IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-S) 


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Hiotographic 

Sciences 
Corporation 


23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER, NY.  MS80 

(716)  872-4503 


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CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions  /  Institut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibliographiques 


The 
tot 


The  Institute  has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


D 


Coloured  covers/ 
Couverture  do  couleur 


I      I    Covers  damaged/ 


Couverture  endommagAe 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaurie  et/ou  pelliculde 

Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 

Coloured  maps/ 

Cartes  gdographiques  en  couleur 

Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 


I      I    Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 


n 
0 


Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 


Bound  with  other  material/ 
Reli6  avec  d'autres  documents 


D 


Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  re  liure  serrie  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ru  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  intArieure 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajout6es 
lors  d'une  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  cela  6tait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  M  fiimies. 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  dt6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-dtre  uniques  du 
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une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  mithode  normale  de  filmage 
sont  indiqu^s  ci-dessous. 


I      I   Coloured  pages/ 


Pages  de  couleur 

Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommag6es 

Pages  restored  and/oi 

Pages  restaurdes  et/ou  pellicul^es 

Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxe< 
Pages  d6color6es,  tachetdes  ou  piqudes 

Pages  detached/ 
Pages  ddtachdes 

Showthrough/ 
Transparence 

Quality  of  prir 

Qualiti  inigale  de  I'impression 

Includes  supplementary  materic 
Comprend  du  materiel  suppl^mentaire 

Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Edition  disponible 


I      I  Pages  damaged/ 

I      I  Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 

rri  Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 

I      I  Pages  detached/ 

r'[^  Showthrough/ 

j      I  Quality  of  print  varies/ 

I      I  Includes  supplementary  material/ 

I      I  Only  edition  available/ 


& 


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ensure  the  best  possible  image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure, 
etc.,  ont  6t6  filmdes  d  nouveau  de  fapon  d 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


The 
pos 
oft 
film 


Ori| 
beg 
the 
sior 
othi 
first 
sior 
or  il 


The 
she 
TIN 
whi 

Mai 
diffi 
enti 
beg 
righ 
reqi 
met 


El 


Additional  comments:/ 
Commentaires  suppl^mentaires; 


Various  pagings.  W<inkled  pages  may  film  slightly  out  of  focus. 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 
Ce  document  est  filmd  au  taux  de  r6duction  indiqu6  ci-dessous. 
10X  14X  ifly  99y 


7CV 


•jvrx 


J 


12X 


16X 


20X 


24X 


28X 


32X 


The  copy  filmed  here  has  been  reproduced  thanks 
to  the  generosity  of: 

Bibiiothdque  nationaie  du  Quebec 


L'exempiaire  film6  f ut  reproduit  grAce  d  la 
ginArositA  de: 

Bibiiothdque  nationaie  du  Quebec 


The  images  appearing  here  are  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  original  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specificaticns. 


Las  images  suivantes  ont  6t6  reproduites  avec  le 
plus  grand  sotn,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettet6  de  rexemplaire  film*,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
fllmage. 


Original  copies  In  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  cover  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  Illustrated  Impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  Illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  — »-  (meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  the  symbol  V  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 


Les  exemplelres  originaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  imprimis  sont  flimis  en  commen9ant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  termlnant  soit  par  la 
dernlAre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  salon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  filmte  en  commengant  par  la 
premiere  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  termlnant  par 
la  dernlAre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaltra  sur  la 
dernlAre  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  seion  le 
cas:  le  symbols  —►  signifie  "A  SUIVRE",  le 
symbols  V  signlfie  "FIN". 


Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  Included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  dtre 
filmis  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diffdrents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  dtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  cliche,  II  est  filmd  d  partir 
de  I'angle  sup6rieur  gauche,  de  gauche  d  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  ndcesssire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mithode. 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

y.  ^a  /a 


1 


THE 


H  I  S  T  O  K  Y 


or 


THE  UNITED  STATES 


or 


NORTH  AMERICA, 


PROM    THS 


PLANTATION  OP  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


TILI. 


THEIR  ASSUMPTION  OF  NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE. 


Br  JAMES  GRAHAME,  LL.  D. 


•   •    •      ■ 


••'  ruf'Twd'VoL'U'MiSS'.     ■  •• 
:•;/.::;  iVO-L:-;!;-      • 

SBC»ND  EDITION,  ENLARGED  AND  AMENDED. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
BLANCHARD    AND    LEA. 


1852. 


Entered  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  jeor  1845,  by 
Lka  and   Blarcuard, 
in  the  Clerk's  office  of  the  District  Court  foj  the  Eastern  District  of  Pennsylvania. 


Printed  bv  T  Kit?.  G.  Cal.iu 


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i 


PREFACE 

TO  TUB 

AMERICAN    EDITION. 


Is  December,  1842,  the  undersigned  was  appointed  by  the  Massachu- 
veits  Historical  Society  "  to  prepare  a  Memoir  of  Mr.  Graharae,  the  his- 
forian  of  the  United  States,"  who  had  been  one  of  its  corresponding  mem- 
bers.  In  fulfilment  of  that  duty,  he  entered  into  a  correspondence  with  Mr 
Grahame's  family  and  European  friends,  in  the  course  of  which  he  learned 
that  Mr.  Grahame  had  left,  at  his  death,  a  corrected  and  enlarged  copy  of 
his  "  History  of  the  United  States  of  North  America,"  and  had  expressed 
among  his  last  wishes,  an  earnest  hope  that  it  might  be  published  in  the 
form  which  it  had  finally  assumed  under  his  hand. 

This  information  having  been  communicated  to  Mr.  Justice  Story, 
Messrs.  James  Savage,  Jared  Sparks,  and  William  H.  Prescott,  they 
concurred  m  the  opinion,  that  it  "  scarcely  comported  with  American  feel- 
ings, interest,  or  self-respect  to  permit  a  work  of  so  much  laborious  research 
and  merit,  written  m  a  faithful  and  elevated  spirit,  and  relating  to  our  own 
history,  to  want  an  American  edition,  embracing  the  last  additions  and  cor- 
rections of  Its  deceased  author."  Influenced  by  considerations  of  this  kind, 
those  gentlemen,  in  connection  with  the  undersigned,  undertook  the  office 
of  promoting  and  superintending  the  publication  of  the  work  in  its  enlarged 
and  amended  form.  A  copy,  prepared  from  that  left  by  the  author,  was 
accordingly  placed  at  their  disposal  by  his  son,  Robert  Grahame,  Esq.  • 
who  subsequently  transmitted  the  original,  also,  to  be  deposited  in  the  libra- 
ry of  Harvard  University.  The  supervision  of  the  work,  during  its  progress 
through  the  press,  devolved  on  the  undersigned,  — a  charge  which  he  has 
executed  with  as  thorough  fidelity  to  Mr.  Grahame  and  the  public  as  its 
nature  and  his  official  engagements  have  permitted. 

A  wish  having  been  intimated  by  the  son  of  Mr.  Grahame,  that  the  Me- 
moir, prepared  at  the  request  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society, 
should  be  prefixed  to  the  American  edition  of  the  History,  it  has  been  ac- 
ceded to.  Ihe  principal  materials  for  this  Memoir  —  consisting  of  extracts 
Irom  Mr.  Grahame's  diary  and  correspondence,  accompanied  by  interesting 
notices  ol  his  sentiments  and  character  —  were  furnished  by  his  highly  ac- 
complished widow,  his  son-in-law,  John  Stewart,  Esq.,  and  his  friend.  Sir 
John  !<.  W.  Herschel,  Bart.,  who  had  maintained  with  him  from  early 
youth  an  uninterrupted  intimacy.  Robert  Walsh,  Esq.,  the  present  Amer- 
ican consul  at  Pans,  well  known  and  appreciated  in  this  country  and  in 
Europe  lor  his  moral  worth  and  literary  eminence,  who  had  enjJyed  the 


VOL.  I 


t 


IV 


PREFACE  TO  THE  AMERICAN   EDITION. 


privilege  of  an  intimate  personal  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Grahame,  also  trans- 
muted  many  of  his  letters.     Like  favors  were  received  from  William  H 
Prescott,  Esq.,  and  the  Rev.  George  E.  Ellis.     In  the  use  of  these  matel 
rials,  the  endeavour  has  been,  as  far  as  possible,  to  make  Mr.  Grahame's 
own  language  the  expositor  of  his  mind  and  motives. 

The  portrait  prefixed   to  this   work  is  from  an   excellent  painting  by 
Healy,  engraved  with  great  fidelity  by  Andrews,  one  of  our  most  eminent 
artists;  the  cost  both  of  the  painting  and  the  engraving  having  been  de- 
frayed by  several  American  citizens,  who  interested  themselves  in  the  sue 
cess  of  the  present  undertaking. 

CXMBK.0OE.  September  9.  1845.  •'^^'^"  ^^^^^^ 


ame,  also  trans- 

m  William  H. 

of  these  maie- 

Mr.  Grahame's 

!nt  painting  by 
r  most  eminent 
aving  been  de- 
ves  in  the  sue 

LH  QUINCY 


MEMOIR 

OF 

JAMES  GRAHAMS,  LL.  D. 


James  Grahame,  the  subject  of  this  Memoir,  was  born  in  Glasgow 
Scotland,  on  the  21st  of  December,  1790,  of  a  family  distinguished,  m  its 
successive  generations,  by  intellectual  vigor  and  attainments,  united  with  a 
zeal  for  civil  liberty,  chastened  and  directed  by  elevated  religious  sentiment. 

His  paternal  grandfather,  Thomas  Grahame,  was  eminent  for  piety,  gen- 
erosity, and  talent.  Presiding  in  the  Admiralty  Court,  at  Glasgow,  he  is 
said  to  have  been  the  first  British  judge  who  decreed  the  liberation  of  a 
negro  slave  brought  mlo  Great  Britain,  on  the  ground,  that  "a  guiltless  hu- 
man being,  in  that  country,  must  be  free"  ;  a  judgment  preceding  by  some 
years  the  celebrated  decision  of  Lord  Mansfield  on  the  same  point.  In  the 
war  for  the  independence  of  the  United  States,  he  was  an  early  and  uni- 
form opponent  of  the  pretensions  and  policy  of  Great  Britain  ;  declaring,  in 
the  very  commencement  of  the  contest,  that  "it  was  like  the  controversy  of 
Athens  vyith  Syracuse,  and  he  was  persuaded  it  would  end  in  the  same  way." 

He  died  m  1791,  at  the  age  of  sixty,  leaving  two  sons,  Robert  and 
James.  Ul  these,  the  youngest,  James,  was  esteemed  for  his  moral  worth, 
and  admired  for  his  genius  ;  delighting  his  friends  and  companions  by  the 
readiness  and  playfulness  of  his  wit,  and  commanding  the  reverence  of  all 
who  knew  hinri,  by  the  purity  of  a  life  under  the  guidance  of  an  ever  active 
religious  principle.  He  was  the  author  of  a  poem  entitled  "  The  Sabbath  " 
which,  adniired  on  its  first  publication,  still  retains  its  celebrity  among  the 
minor  effusions  of  the  poetic  genius  of  Britain. 

Robert,  the  elder  of  the  sons  of  Thomas  Grahame,  and  father  of  the  sub- 
ject of  this  Memoir,  inheriting  the  virtues  of  his  ancestors,  and  imbued  with 
their  spirit,  has  sustained,  through  a  long  life,  not  yet  terminated,  the  char- 
acter of  a  uniform  friend  of  liberty.  His  zeal  in  its  cause  rendered  him,  at 
ditterent  periods,  obnoxious  to  the  suspicions  of  the  British  government. 
When  the  mmistry  attempted  to  control  the  expression  of  public  opinion  by 
he  prosecution  of  Home  Tooke,  a  secretary  of  state's  warrant  was  isiied 
arnni ll  oJ  'tT  t^^  ^«"«^,^"ences  of  which  he  was  saved  through  the 
u'v  nl  •TT'I'  ^^  '  f°".^^"  "•■y •  W*^^"  Castlereagh's  ascendant  pol- 
icy had  excited  the  people  of  Scotland  to  a  state  of  revolt,  and  several  per- 
sons  were  prosecuted  for  high  treason,  whose  poverty  prevented  them  from 
engaging  the  best  counsel,  he  brought  down,  at  his  ovvn  charge,  for  LkZ 
fence,  distinguished  English  lawyers  from  London,  they  being  deemed  bet 
ter  acquainted  than  those  of  Scotland  with  the  law  of  high  treason  ;  and 


▼1 


MEMOIR. 


the  result  was  the  acquittal  of  the  persons  indicted.  He  sympathize  with 
the  Americans  in  their  struggle  for  independence,  and  rejoiced  in  their  sue- 
cess.  Uegardmg  the  French  devolution  as  a  shoot  from  the  American 
stock,  he  hailed  its  progress  in  its  early  stages  with  satisfaction  and  hope, 
bo  long  as  Its  leaders  restricted  themselves  to  argument  and  persuasion,  he 
was  their  adherent  and  advocate  ;  but  withdrew  his  countenance,  when  ihev 
resorted  to  terror  and  violence.  ' 

By  his  profession  as  writer  to  the  signet'  he  acquired  fortune  and  emi- 
nence, rhough  distinguished  for  public  and  private  worth  and  well  directed 
.^l".'o^oP°.""'  ?""f  excluded  him  from  official  power  and  distinction, 
until  1833,  when,  after  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill,  he  was  unanimous! 
y  chosen,  at  the  age  of  seventy-lour,  without  any  canvass  or  solicitation  on 
Jiis  part,  at  the  first  election  under  the  reformed  constituency.  Lord  Provost 
01  Ulasgow.  His  character  is  not  without  interest  to  the  American  people  • 
lor  Ins  son,  whose  respect  for  his  talents  and  virtues  fell  little  short  of  ad- 
miration, acknow  edges  that  it  was  his  father's  suggestion  and  encouragement 
which  first  turned  his  thoughts  to  writing  the  history  of  the  United  States 

Under  such  paternal  influences,  James  Grahame,  our  historian,  was  early 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  liberty.     His  mind  became  familiarized  with  its 
principles  anS  their  limitations.    Even  in  boyhood,  his  thoughts  were  direct- 
ed towards  that  Transatlantic  people  whose  national  existence  was  the  work 
oJ  that  spirit,  and  whose  institutions  were  framed  with  an  express  view  to 
maintain  and  peroetuate  it.     His  early  education  was  domesticf    A  French 
omigrant  priest  taught  him  the  first  elements  of  learning.     He  then  i)assed 
through  the  regular  course  of  instruction  at  the  Grammar  School  of  Glas- 
gow,  and  afterwards  attended  the  classes  at  the  University  in  that  city.     In 
both  he  was  distinguished  by  his  proficiency.     After  pursuing  a  preparatory 
course  in  geometry  and  algebra,  hearing  the  lectures  of  Professor  Playfair, 
and  reviewing  his  former  studies  under  private  tuition,  he  entered,  about  his 
twentieth  year,  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge.     But  his  connection  with 
the  University  was  short.     In  an  excursion  during  one  of  the  vacations,  he 
lormed  an  attachment  to  the  lady  whom  he  afterwards  married  ;  becoming, 
in  consequence,  desirous  of  an  early  establishment  in  life,  he  terminated  ab- 
ruptly hs  academical  connections,  and  commenced  a  course  of  professional 
study  preparatory  to  his  admission  to  the  Scottish  bar. 

At  Cambridge  he  had  tlie  happiness  to  form  an  acquaintance,  which  ripen- 
ed mto  n-iendship,  with  Mr.  Herschel,  now  known  to  the  world  as  Sir  John 
*  •  ^'  Herschel,  Bart.,  and  by  the  high  rank  he  sustains  among  the  astron- 
omers  of  Lurope.  Concerning  this  friendship  Mr.  Grahame  thus  writes  in 
hisdiary—' It  has  always  been  an  ennobling  tie.  We  have  been  the 
friends  of  each  other's  souls  and  of  each  other's  virtue,  as  well  as  of  each 
other  s  person  and  success.  He  was  of  St.  John's  College,  as  well  as  I. 
Many  a  day  we  passed  m  walking  together,  and  many  a  night  in  studying  to- 
gether.  \«f'f  mtimacy  continued  unbroken  through  Mr.  Grahame's  life, 
in  June,  1812,  Mr.  Grahame  was  admitted  to  the  Scottish  bar  as  an  ad- 
vocate,  and  immediately  entered  on  the  practice  of  his  profession.  It  seems, 
however  not  to  have  been  suited  to  his  taste  ;  for  about  this  time  he  writes 
-  Until  now,  1  have  been  my  own  master,  and  I  now  resign  my  inde- 
pendence  for  a  service  I  dislike."  His  assiduity  was,  nevertheless,^  unre- 
mitted, and  was  attended  with  satisfactory  success  ;  indicative,  in  the  opin- 
■onofhisfnends,  of  ultimate  |)rofessiona[eminence.  ^ 

'  An  attorney. 


Revit 


MEMOIR. 


Tipathized  with 
!d  in  their  suc- 
the  American 
tion  and  hope, 
persuasion,  he 
ice,  when  they 

une  and   emi- 
t  well  directed 
nd  distinction, 
as  unanimous- 
solicitation  on 
Lord  I'rovost 
irican  people  ; 
?  short  of  ad- 
ncouragement 
lited  States, 
ian,  was  early 
rized  with  its 
3  were  direct- 
was  the  work 
press  view  to 
:.    A  French 
e  then  passed 
hool  of  Glas- 
liat  city.     In 
a  preparatory 
3sor  Playfliir, 
ed,  about  his 
inection  with 
vacations,  he 

;  becoming, 
!rniinated  ab- 

professional 

which  ripen- 
as  Sir  John 
g  the  astron- 
hus  writes  in 
ve  been  the 
11  as  of  each 
as  well  as  I. 
studying  to- 
ahame's  life. 
)ar  as  an  ad- 
I.  It  seems, 
le  he  vvriies, 
;n  my  inde- 
eless,  unre- 
in the  opin- 


TU 


In  October,  1813,  he  married  Matilda  Robley,  of  Stoke  Newington,  a 
pupil  of  Mrs.  Barbauld  ;  who,  in  it  letter  to  a  friend,  wrote  concerning  her, 
—  "  She  is  bjr  far  one  of  the  most  charming  women  I  have  ever  known! 
Young,  beautilul,  amiable,  and  accomplished  ;  with  a  fine  fortune.  She  is 
going  to  be  married  to  a  Mr.  Grahame,  a  young  Scotch  barrister.  I  have 
the  greatest  reluctance  to  part  with  this  precious  treasure,  and  can  only  hope 
that  Mr.  Grahame  is  worthy  of  so  much  happiness." 

All  the  anticipations  justified  by  Mrs.  Barbauld's  exalted  estimate  of  this 
lady  were  realized  by  Mr.  Grahame.  He  found  in  this  connection  a  stim- 
ulus and  a  reward  for  his  professional  exertions.  "  Love  and  ambition," 
he  writes  to  his  friend  Herschel,  soon  after  his  marriage,  "  unite  to  incite 
my  industry.  My  reputation  and  success  rapidly  increase,  and  I  see  clear- 
ly that  only  perseverance  is  wanting  to  possess  me  of  all  the  bar  can  afford." 
And  again,  at  a  somewhat  later  period,  — "You  can  hardly  fancy  the  de- 
light I  felt  the  other  day,  on  hearing  the  Lord  President  declai;^  that  one 
ol  my  printed  pleadings  was  most  excellent.  Yet,  although  you  were  more 
ambitious  than  I  am,  you  could  not  taste  the  full  enjoyment  of  professional 
success,  without  a  wife  to  heighten  your  pleasure,  by  sympathizing  in  it." 

Soon  after  Mr.  Grahame's  marriage,  the  religious  principle  took  predom- 
inating possession  of  his  mind.     Its  depth  and  influence  were  early  indicat- 
ed in  his  correspondence.     As  the  impression  bad  been  sudden,  his  friends 
anticipated  it  would  be  temporary.     But  it  proved  otherwise.     From  the 
bent  which  his  mind  now  received  it  never  afterwards  swerved.     His  gen- 
eral religious  views  coincided  with  those  professed  by  the  early  Puritans  and 
the  Scotch  Covenanters  ;  but  they  were  sober,  elevated,  expansive,  and  free 
from  narrowness  and  bigotry.    Though  his  temperament  was  naturally  ardent 
and  excitable,  he  was  exempt  from  all  tendency  to  extravagance  or  intoler- 
ance.    His  religious  sensibilities  were  probably  quickened  by  an  opinion, 
which  the  feebleness  of  his  physical  constitution  led  him  early  to  entertain 
that  his  life  was  destined  to  be  of  short  duration.     In  a  letter  to  Hefschel' 
about  this  period,  he  writes,  — "I  have  a  horror  of  deferring  labor:  and 
a^o  such  fancies  or  presentiments  of  a  short  life,  that  I  often  feel  I  cannot 
afford  to  trust  fate  for  a  day.     I  know  of  no  other  mode  of  creating  time. 
M   ®'^P''''^^'°"  ^^  allowable,  than  to  make  the  most  of  every  moment." 
Mr.  Grahame's  mind,  naturally  active  and  discursive,  could  not  be  cir- 
cumscribed within  the  sphere  of  professional  avocations.     It  was  early  en- 
gaged on  topics  of  general  literature.     He  began,  in  1814,  to  write  for  the 
Keviews,  and  his  labors  in  this  field  indicate  a  mind  thoughtful,  fixed,  and 
comprehensive,  uniting  great  assiduity  in  research  with  an  invincible  spirit  of 
independence.     In  1816,  he  sharply  assailed  Malthus,  on  the  subject  of 
I  opulation.  Poverty,  and  the  Poor-laws,"  in  a  pamphlet  which  was  well 
received  by  the  public,  and  passed  through  two  editions.     In  this  pamphlet 
he  evinces  his  knowledge  of  American  aifairs  by  frequently  alluding  to  them 
and  by  quoting  from  the  works  of  Dr.  Franklin.    Mr.  Grahame  was  one  of 
the  few  to  whom  Malthus  condescended  to  reply,  and  a  controversy  ensued 
between  them  m  the  periodical  publications  of  the  day.     In  the  year  1817 
ftis  religious  prepossessions  were  manifested  in  an  animated  "Defence  of  the 
acottish  1  resbytenans  and  Covenanters  against  the  Author  of  *  The  Tales 
01  my  Landlord  "» ;  these  productions  being  regarded  by  him  "as  an  at- 
tempt to  hold  upv  to  contempt  and  ridicule  those  Scotchmen,  who,  under  a 
galling  temporal  tyranny  and  sniriinnl  nArao/x.tjoi   (\pA  c —  ,u^:.  u j 


VJU 


MEMOIR. 


comforts,  to  worship,  in  the  secrecy  of  deserts  and  wastes,  their  God,  ac- 
cording to  the  dictates  of  their  conscience  ;  the  genius  of  the  author  beii* 
thus  exerted  to  falsify  history  and  confound  moral  distinctions."  Mr.  Gra- 
hame  also  published,  anonymously,  several  pamphlets  on  topics  of  local  in- 
terest ;  "  all,"  it  is  said,  "  distinguished  for  elegance  and  learning."  la 
mature  life,  when  time  and  the  habit  of  composition  had  chastened  his  taste 
and  improved  his  judgment, — his  opinions,  also,  on  some  topics  having 
changed,  —  he  was  accustomed  to  look  back  on  his  early  writings  with  little 
complacency,  and  the  severity  with  which  he  applied  self-criticism  led  him 
to  express  a  hope  tjiat  all  memory  of  these  publications  might  be  obliterated. 
Although  some  of  them,  perhaps,  are  not  favorable  specimens  of  his  ripened 
powers,  they  are  far  from  meriting  the  oblivion  to  which  he  would  have  con- 
signed them. 

In  the  course  of  this  year  (1817),  Mr.  Grahame's  eldest  daughter  died, 
—an  eveiU  so  deeply  afflictive  to  him,  as  to  induce  an  illness  which  endan- 
gered his  life.  In  the  year  ensuing,  he  was  subjected  to  the  severest  of  all 
bereavements  in  the  death  of  his  wife,  who  had  been  the  object  of  his  anlim- 
ited  confidence  and  affection.  The  effect  produced  on  Mr.  Grahame's  mind 
by  this  succession  of  afflictions  is  thus  noticed  by  his  son-in-law,  John  Stew- 
art, Esq. : — "  Hereafter  the  chief  characteristic  of  his  journal  is  deep  re^ 
ligious  feeling  pervading  it  throughout.  It  is  full  of  rehgious  meditations, 
tempering  the  natural  ardor  of  his  disposition ;  presenting  curious  and  in- 
structive records,  at  the  same  time  showing  that  these  convictions  did  noi 
prevent  him  from  mingling  as  heretofore  in  general  society.  It  also  evidences 
tliat  all  he  there  sees,  the  events  passing  around  him,  the  most  ordinary  oc- 
currences of  his  own  life,  are  subjected  to  another  test, — are  constantly 
referred  to  a  religious  standard,  and  weighed  by  Scripture  principles.  The 
severe  application  of  these  to  himself,  —  to  self-examination,  —  is  as  re- 
markable as  his  charitable  application  of  them  in  his  estimate  of  others." 

To  alleviate  the  distress  consequent  on  his  domestic  bereavements,  Mr. 
Grahame  extended  the  range  of  his  intellectual  pursuits.   In  1819,  be  writes,, 
—  "  I  have  been  for  several  weeks  engaged  in  the  study  of  Hebrew  ;  and,, 
having  mastered  the  first  difficulties,  the  language  will  be  my  own  in  a  few 
months.    I  am  satisfied  with  what  I  have  done.    No  exercise  of  the  mmd  is 
wholly  lost,  even  when  not  prosecuted  to  the  end  originally  contemplated." 
For  several  years  succeeding  the  death  of  his  wife,  his  kterary  and  pro- 
fessional labors  were  much  obstructed  by  precarious  health  and  depressed 
spirits.     His  diary  during  this  period  indicates  an  excited  moral  watchful- 
ness, and  is  replete  with  solemn  and  impressive  thouglits.     Thus,  in  April,. 
1821,  he  remarks,  —  "  In  writilfig  a  law-pleading  to-day,  I  was  struck  witJ» 
what  I  have  often  before  reflected  on,  the  subtle  and  dangerous  temptation* 
that  our  profession  presents  to  us  of  varnishing  and  disguising  the  conduct 
and  views  of  our  clients, — of  mending  the  natural  complexion  of  a  case,, 
filling  up  its  gaps  and  rounding  its  sliarp  corners."    And  in  Ok:tober  foUow- 
mg,  —  "  Why  is  it  that  the  creatures  so  often  disappomt  as,  and  that  tl>e 
uuition  of  them  is  sometimes  attended  with  sati«^ty  ?     We  try  to  make  ibem 
more  to  us  than  (Jod  has  fitted  them  to  be.    Such  attempts  must  ever  be  in 
rain.     We  do  not  enjoy  tliem  as  the  gifts  and  refreshments  afforded  ns  by 
God,  and  in  subordinution  to  his  will  and  purpose  in  giving.     If  we  did  so^ 
«ur  use  would  be  humble,  grateful,  mod 'irate,  and  happy.     The  good  tJn» 

IfQO    n*»*a    IS:  tkorn    ia    \t^»mtnAt^A   •    !>..>  ...  .— .    .U-^    :_    -I———    ^i(*     ^t--!-    I--'— t- 

-»-ssi    I  "^-    -=■  »»•-  .i.    — .    ij-j^tiwva  ,    inii  x3Sica    max    a.  UTaWs  OU^    j'l'rir   itIIQBISi' 


ties 


MEMOIR. 


iheir  God,  ac- 
be  author  beii^ 
5."     Mr.  Gra- 
lies  of  local  in- 
learning."     In 
stened  his  taste 
'•  topics  having 
tings  with  little 
ticism  led  him 
be  obliterated, 
r  of  his  ripened 
ould  have  con- 
daughter  died, 
)  which  endan- 
severest  of  all 
:t  of  his  anlini- 
rahame's  mind 
,v,  John  Stew- 
nal  is  deep  re- 
8  meditations, 
urious  and  in- 
ctions  did  not 
also  evidences 
t  ordinary  oc- 
are  constantly 
aciples.     Tb» 
►,  —  is  as  re- 
of  others." 
ivements,  Mr. 
i  19,  be  writes,, 
Icbrew  ;  and,, 
own  in  a  few 
of  the  mind  is 
intemplated.'* 
rary  and  pro- 
:iHil  depressed 
oral  watchfut- 
hus,  in  April,. 
15  struck  witji 
is  temptations' 
;  the  cottduci 
on  of  a  cBse^ 
jtober  foliow- 
and  that  tlte 
to  make  thenr 
jst  ever  be  in 
IForded  ns  hy 
Ef  we  did  so^ 
be  good  tbatr 


IX 


^1 

OKir 


L 

i!igfB2BF 


sweetness  and  best  use  may  be  found  in  the  testimony  they  afford  of  his  ex- 
haustless  love  and  goodness."  And  again,  in  February,  1822,  — "We  are 
all  travelhng  to  the  grave,  — but  in  very  different  attitudes  ;— some  feasting 
and  jestmg,  some  fastmg  and  praying ;  some  eagerly  and  anxiously  strugelins 
lor  things  temporal,  some  humbly  seeking  things  eternal." 

An  excursion  into  the  Low  Countries,  undertaken  for  the  benefit  of  his 
health,  m  1823,  enabled  Mr.  Grahame  to  gratify  his  "strong  desire  to  be- 
come acquainted  with  extrema  vestigia  of  the  ancient  Dutch  habits  and  man- 
ners. In  this  journey  he  enjoyed  the  hospitalities,  at  Lisle,  of  its  gover- 
nor, Marshal  Cambronne,  and  formed  an  intimacy  with  that  noble  veteran, 
which,  through  the  correspondence  of  their  sympathies  and  principles,  ripen- 
ed into  a  friendship  that  terminated  only  with  life  itself.  r     >    i- 

About  this  period  he  was  admitted  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Ed- 
inburgh    and  soon  after  began  seriously  to  contemplate  writing  the  history 
of  the  United  States  of  North  America.     Early  education,  relilious  princi- 
pie,  and  a  native  earnestness  in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  concurred  to  in- 
clme  his  mind  A  this  undertaking.    He  was  reared,  as  we  have  seen,  under 
the  immediate  eye  of  a  father  who  had  been  an  early  and  uniform  advocate 
ot  tJie  principles  which  led  to  American  independence.    In  1810,  whil    vet 
but  on  the  threshold  of  manhood,  his  admiration  of  the  illustrious  men  ^vho 
were  distmguisiied  m  the  American  Revolution  was  evinced  by  the  familiari- 
ty with  ^vhich  he  spoke  of  their  characters  or  quoted  from  their  writings. 
1  he  names  of  Washington  and  Franklin  were  ever  on  his  lips,  and  his  cbief 
source  of  delight  was  m  American  history.^    This  interest  was  mtenseiy  in- 
creased  by  the  fact,  that  religious  views,  in  many  respects  coinciding  \nth 
his  own   had  been  the  chief  moving  cause  of  one  of  the  earliest  and  m^x 
successful  of  the  emigrations  to  North  America,  and  had  exerted  a  material 
eftect  on  the  structure  of  the  political  institutions  of  die  United  States 
Ihese  combined  inguences  elev.  ,.ed  his  feelings  to  a  state  of  enthusiasm  oa 
the  subject  of  American  history,  and  led  him  to  regard  it  as  "  the  noblest  in 
dignity,  the  most  comprehensive  in  utility,  and  the  most  interesting  in  oro- 
gress  and  event,  of  aU  the  subjects  of  thought  and  investigation."    In  jL», 
1824,  he  remarks  m  his  journal,-"!  have  had  soraelhoughts  of  wrhine 
tJTl  °i,N°?h  America   from  the  period  of  its  cotenization  from  E«! 
rope  till  the  Revolution  and  the  establishment  of  the  republic.    The  subiect 
seems  to  me  grand  and  noble.     It  was  not  a  thirst  of  gold  or  of  conqSSu 
but  piety  and  virtue,  that  laid  the  foundation  of  those  settlements.    The^ 
^L"!"^    f  •  ^1'*'  P''"''!;'  '  '""T'  °^^'""  «"'^  •="■'"«'  »>»*  of  manly  ente.- 

S  «lTn  K  .1.  y    °''  ""V^^  ^V'  *'="'*^  °^  Freedom  betrayed  and  abandon 
J^l  V  w'^  I'^'T  ""^^  ^'"Sland.     The  share  that  religious  men  ted  S» 
accomplishing  the  American  Revolution  is  a  matter  well  deservmg  inm^J" 
but  leading   I  fear,  into  very  difficult  discussion."  ^  ^     ^' 

engaged  m  it  w  th  many  doubts  and  after  frequent  misRivings^     Nor  did  be 

Sused^^iCff^'"'-"'^'  »;^  P«^««-«d,  were  scattered'broken,  a^ 

Ues     'nd  chSlv  to\   "^""f  ""•*  f^T^  ^y  ^'"'^^^"  independent  sove^ign- 
ties  ,  and  chiefly  to  be  sought  in  local  tracts  and  histories,  hard  to  be  Si- 

'  Sit  John  P.  W.  Herwjhei't  lettVK  ~~ ~~" 


xr 


MEMOIR. 


tamed,  and  often  little  known,  even  in  America,  beyond  the  scenes  in  which 
they  had  their  origin,  and  on  which  their  light  was  reflected.     It  was  a  work 
which  must  absorb  many  years  of  his  life,  and  task  all  his  faculties.     Not 
only  considerations  like  these,  but  also  the  extent  of  the  outline,  and  the 
number  and  variety  of  details  embraced  in  his  design,  oppressed  and  kept  in 
suspense  a  mmd  naturally  sensitive  and  self-distrustful.     Having  at  length 
become  fixed  in  his  purpose,— chiefly,  there  is  reason  to  believe,  through 
the  predominating  influence  of  his  religious  feelings  and  views,  —  on  the  4ih 
of  December,  1824,  he  writes  in  his  journal,  —  "  After  long,  profound,  and 
anxious  deliberation,  and  much  preparatory  research  and  inqui.v,  I  began  the 
continuous  (for  so  I  mean  it)  composition  of  the  historv  of  the  United  States 
of  North  America.     This  pursuit,  whether  I  succeed  in  it  or  not,  must 
ever  attract  my  mind  by  the  powerful  consideration,  that  it  was  first  suggest- 
ed to  me  in  conversation  with  my  father,  Mr.  Clarkson,  and  Mr.  Dillwyn  » 
And,  at  a  subsequent  date,— " May  God  (whom  I  have  invoked  in  the 
work)  bless,  direct,  and  prosper  my  undertaking !     The  surest  way  to  exe- 
cute It  well  IS  to  regard  it  always  as  a  service  of  body  and^splrit  to  God  • 
that  the  end  may  shed  its  light  on  the  means. »»     In  the  same  spirit,  he 
writes  to  Mr.  Herschel,  on  the  31st  of  December,  — "  For  a  considerable 
time  1  have  been  meditating  a  great  literary  work,  and,  after  much  prepara- 
tory reading,  reflection,  and  note-writing,  have  at  length  begun  it.    If  I  con- 
tinue It,  as  I  hope  to  do,  it  will  absorb  much  of  my  time  and  mind  for  manv 
years.     It  is  a  history  of  North  America,  —  the  most  interesting  historica'l 
subject,  J  think,  a  human  pen  ever  undertook.     I  have  always  thought  the 
labors  of  the  historian  the  first  in  point  of  literary  dignity  and  utility.     His- 
tory IS  every  thing.    Religion,  science,  literature,  whatever  men  do  or  think 
falls  within  the  scope  of  history.     I  ardently  desire  to  make  it  a  religious 
work,  and,  in  writing,  to  keep  the  chief  end  of  man  mainly  in  view.     Thus 
I  hope,  the  nobleness  of  the  end  I  propose  may  impart  a  dignity  to  the 
means."  ' 

The  undertaking,  once  commenced,  was  prosecuted  with  characteristic 
ardor  and  untiring  industry.  All  the  time  which  professional  avocations  left 
to  him  was  devoted  to  this  his  favorite  field  of  exertion.  His  labors  were 
continued  always  until  midnight,  and  often  until  three  or  four  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  and  he  became  impatient  of  every  other  occupation.  But  late 
hours,  long  sittings,  and  intense  application  soon  seriously  affected  his  health 
and  symptoms  of  an  overstrained  constitution  gradually  began  to  appear  Of 
this  state  of  mind,  and  of  these  effects  of  his  labors  on  his  health,  his  letters 
give  continual  evidence.  "  I  am  becoming  increasingly  wedded  to  my  his- 
torical work,  ?>nd  proportionally  averse  to  the  bar  and  forensic  practice.  At 
hall  past  three  this  morning  I  desist,  from  motives  of  prudence  (tardily  op- 
erating,  it  must  be  confessed)  rather  than  from  weariness."  —  "  Sick  or 
well,  my  History  is  the  most  interesting  and  absorbing  employment  I  have 
ever  found.     It  is  a  noble  subject."  ** 

By  application  thus  active  and  incessant,  the  first  volume  of  his  work 
comprehending  the  history  of  the  settlement  of  Virginia  and  New  England' 
was  so  nearly  complejed^atjyjnjhej^^  as^c^dmit  of  his  then 

'  A  manuscript  journal  of  iho  progress  of  tliiH  HiHtory,  includinglhTamhiii^i^onWltecr 

depoBited  .n  the  library  of  that  institution,  to  ivhich  it  now  belong..    It  i.  ono  of  the  docu 
■lent*  URcd  in  tho  preparation  of  thJH  Memoir. 
•  Lotten  to  llerKhel,  January  and  Februury,  IHas, 


cess. 


MEMOIR. 


XI 


3  scenes  in  which 
.  It  was  a  work 
s  faculties.     Not 

outline,  and  the 
essed  and  kept  in 
Having  at  length 

believe,  through 
ivs,  —  on  the  4th 
ig,  profound,  and 
(uhy,  I  began  the 
he  United  States 

it  or  not,  must 
(vas  first  suggest- 
i  Mr.  Dillwyn." 
!  invoked  in  the 
rest  way  to  exe- 
l^splrit  to  God ; 
J  same  spirit,  he 
r  a  considerable 
r  much  prepara- 
;un  it.  If  1  con- 
d  mind  for  many 
resting  historical 
vays  thought  the 
id  utility.  His- 
nen  do  or  think, 
^e  it  a  religious 
n  view.  Thus, 
a  dignity  to  the 

th  characteristic 
il  avocations  left 
lis  labors  were 
r  o'clock  in  the 
tion.  But  late 
icted  his  health, 
I  to  appear.  Of 
;alth,  his  letters 
Jded  to  my  his- 

0  practice.  At 
ice  (tardily  op- 
"  — "  Sick  or 
loyment  I  have 

e  of  his  work, 

New  England, 

rnit  of  his  then 

thnritioH  conBiilted^ 

1  College,  and  waa 
a  one  of  tho  docu 


opening  a  negotiation  for  its  publication.  In  a  letter  to  Longman,  his  book- 
seller,  Mr.  Grahame  expresses  in  the  strongest  terms  his  devotedness  to  the 
undertaking,  and  adds,  —  "Every  day  my  purpose  becomes  stronger  to 
abandon  every  other  pursuit,  in  order  to  devote  to  this  my  whole  time  and 
attention." 

He  now  imniediately  set  about  collecting  materials  for  his  second  volume. 
,  Having  ascertained  that  in  England  it  was  impossible  to  obtain  books  essen- 
tial to  the  success  of  his  historical  researches,  and  that  rich  treasures  in  the 
department  of  American  history  were  deposited  at  Gottingen,  he  undertook 
a  journey  to  that  city,  and  found  in  its  library  many  very  valuable  materials 
for  his  work.  To  these  resouices  his  attention  had  been  directed  by  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  whose  "  unwearied  labors  in  supplying  him  with  infor- 
mation on  the  subject  of  his  historical  work,  and  whose  interest  in  its  suc- 
cess," he  gratefully  acknowledges  in  his  letters  ;  adding,  —  "  To  him  noth- 
ing is  indifferent  that  concerns  literature,  or  the  interests  of  his  friends." 
During  Mr.  Grahame's  short  residence  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  his 
mother,  to  whom  he  was  tenderly  attached,  died  ;  and  he  returned  to  En- 
gland i/i  the  following  September  (1825)  under  a  heavy  depression  of  spirits. 
He  resumed,  however,  his  favorite  labors,  but,  in  consequence  of  the  feilure 
of  his  health,  was  soon  obliged  to  desist. 

"  The  latter  part  of  1825  and  the  beginning  of  1826,"  his  friend  Her- 
schel  states,  "  was  passed  by  Mr.  Grahame  in  London,  under  pressure  of 
severe  and  dangerous  as  well  as  painful  illness,  the  exhausting  and  debilitat- 
ing effects  of  which  were  probably  never  obliterated  from  his  constitution, 
and  which  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  seek  safety  in  a  milder  climatfi  than 
;!  that  of  Scotland.     Thither,  however,  he  for  a  while  returned,  but  only  to 
;  write  in  a  strain  like  the  following  :  —  '  Whitehill,  April  24,  1826.     My 
bodily  health  is  nearly  reestablished  ;  but  my  mind  is  in  a  wretched  state  of 
feebleness  and  languor,  and  indifference  to  almost  every  thing.    My  History 
is  completely  at  a  stand.     The  last  month  has  been  the  most  disagreeable 
I  p    "}y.  '''®-     '^  ^  ^^  "ot  t"  undergo  some  great  change  in  the  state  of  my 
.  faculties,  I  do  sincerely  hope  my  life  may  not  be  long.     My  discontent  and 
i  uneasiness  are,  however,  mitigated  by  the  thought,  that  our  condition  is  ap- 
pointed by  God,  and  that  there  must  be  duties  attached  to  it,  and  some  de- 
gree of  happiness  connected  with  the  performance  of  those  duties.     Sure- 
y,  the  highest  duty  and  happiness  of  a  created  being  must  arise  from  a  wil- 
hng  subservience  to  the  designs  of  the  Creator.'  " 

•  Being  apprized  by  his  physicians  that  an  abode  in  Scotland  during  anoth- 
er winter  would  probably  prove  fatal  to  him,  he  transferred  his  residence  to 
the  bouth  of  England,  and  thenceforth,  abandoning  his  profession  of  advo- 
cate, devoted  himself  exclusively  to  the  completion  of  his  historical  work, 
as  appears  by  the  following  entry  in  his  diary  :  —  "  March,  1826.  Edin- 
»  f?  J  j""™  ^V  P"^^?^""?  ^o  strike  my  tent,  that  is,  dissolve  my  house- 
hold and  depart  for  ever  from  this  place  ;  my  physicians  requiring  me  not  to 
pass  another  winter  in  ihe  climate  of  Scotland.  I  quit  my  profession  with- 
out regret,  having  little  liked  and  greatly  neglected  it  ever  since  I  under- 
took lie  history  of  America,  to  which  I  shall  be  glad  to  devote  uninterrupt- 
edly ail  my  energies,  as  soon  as  I  succeed  in  re-collecting  them." 

His  journal  bears  continued  testimony  lo  ilie  deep  interest  he  took  in 
every  thing  American,  and  the  philosophic  views  which  he  applied  to  the 
condition  and  duties  of  the  people  of' the  United  States. —  *' American 

VOL.  I.  t  «« 


xu 


MEMOIR. 


writers  are  too  apt  to  accept  the  challenge  of  Europeans  to  competitions 
quite  unsuitable  to  their  country.     Theraistocles  neither  envied  nor  emulat- 
ed the  boast  of  the  flute-player,  to  whose  challenge  he  answered  :  '  I  can- 
not, indeed,  play  the  flute  like  you  ;  but  I  can  transform  a  small  villaee  into 
a  great  city.'     From  evils  of  which  America  is  happily  ignorant  there  arise 
some  partially  compensating  advantages,  which  she  may  very  well  dispense 
with.     Titular  nobility  and  standing  armies,  for  example,  develope  polite- 
ness and  honor  (not  honor  of  the  purest  and  noblest  kind)  among  a  few  at 
the  expense  of  depraving  and  depressing  vast  multitudes.    Great  inequalities 
of  wealth,  the  bondage  of  the  lower  classes,  have  adorned  European  realms 
with  splendid  castles  and  cathedrals,  at  the  expense  of  lodging  the  mass  of 
society  in  garrets  and  hovels.     If  American  writers  should  succeed  in  per- 
suading their  countrymen  to  study  and  assert  equality  with  Europeans    in 
dramatic  entertainments,  m  smooth  polish  of  manners,  and  in  those  arts  which 
profess  to  enable  men  to  live  idly  and  uselessly,  without  wearying,  they  will 
orra  a  taste  inconsistent  with  just  discernment  and  appreciation  of  their  po- 
htical  institutions.     Vespasian  destroyed  the  palace  of  Nero,  as  a  monument 
ot  luxury  and  pernicious  to  morals.     The  absence  of  such  palaces  as  Tria- 
non  and  Marly  may  well  be  compensated  by  exemption  from  such  tyranny 
as  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes,  which  was  coeval  with  their  erection  " 
Uf  Mrs.  Trollope's  «'  Domestic  Manners  of  the  Americans,"  and  her  de- 
preciating view  of  "the  society  which  he  regarded  with  love,  admiration, 
and  hope,    he  thus  writes  m  a  subsequent  page  of  his  journal :  —  "  What  is 
inith  .'    Is  it  not  as  niirch  in  the  position  of  the  observer  as  in  the  condition 
of  the  observed  >    Mrs.  Trollope  seems  to  me  full-fraught  with  the  most 
pitilui  vulgarities  of  aristocratical  ignorance  and  pretension  ;  and  these  would 
naturally  mvite  the  shock  of  what  she  seems  to  have  met  with  in  the  antipa- 
thy of  democratic  insolence  and  coarseness  ;  —  she  is  Basil  HaJl  in  petticoats. 
1  hmk  of  such  a  brace  of  pragmatical  pretenders  and  adventurers  as  he  and 
she,  sitting  m  judgment  on  America  !  " 

It  is  impossible  not  to  remark  the  delight  his  mind  took  in  any  associations 
connected  with  America.  «  At  the  printing  ofiice  of  Messrs.  Strahan  and 
Spottiswoode,"  he  writes  "  I  corrected  a  proof-sheet  of  my  History  of 
Worth  America,  sitting  mtktn  the  walls  of  that  establishment  u>kere  Franklin 
once  ..as  a  workman-  Again,  at  Kensington  :--  I  delight  tostroU  am  3 
the  sombre  grandeur  of  these  gardens.    The  lofty  height  and  deep  shade  of 

h!,!  S'^"     !"'a'1!''  '"'P^  ^  P'^"''"?'  solemn,  half-melancholy  gloom. 
Here  Penn  aid  Addison  walked.     Here  Rousseau,  when  in  England,  w" 
wont  to  sit  and  muse.     Sometimes,  in  spirit,  I  meet  their  spirits  here." 
rioH  nf  f^v'TuT'  1^^''  T'^'  ^""S!"g  »»'e  narrative  down  to  the  pe- 
ai^  IROT   ,^!;p''f\"'"^'"'r'  ^^""?  '^  '""S'^  completed,  were  in  FebVu- 

RrJtlcE  ?r'  !"u  ,?!"  ^''^°''y  "^^^  ""^^^'^^^  ^''h  little  interest  by  the 
British  public,  and  by  all  the  greater  Reviews  with  neglect.  The  Edinbi.rcli 

n'en^e""!"'  "V^  ^-^'S"  ^^^-b'  maintained 'toward,  it  an  omints 

probation.  For  Englishmen  the  colonial  history  of  the  United  States  had 
but  few  attractions;  and  the  spirit  in  which  Mr.  Grahame  had  treated  he 
subject  was  not  calculated  to  gratify  their  national  pride.     He  was  thought 

..!  ,j.,a»,,f  {3ad  icaijuiaica  m  aveiaiou  tu  nionarciiy/' that  to. 


ca. 


MEMOIR. 


competitions 
i  nor  eniulat- 
red  :  '  I  can- 
tU  village  into 
nt  there  arise 
well  dispense 
elope  polite- 
ong  a  few,  at 
>t  inequalities 
opean  realms 
;  the  mass  of 
;ceed  in  per- 
uropeans,  in 
se  arts  which 
ng,  they  will 
I  of  their  po- 
a  monument 
ces  a$  Tria- 
luch  tyranny 
ir  erection." 
'  and  her  de- 
admiration, 
~  "  What  is 
he  condition 
th  the  most 
these  would 
)  the  antipa- 
n  petticoats, 
rs  as  he  and 

associations 
Stralian  and 

History  of 
re  Franklin 
•  stroll  amid 
;p  shade  of 
loly  gloom, 
igland,  was 

here." 
1  to  the  pe- 
i  in  Febru- 
ustain  a  se- 
rest  by  the 
Edinburgh, 
in  ominous 
Lialified  ap- 
States  had 
treated  the 
las  thought 
lid  that  his 
—  that  to- 


xin 


wards  the  church  of  England  "his  feelings  were  fanatical,"  towards  the 
church  of  Rome  "  illiberal  and  intolerant." 
•  Conscious  of  the  labor  he  had  bestowed  upon  it,  and  of  the  fidelity  with 
which  It  was  executed,  Jfr.  Grahame  was  not  disheartened  by  the  chillinc 
reception  his  work  met  with  from  the  British  public,  nor  deterred  from  pur- 
suing  his  original  design  ;  the  conviction  predominating  in  his  mind,  that 
sooner  or  later  it  would  conciliate  public  esteem.  Accordingly,  in  the  au- 
tumn of  the  same  year  in  which  his  first  two  volumes  were  published,  he  not 
only  conimenced  their  revision,  but  began  an  extension  of  his  History  to  the 
period  of  the  declaration  of  American  independence.  His  interest  in  his 
subject  evidently  increased.  "  American  history,"  he  writes,  "  is  my  fa- 
vorite field."—  "  I  am  averse  to  all  other  occupation."—  "  I  am  pleased 
to  gather  from  any  quarter  wherewith  to  decorate  my  beloved  North  Ameri- 
ca. — '^  God  bless  the  people  and  institutions  of  North  America  '  So 
prays  their  warm  friend,  and  obscure,  but  industrious,  historian." 

About  this  time,  through  the  kindness  of  James  Chalmers,  nephew  of  the 
late  George  Chalmers,  he  obtained  admission  to  the  library  of  that  distin- 
guished American  annalist.  The  treasures  there  opened  to  him  rekindled 
his  zeal,  and  he  renewed  his  historical  labors  with  an  intense  assiduity  ill 
comporting  with  the  critical  state  of  his  health.  Apprehending  a  fatal  termi- 
nation ot  his  disease,  his  medical  advisers  urged  him  to  pass  the  ensuing  win- 
ter at  the  IS  and  of  Madeira  ;  and  thither  his  friend  Herschel,  through  anx- 
iety lor  his  life,  offered  to  accompany  him.  But  no  consideration  could  in- 
duce him  to  leave  England,  where  alone  the  researches  which  occupied  his 
mind  could  be  pursued  with  advantage  ;  and  for  the  purpose  of  availing  him- 
self of  the  books  on  American  history  which  London  afforded,  he  established 
himself  in  the  vicinity  of  that  city. 

In  May,  1828,  Mr.  Grahame  visited  Paris,  accompanied  by  his  father 
who  introduced  hira  to  La  Fayette.    "  I  was  received,"  he  writes,  "  by  this 
renerable  and  illustrious  man  with  the  greatest  kindness.    His  face  expresses 
grave,  mild,  peaceful  worth,  the  calm  consciousness  and  serene  satisfaction 
ol  virtue.    I  was  charmed  with  his  dignified  simplicity,  his  mild  but  generous 
benevolence,  and  the  easy,  genUe,  superior  sense  and  virtue  of  his  thinking." 
^rom  Paris,  Mr.  Grahame  travelled  with  his  father  along  the  banks  of  the 
Loire,  visited  Nantes,  renewed  his  acquaintance  with  Marshal  and  Madame 
Cambronne,  and  spent  some  days  in  their  family.     ♦«  The  modest,  simple, 
^'•J'vaJrous  character  of  Marshal  Cambronne,"  says  Mr.  Stewart,  "  attract- 
ed Mr.  Grahame's  esteem  and  admiration,  and  strengthened  those  ties  of 
mutual  interest  and  attachment  which  their  former  intercourse  had  originated." 
Returning  to  the  neighbourhood  of  London  in  June  following,  his  health 
recruited  by  his  excursion,  he  immediately  resumed,  with  characteristic  ar- 
dor, his  favorite  historical  pursuits.    At  this  time  the  Catholic  emancipation 
question  strongly  agitated  the  British  nation,  and  \»r.  Grahame'i  ardent  love 
of  liberty  and  religious  toleration  excited  in  tv:       kc-en  interest  in  the  suc- 
cess of  this  measure.     Having  found  the  clima.      f  Nantes  adapted  to  his 
constitution,  and  enabling  him,  as  he  expressed  himself,  "  to  labor  night  and 
day  at  his  historical  work,"  he  returned  to  that  city  in  October  of  the  same 
year,  and  fixed  his  residence  there  during  the  ensuing  winter  and  spring. 
In  May,  1829,  on  his  homeward  journey,  he  passed  through  Paris,  again 

-.  —  _  sj ,  _«,,  ,.„„  ,j,„,  ijj  ^fjg  „,iuSi  ui  ni3  lanitiy,  "  surrounued, 

toe  writes,  «  by  a  troop  of  friends,  some  of  distinguished  character  und  as- 


XIV 


MEMOIR. 


pect,  and  all  regarding  him  with  respect  and  admiration.  Thus  serene  is  the 
evening  of  his  troubled  but  glorious  life."  Mr.  Grahame  adds  :  —  "I  had 
the  honor  and  happiness  of  long  and  most  interesting  conversations  with  him, 
respecting  the  origin  and  commencement  of  his  connection  with  the  Ameri- 
can cause.  Nothing  could  be  more  friendly,  kind,  or  benevolent  than  his 
manners  ;  nothing  more  instructive,  entertaining,  or  interesting  than  the  con- 
versation he  bestowed  upon  me.  How  mild,  wise,  and  good  La  Fayette  is  • 
Mr.  Clarkson  described  him  to  Me  as  a  man  toho  desires  the  happiness  of  the 
hu:.,  in  race,  in  consistence  with  strict  subservience  to  the  cause  of  truth  and 
the  honor  of  God.  I  deem  this  a  very  honorable  diploma.  In  the  compa- 
ny of  La  Fayette,  I  feel  an  elevation  of  spirit  and  expansion  of  heart.  What 
a  roll  of  great  deeds,  heroic  virtues,  and  interesting  scenes  is  erij;raven  on  the 
lines  of  the  venerable  face  of  the  prisoner  of  Olmiitz  !  " 

From  these  and  other  conversations  Mr.  Grahame  acknowledges  that  he 
derived  the  materials  for  various  passages  in  the  text  and  notes  of  the  fourth 
volume  of  his  History  of  the  United  States.  This  work  he  finished  in  De- 
cember, 1829.  The  intense  labor  which  he  had  applied  to  its  completion 
brought  on  a  severe  nervous  fever,  which,  for  a  short  time,  threatened  a  fatal 
result. 

In  April,  1830,  Mr.  Grahame  was  married,  at  Nantes,  to  Jane  A.  Wil- 
son, daughter  of  the  Rev.  John  Wilson,  the  Protestant  pastor  of  that  city. 
Concerning  this  connection,  John  Stewart,  Esq.,  his  son-in-law,  thus  writes  : 
—  "  From  this  period  till  his  death,  Mr.  Grahame's  home  was  at  Nantes  ; 
and  in  the  society  of  his  pious,  amiable,  and  accomplished  wife,  and  under 
her  tender  and  vigilant  care,  Mr.  Grahame  enjoyed  a  degree  of  tranquil  hap- 
piness and  renewed  health  to  which  he  had  been  long  a  stranger  ;  —  inter- 
rupted only,  at  times,  by  his  tendency  to  excessive  literar)  exertion  ;  but  at 
a  later  period  more  seriously  and  permanently,  by  the  dangerous,  lingering, 
and  almost  hopeless  illness  of  his  daughter.  Between  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gra- 
hame existed  the  most  devoted  attachment,  based  upon  a  complete  apprecia- 
tion of  and  profound  esteem  for  each  other's  qualities  and  principles.  They 
were  both  interesting,  even  in  appearance  ;  tall  and  well  proportioned  ;  — 
their  features  bearing  the  impress  of  a  happy  seriousness,  while  their  de- 
meanour evinced  that  peculiarly  attractive  stamp  of  real  gentility  which  Chris- 
tian principles  add  to  natural  good-breeding." 

After  his  marriage,  Mr.  Grahame  resided  for  several  years  at  L'Eperon- 
niere,  an  ancient  chateau  in  the  environs  of  Nantes  ;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wilson 
the  aged  parents  of  his  wife,  being  inmates  of  his  family.  "  Through  their 
long  standing  connections,"  continues  Mr.  Stewart,  "  Mr.  Grahame  found 
himself  at  once  in  the  best  French  society  of  Nantes.  There  the  worth 
of  his  character  soon  made  itself  respected.  The  interest  he  took  in  every 
thing  affecting  the  welfare  of  the  city  (to  which,  if  necessary,  he  was  accus- 
tomed liberally  to  subscribe),  the  urbanity  of  his  demeanour  in  his  intercourse 
With  nidividuals,  united  with  the  generosity  of  his  disposition,  soon  caused 
him  to  be  regarded  more  in  the  light  of  a  fellow-citizen  than  as  a  stranger  ; 
and  in  process  of  time  all  such  local  distinctions  as  his  numerous  friends 
could  bestow  upon  him,  or  induce  him  to  accept,  were  conferred  on  him. 
The  influence  he  thus  acquired  was  chiefly  and  successfully  exerted  in  the 
support  of  the  small  but  increasing  church  professing  the  Protestant  faith  at 
Nantes.     To  several  Frenchmen  residing  at  Nantes  Mr.  Grahame  became 


IvnriTllv  attnnUnrl 


1.... 


tisough  liis  spirit  of  general  benevolence  led  him  to  take 


MEMOIR. 


rene  is  the 
—  "I  had 
I  with  him, 
he  Ameri- 
it  than  his 
n  the  con- 
'ayette  is  • 
ness  of  the 
'  truth  and 
he  compa- 
rt. What 
yen  on  the 

;es  that  he 
the  fourth 
ed  in  De- 
;ompletion 
ned  a  fatal 

3  A.  Wil- 
ihat  city, 
us  writes  : 
t  Nantes  ; 
and  under 
nquil  hap- 
;  —  inter- 
»n  ;  but  at 
lingering, 
i'lrs.  Gra- 
apprecia- 
Bs.  They 
ioned  ;  — 
their  de- 
ich  Chris- 

i'Eperon- 
.  Wilson, 
3ugh  their 
me  found 
the  worth 
L  in  every 
'as  accus- 
itercourse 
)n  caused 
stranger  ; 
IS  friends 
on  him. 
ted  in  the 
It  faith  at 
s  became 
ui  to  take 


XV 


a  warm  mterest  m  those  among  whom  he  lived,  and  notwithstanding  he  saw 
much  among  the  French  to  admire  and  respect,  yet  the  character  of  his  mind 
and  habits,  staid,  serious,  and  retired,  did  not  penuit  his  feelings  towards 
that  country  to  approach  to  any  thing  like  the  warmth  of  his  affection  and 
admiration  for  either  America  or  England." 

Although  Mr.  Grahame  had  finished  writing  his  History  in  December, 
1829,  he  was  far  from  regarding  it  as  ready  for  the  press.  He  attributed 
the  ill  success  of  his  first  two  volumes  to  the  haste  with  which  they  had 
been  published  ;  he  therefore  resolved  to  devote  several  years  to  the  revis- 
ion of  the  entire  work,  and  often  expressed  a  doubt  of  its  publication  in  his 
Iiietime. 

Nearly  four  years  had  now  elapsed  since  the  appearance  of  Mr.  Grahame's 
volumes,  yet  the  general  silence  concerning  them  had  not  been  broken  by 
any  voice  from  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  high  price  of  the  English 
edition  rendered  any  considerable  circulation  in  this  country  hopeless  ;  and 
American  editors  were  yet  to  learn  that  it  was  possible  for  a  foreigner  and 
a  Briton  to  treat  the  early  history  of  the  United  States  with  fairness  and  im- 
partiality.  The  knowledge  of  the  nature  and  true  value  of  this  composition 
was  confined  to  a  few  individuals.  At  length,  in  January,  1831,  a  just  and 
discriminating  critical  notice  of  the  work  appeared  in  the  North  American 
Review.  After  expressing  regret  at  the  neglect  with  which  it  had  hitherto 
been  treated  :n  America,  and  pointing  out  the  causes  of  the  little  interest  it 
had  excued  in  this  country,  the  reviewer  proceeds  to  do  justice  to  the  inde- 
pendent spirit  of  the  author  ;  to  his  freedom  from  prejudice  ;  to  "  the  happy 
discrimination  he  had  manifested  in  the  selection  of  the  leading  principles 
that  led  to  the  colonization  of  the  several  States,  and  the  able  exposition 
of  the  results  that  followed"  ;  and  to  his  having  "  corrected,  with  a  proper 
boldness,  the  mistakes,  whether  of  ignorance  or  malignity,  which  his  prede- 
cessors in  the  same  labors  had  committed."     The  reviewer  adds, "  Mr. 

Grahame,  with  a  spirit  able  to  appreciate  the  value  of  his  subject,  has  pub- 
lished what  we  conceive  to  be  the  best  book  that  has  anywhere  appeared, 
upon  the  early  history  of  the  United  States."  "He  has  not  invariably 
avoided  error,  but  he  has  coped  very  successfully  \!vith  the  disadvantages  of 
his  situation."  This  is  believed  to  be  the  first  time  Mr.  Grahame's  Histo- 
ry had  been  made,  either  in  America  or  Europe,  the  special  subject  of  notice 
in  any  leading  Review. 

This  high  commendation  of  the  two  volumes  then  published  appears  by 
his  journal  to  have  been  "  very  gratifying"  to  Mr.  Grahame,  and  to  have 
encouraged  him  to  proceed  with  the  revision  and  preparation  of  his  extended 
work.  While,  under  this  new  incitement,  he  was  assiduously  employed  in 
reexamming  the  details  of  his  History,  and  exerting  himself  to  render  it  as 
accurate  as  possible,  he  was  interrupted  by  events  which  filled  his  domestic 
circle  with  grief  and  anxiety.  In  May,  1833,  the  death  of  his  wife's  moth- 
er, Mrs.  Wilson,  for  whom  he  entertained  an  affection  truly  filial,  was  im- 
mediately followed  by  the  dangerous  illness  of  his  only  daughter.  Her  phy- 
sicians, both  in  France  and  England,  having  declared  that  her  life  depended 
upon  a  change  of  climate,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Grahame  immediately  accompanied 
her  to  Madeira  ;  whence,  after,  a  residence  of  nine  months,  they  returned, 
her  restoration  being  now  deemed  hopeless.  She  eventually  recovered, 
however,  in  a  manner  "  incomprehensible  and  unparalleled  in  medical  expe- 
rience," and  ultimately  attained  a  state  of  fair  and  permanent  health,  to  which 
the  assiduous  attention  of  her  excellent  molher-in-law  greatly  contributed. 


Xvi 


MEMOIB. 


i- 


On  his  return  from  Madeira,  Mr.  Grahame  first  heard  of  the  death  of  L» 

Fayette,  to  whose  memory  he  pays  the  following  tribute  in  his  diary  : 

"  La  Fayette  is  dead  !  This  '  sun  of  glory '  is  blotted  from  the  political 
firmament,  which  he  has  so  long  adorned.  Every  honest  and  generous 
breast  must  '  feel  the  sigh  sincere '  for  the  loss  of  this  great  man,  —  the 
extinction  of  an  effulgence  of  honor,  virtue,  and  wisdom  so  benignly  bright. 
Fully  and  beautifully  did  he  exemplify  the  words  of  Wolsey  :  '  Love  thyself 
last,'  and  'Corruption  wins  not  more  than  honesty.'  He  drew  his  last 
breath,  and  ceased  to  be  a  part  (how  honored,  how  admirable  a  part  !)  of 
human  nature,  at  an  early  hour  on  the  twentieth  of  this  month  [May],  at  the 
age  of  nearly  seventy-seven.  Pity  that  his  last  days  must  have  been  embit- 
tered by  the  existing  dissensions  in  his  beloved  America  !  Of  the  human 
beings  I  have  known,  and  knowing  have  regarded  with  unmingled  veneration, 
there  exist  now  only  Mr.  Clarkson  and  my  father.  It  seems  strange  to  me 
that  La  Fayette  should  be  no  more,  —  that  such  an  illustrious  ornament  of 
human  nature  should  disappear,  and  yet  the  world  continue  so  like  what  it 
vyas  before.  Yet  the  words  '  La  Fayette  is  dead  '  will  cause  a  keen  sensa- 
tion to  vibrate  through  every  scene  of  moral  and  intellectual  being  on  earth. 
A  thousand  deep  thoughts  and  earnest  remembrances  will  awaken  at  that 
name,  over  which  ages  of  renown  had  gathered,  while  yet  its  cvner  lived  and 
moved  and  had  his  being  among  us.  France,  in  losing  this  man,  seems  to 
me  to  have  lost  the  brightest  jewel  in  her  national  diadem,  and  to  have  suf- 
fered an  eclipse  of  interest  and  glory." 

During  his  residence  in  Madeira,  Mr.  Grahame  continued  the  revision  of 
his  History,  and  on  his  return,  after  devoting  another  year  to  the  same  object, 
he  took  up  his  residence  in  London  for  the  purpose  of  superintending  its 
publication.  Here,  again,  his  anxiety  and  unremitting  industry  induced  a 
dangerous  illness.  His  restoration  to  health  he  attributed  to  the  assiduous 
care  of  two  of  his  friends,  Mrs.  Reid  and  Dr.  Boott.  The  former  took 
him  from  his  hotel  to  her  own  house,  and  thus  secured  for  him  retirement, 

auiet,  and  her  undivided  attention.  *'  From  her,"  he  says,  "  I  have  received 
le  most  comfortable  and  elegant  hospitality,  fhe  kindest  and  most  assiduous 
care,  and  conversation  seasoned  with  genius,  piety,  and  benevolence,  and  the 
finest  accomplishments  of  education."  Concerning  Dr.  Boott,  who  is  a  na- 
tive of  Boston,  Massachusetts,  established  as  a  physician  in  London,  Mr. 
Grahame  remarks  in  his  diary,  —  "  His  knowledge  is  great  ;  his  abilities 
excellent ;  his  flow  of  thought  incessant  ;  his  heart  and  dispositions  admira- 
ble. He  insists  that  his  valuable  attendance  upon  me  be  accepted  as  friend- 
ly, and  not  remunerated  as  professional,  service.  In  this  man,  America  has 
sent  me  one  of  her  noblest  sons,  to  save  the  life  of  her  historian." 

After  an  interruption  of  six  weeks,  Mr.  Grahame  resumed  the  revision  of 
the  proof-sheets  of  his  work  ;  and  in  December,  having  finished  this  labor, 
returned  to  his  family,  at  Nantes.  In  the  ensuing  January  (1836),  his  His- 
tory was  published. 

Eleven  years  had  now  elapsed  since  Mr.  Grahame  had  commenced  writ- 
ing the  History  of  the  United  States.  More  earnest  and  assiduous  research 
had  seldom  been  exerted  by  any  historian.  His  interest  in  the  subject  was 
intense.  His  talents  were  unquestionable.  There  Was  no  carelessness  in 
the  execution,  no  haste  in  the  publication.  A  Briton,  highly  educated,  uni- 
versally respected,  of  a  moral  and  religious  character  which  gave  the  stamp 
of  authority  to  his  statements  and  opinions,  had  devoted  the  best  year?  of  his 


i)  I 


MEMOIR. 


xtn 


f  death  of  Lt 
lis  diary  :  — 

the  political 
ind  generous 
t  man,  —  the 
nignly  bright. 
Love  ihyself 
Irew  his  last 

a  part  !)  of 
;May],  at  the 
2  been  embit- 
)f  the  human 
id  veneration, 
strange  to  me 
ornament  of 
0  like  what  it 
a  keen  sensa- 
iing  on  earth, 
/a ken  at  that 
ner  lived  and 
an,  seems  to 

to  have  suf- 

le  revision  of 
same  object, 
rintending  its 
ry  induced  a 
he  assiduous 
former  took 
n  retirement, 
lave  received 
iost  assiduous 
snce,  and  the 
who  is  a  na- 
London,  Mr. 
;  his  abilities 
tions  admira- 
ted  as  friend- 
America  has 
m." 

le  revision  of 
ed  this  labor, 
36),  his  His- 

Tienced  writ- 
lous  research 
i  subject  was 
relessness  in 
ducated,  uni- 
ve  the  stamp 
t  yentf  of  hi< 


.Ife  to  the  task  of  introducing  his  countrymen  and  the  world  to  an  acquaint- 
ance with  the  early  fortunes  of  a  people  who  had  risen  with  unparalleled  rap- 
idity to  a  high  rank  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  ;  yet  a  second  time  his 
work  was  received  with  neglect  by  those  literary  Reviews  in  Great  Britain 
which  chiefly  guide  the  public  taste,  and  distribute  the  rewards  and  honors 
of  literary  industry.  Although  highly  wrought,  elevated  in  sentiment,  gener- 
ous and  noble  in  its  design,  all  its  views  and  influences  made  subservient  to 
tlie  cause  of  pure  morals  and  practical  piety,  yet,  as  has  been  already  ob- 
served, it  was  obviously  not  adapted  to  conciliate  either  the  prejudices,  the 
feelings,  or  the  interests  of  the  British  people.  It  could  not  well  be  expect- 
ed, that,  under  an  Episcopal  hierarchy,  whose  Roman  Catholic  origin  and 
tendencies  are  manifest,  a  history  of  successful  Puritanism  would  be  favorably 
received.  It  could  not  be  hoped,  that,  in  a  nation  which  had  risen  to  the 
height  of  civiHzation  and  power  under  a  monarchy  based  on  an  aristocracy, 
a  work  illustrative  and  laudatory  of  institutions  strictly  republican  would  be 
countenanced,  —  much  more,  generally  patronized.  Mr.  Grahame,  more- 
over, had  not  only  imbibed  the  political  principles  of  the  Puritans,  but  had 
caught  much  of  their  devotional  spirit.  Hence  his  language,  at  times,  is  ill 
suited  to  the  genius  of  an  age  which  does  not  regard  religion  as  the  great  busi- 
ness of  life,  nor  the  extension  of  its  influences  as  one  of  the  appropriate  ob- 
jects of  history.  Owing  to  these  causes,  his  work  received  little  encourage- 
ment in  Europe,  and  the  knowledge  of  its  claims  to  respect  and  attention 
was  limited.  Nor  were  these  consequences  confined  to  Great  Britain.  Amer- 
ican readers  commonly  rely  on  the  leading  Reviews  of  that  country  for  no- 
tices of  meritorious  productions  of  British  authors,  and  are  not  apt  to  make 
research  after  those  which  they  neglect  or  depreciate.  As  Mr.  Grahame 
belonged  to  no  political  or  literary  party  or  circle,  he  was  without  aid  from 
that  personal  interest  and  zeal  which  often  confer  an  adventitious  popularity. 
He  trusted  the  success  of  his  work  wholly  to  its  own  merits,  and,  when  dis- 
appointed a  second  time,  neither  complained  nor  was  discouraged,  —  sup- 
ported, as  before,  by  a  consciousness  of  his  faithful  endeavours,  and  by  a 
firm  belief  in  their  ultimate  success.  He  had  assumed  the  whole  pecuniary 
risk  of  his  extended  publication,  in  four  volumes  octavo,  which  resulted  in  a 
loss  of  one  thousand  pounds  sterling,  —  and  that,  at  a  time,  as  he  states, 
when  it  was  not  easy  for  him  to  sustain  it.  Taking  no  counsel  of  despond- 
ency, however,  he  immediately  began  to  prepare  for  a  second  edition  of  his 
entire  work,  and  devoted  to  it,  during  the  remaining  years  of  his  life,  all  the 
time  and  strength  which  a  constitutional  organic  disease  permitted. 

Hitherto,  Mr.  Grahame's  interest  in  America  had  been  derived  from  the 
study  of  her  history  and  institutions  ;  but  in  1837  he  formed  an  acquaintance 
with  a  few  distinguished  Americans,  and  received  from  them  the  respect  due 
to  his  historical  labors.  Among  these  was  Robert  Walsh,  Esq.,  who,  after 
a  brilliant  and  effective  literary  career  in  this  country,  had  transferred  his 
residence  to  Paris  ;  by  him  Mr.  Grahame  was  introduced  to  Washington 
Irving.  Both  these  eminent  Americans  united  in  urging  him  to  write  the 
history  of  the  American  Revolution  ;  Mr.  Walsh  offering  to  procure  for  him 
materials,  and  a  sufficient  guaranty  against  pecuniary  loss. 

Under  this  influence  he  now  entered  upon  a  course  of  reading  embracing 
that  period  of  American  history  ;  but,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  general 
tenor  of  his  subsequent  remarks  and  the  result,  more  from  curiosity  and  in- 
terest in  the  subject  than  from  any  settled  purpos       '  writing  upon  it ;  for 


XVlll 


MEMOIR. 


early  m  August  of  this  year  (1837),  he  observes  in  his  diary, —  "  Mr 
Walsh,  in  his  letters  to  me,  renews  his  urgency  that  I  should  write  the  his- 
tory of  the  Revolutionary  War.     But  I  think  I  have  done  enough  as  a  his- 
torian, and  that  a  prudent  regard  to  my  own  reputation  bids  me  rather  enforce 
my  title  than  enlarge  my  claim  to  public  attention."     And  about  the  same 
time  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Walsh,  —  "  1  cannot  agree  with  you  in  thinking  that 
our  beloved  America  will  regard  with  equal  complacency  a  historic  garland 
attafched  to  her  brows  by  foreign  hands,  and  one  in  which  a  son  of  her  own 
blends  Ins  own  renown  with  hers."     Yet,  from  a  letter  to  the  same  gentle- 
man in  September  following,  it  is  evident  that  Mr.  Grahame  entertamed  a 
strong  predilection  for  the  design  ;  for  he  thus  writes  :  —  "  The  more  I  pur- 
sue my  present  American  studies,  the  more  I  am  struck  with  a  pleasing  as- 
^nishnient.     The  account  of  the  formation  of  the  federal  constitution  of 
iNorth  America  inspires  me  with  delight  and  admiration.     I  knew  but  the 
outline  of  the  scene  before.    Now,  I  find  that  the  more  its  details  are  exam- 
ined, the  more  honorable  and  interesting  it  proves.     Truly  does  it  deserve 
to  be  termed  the  greatest  scene  of  human  glory  that  ever  adorned  the  tide 
ot  human  time.     1  wish,  that,  ere  my  health  and  spirit  had  been  broken,  I 
had  ventured  to  be  the  historian  of  that  scene.     But  surely  the  country    the 
magna  mater  mrum,  that  has  produced  such  actors  and  such  deeds,  is  hei- 
sell  destined  to  afford  their  fittest  historian."     In  a  similar  strain  he  writes 
in  his  journal,  under  the  same  date,  —  "  The  account  (by  Pitkin  and  oth- 
ei-s),  which  I  am  reading,  of  the  formation  of  the  federal  constitution  of 
INorth  America,  after  the  achievement  of  her  national  independence,  fills 
me  with  astonishment  and  admiration.     It  would  make  me  glad  to  be  con- 
vinced that  the  present  people  of  America  and  their  leaders  are  altogether 
such  as  were  the  Americans  of  those  days.    Far  more  was  gamed  to  Amer- 
ica  (and  through  her,  I  hope,  eventually  to  the  whole  world)  by  the  wisdom 
Virtue,  and  moderation  exhibited  by  her  children  after  the  War  of  Indenend- 
T±  I^'"i  •  f  '^'  r^""'  'I'''  ^'■^"Sht  that  war  to  its  happy  close,     sich  a 
scene  the  history  of  no  other  country  ever  exhibited.     I  wish  I  Imd  been  its 
historian.     But  a  fit  historian  will  surely  arise  one  day  " 

Botta,  who  had  written  the  history  of  the  American  Revolution,  died  about 
his  time  in  Pans.   Mr.  Grahame's  feelings  were  deeply  moved  b;  the  even 
'I  hope,"  he  wrote  in  his  diary,  "  that  the  Americans  at  Paris  attended 
to  nnr^  i,  JtT    '^/y'^'J^Z^,"^  American,  I  would  have  desired  leave 
o  attend,  had  I  been  there."  And  m  a  letter  to  Mr.  Walsh,  he  remarks,  - 
1  hope  some  memoir  of  Botta  will  appear.     It  should  gratify  Americans 
to  learn,  that,  on  his  death-bed,  he  related  (it  was  to  myself),  Uiat^iis  son 
in  some  distant  part  of  the  world,  received  civilities  from  the  officers  and 
of  Lv?^'"Tf"-''^'''^'  ^^J>°  i»stantly  recognized  as  a  friend  the  son 
llnl    >    w?"  °/»'f/,^o""|'-y' -adding,  '  That  was  a  rich  reward  of  my 
labors.'    When  I  told  him  that  Jefferson  had  expressed  admiration  of  his 
work,  he  squeezed  my  hand  and  testified  much  delight.     And  when  I  told 
him  that  both  Jefferson  and  John  Adams  condemned  his  speeches  as  ficti  ions, 
he  smiled,  and  answered  with  naiveU,  '  They  are  not  wholly  invented.-' 

Mr.  Walsh  having,  m  conversation,  expressed  to  Mr.  Grahame  h-s  sur- 
prise at  tlje  partia  ..y  he  evinced  for  his  coin.ry  and  countrymen,  he  repl Ld, 

il^lni't.  •"'^''  T"'  ''l'^\^y  '''^  ^'''^'''  ^°  ^^'^  ^he  Romans,  so  was  I 
trained  by  mine  to  love  the  Americans."  And,  in  writing  to  that  gentle- 
man in  October.  Ififi?.  h*-  rnmorUo    ;„  ,i.„  _„„_  '    •  •.        ,9  ,      ^'  gtniie- 

I  see  the  defence  of  America  conducted  with  recrimination  against  Great 


I 


MEMOIR.  j^ 

.  Britain.  But  I  must  confess  that  my  own  indignation  at  the  conduct  and  lan- 
guage of  some  of  my  countrymen  towards  America  is  at  times  uncontrollable. 
I  wish  that  Americans  could  regard  these  follies  with  indulgence,  or  magnani. 
mous  (perhaps  disdainful)  indiilerencc.  For  my  part,  I  cap  truly  say,  that 
my  daughter  is  hardly  dearer  to  me  than  America  and  American  renown." 
His  admiration  of  the  character  of  Washington  is  thus  expressed  in  his 
journal,  under  the  date  of  September,  1837  :  —  "O,  what  a  piece  of  work 
of  divine  handicraft  was  Washington  !  What  a  grace  to  his  nation,  his  age, 
and  to  human  nature  was  he  !  I  know  of  no  other  military  and  political  chief 
who  has  so  well  supported  the  character  delineated  in  these  lines  of  Horace :  — 

'  Justuin  ac  tenacem  propoHiti  virum 
Non  civium  ardor  prava  jubentium, 
Non  vultug  inntantis  tyranni, 
Mente  quatit  solidA.' 

With  the  same  feeling  that  tempted  the  clergyman,  who  read  the  funeral 
service  over  the  body  of  John  Wesley,  to  substitute,  for  the  formula,  •  our 
dear  brother  here  departed,'  the  words,  '  our  dear  father  here  departed,'  I 
am  inclined  to  regard  Washington  rather  as  a  father  than  a  brother  of  his 
fellow-men.  What  a  master,  what  a  pupil,  were  Washington  and  La  Fay- 
ette !  One  day,  when  I  was  sitting  with  La  Fayette,  he  said  to  me,  ♦  I  was 
always  a  republican,  and  Washington  was  always  my  model  and  my  master.' " 
During  the  same  month,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Walsh,  —  "  Washington  impresses 
me  with  so  much  veneration,  that  I  have  become  more  than  ever  anxious  to 
know  what  really  was  the  state  and  complexion  of  his  religious  opinions  " ;  and 
,  recurring,  in  a  subsequent  letter,  to  the  same  topic,  he  remarks,  —  "  I  find 
McGuire's  *  Religious  Opinions  and  Character  of  Washington '  heavy,  tire- 
some, and,  in  general,  unsatisfactory.  But  last  night  I  reached  a  passage  which 
gave  nie  lively  delight ;  for  now  I  can  look  on  Washington  as  a  Christian." 

Until  near  the  close  of  this  year,  Mr.  Grahanie  continued  to  pursue  his 
researches  on  the  subject  of  the  American  Revolution,  although  laboring  un- 
der a  constant  depression  of  health  and  spirits,  and  a  prevailing  apprehension 
that  his  life  would  be  shorty  and  that  his  constitutional  disorders  were  symp- 
tomatic of  sudden  death.  But  in  December,  1837,  his  physicians  prohib- 
ited him  from  "  writing  or  reading  for  some  months,  on  any  subject  likely  to 
provoke  much  thinking  "  ;  and  on  the  19th  of  this  month,  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Walsh,  that  he  had  reason  to  attribute  his  recent  illness  to  his  "  late  historic 
studies,  and  to  the  anxiety  of  mind  earnest  meditation  had  induced."  '^For 
me  to  undertake  such  a  work,"  he  says,  "or  even  contemplate  it,  or  dili- 
gently prepare  for  it,  until  my  health  be  totally  renovated  (which,  in  all  hu- 
,  man  probability,  it  never  will  be),  would,  1  clearly  see,  be  to  do  to  the  sub- 
ject and  to  myself  unreasonable  injustice.  /  therefore  renounce  it  altogether. 
1  hope  you  will  not  blame  me,  nor  regret  the  trouble  you  have  takeri  and 
the  kindness  you  have  shown  me  with  the  view  of  my  prosecuting  the  career 
from  which  I  have  novr  retreated.  For  a  long  time  betore  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  your  acquaintance,  I  had  resolved,  from  a  sense  of  both  moral  and  phys- 
ical incompetency,  as  well  as  on  account  of  the  slenderness  of  my  success, 
the  heaviness  of  my  pecuniary  loss,  and  other  considerations,  to  cs^rty  my 
historic  narrative  rio  farther.  It  was  your  flattering  encouragement  t—  the 
laus  laudati  viri  —  that  tempted  me  to  mistake  an  agreeable  vision  for  a 
reasonable  hopej  and  to  embrace  the  purpose  I  must  now  painfully,  but  de-. 
cidedly,  forego. 

* Hotweopipui alit:  ponuiU quia powa  videnlur.' 

VOL.  I.  '    - -jp:  ^ 


I  i 

h  { 
t   I 


I'l 


zz 


MEMOIR. 


Neither  category  was  mine.    I  had  no  success  to  sustain  me,  and  no  internal 
confidence  to  impel  mo  ;  but  the  very  reverse." 

The  charge  of  "invention,"  preferred  against  Mr.  Grahame  by  Mr. 
Bancroft,  in  his  History,'  on  account  of  the  epithet  "  baseness  "  apphed  by 
him  to  the  conduct  of  Clarke,  the  agent  of  Rliode  Island,  in  negotiating  for 
that  cblony  the  charter  it  obtained  in  16G3  from  Charles  the  Second,  first 
came  to  Mr.  Grahame's  knowledge  early  in  the  year  1838,  and  excited  in 
him  feelings  of  surprise  and  a  deep  sense  of  wrong.  "  There  is  here,"  he 
immediately  wrote  to  Mr.  Walsh,  "  a  plentiful  lack  of  the  kindness  I  might 
have  expected  from  an  American,  and  of  the  courtesy  which  should  char- 
acterize a  gentleman  and  a  lan  of  letters.  I  had  deserved  even  severer  lan- 
guage, if  the  invention  with  which  I  am  charged  were  justly  laid  to  me. 
But  the  imputation  is  utterly  false.  —  1  have  written  under  the  guidance  of 
authorities,  on  which  I  have,  nerhaps  crringly,  certainly  honestly,  relied 
I  would  rather  be  convicted  of  the  grossest  stupidity,  than  of  the  slightest 
degree  of  wilful  falsification  ;  for  I  greatly  prefer  moral  to  intellectual  merit 
and  repute."  A  defence  against  this  attaclt  upon  Mr.  Grahame's  veracity 
as  a  historian  was  soon  after  published  by  Mr.  Walsh  in  "  The  New  Yort 
American  "  ;  and  was  succeeded  by  another,  from  Mr.  Grahame  himself, 
in  the  same  paper. 

Mr.  Bancroft,  in  a  subsequent  edition  of  his  History,'  silently  withdrew 
the  charge  of  "  invention,"  and  substituted  in  its  stead  that  of  "  unwarranted 
misapprehension."  It  is  not  apparent  how  this  charge  is  more  tenable  than 
was  the  other. 

Mr.  Grahame's  strictures  on  Clarke's  conduct  in  the  negotiation  referred 
to  drew  upon  him  the  animadversions  of  "  some  of  the  literati  of  Rhodp 
Island."     Through  them,  he  became  acquainted  with  the  intrinsic  worth  of 
Clarke's  general  character,  and  readily  acknowledged  him  to  be  "a  true 
patriot  and  excellent  man,  and  well  deserving  the  reverence  of  his  natural 
and  national  posterity."     Yet  Mr.  Grahame's  mind  was  so  deeply  and  un- 
alterably impressed  with  the  opinion,  that  Clarke  had  exceeded  '*  the  line 
of  honor  and  integrity  "  in  that  negotiation,  that  he  appears  to  have  been 
unable  to  reconcile  it  to  his  sense  of  truth,  as  a  historian,  wholly  to  exoner- 
ate his  conduct  from  censure.     Accordingly,  in  the  present  edition  of  his 
History,'  Mr.  Grahame  thus  alters  the  sentence  which  had  occasioned  the 
animadversions  alluded  to:  —  "  The  envoy  conducted  his  negotiation  with  a 
jiuppleness  of  adroit  servility,  that  rendered  ihe  success  of  it  dearly  bought  "  ; 
impjying  that  Clarke,  in  suing  for  favors  under  such  pretences  as  he  •   •  -^d 
10  obtain  them,  had  exhibited  a  "servile"  spirit    "supple"  in  respert    ' 
policy,  and  "adroit  "  in  the  color  he  gave  to  the  facts  on  which  he   '     v. 
.Lis  hopes  of  success  ;  and  intimating  that  he  could  find  no  other  apology  lor 
his  conduct,  than  "  the  aptitude  even  of  rood  men  to  be  transported  beyond 
tiie  line  of  honor  and  integrity,  in  conducting  such  negotiations  as  that  which 
was  confided  to  Ckike .'"' 

•  Vol.  II.,  p.  64,  edit.  18.xr '  •  Vol.  II.,  p.  64,  edit.  1841.  '  See  Vol.  I.,  p.  224. 

*  It  is  due  to  the  subject,  cT'tt..  Memoir  hure  to  inquire  into  those  general  tacts  and  cir- 
«ilin»tanccs  which  led  Bfi.  )j  •  ome  ('h::  tenor  of  whose  mind  towards  the  people  of  the 
fJoited  States  was  kind,  C!i<i(,  d,  t  <>'  1  ;t  iatory)  to  express  so  strongly  and  adhere  so  persevur- 
JMgly  to  tlie  opioion  he  had  'iominr  e.  >>ncori]iing  Clarke's  conduct  in  the  negotiation  above  ad- 
verted to. 

At  the  time  of  Clarke's  negotiation,  >.Ta88achusett8  and  Rhode  Island  were  both  present  by 
tieptity  at  the  court  of  Charieii  tho  Huuuii« ',  "~  ""I'l  mvttd  aline  otj  je&f ;  irisssaciiusetts  oi  trie 
tcme,  being  Bpprchenai.vo  it  .was  his  jnteiftii  >n  to  vacate  her  old  charter ;  Rhode  Island  of  Mas- 
MwnuMtts,  wn9  had  shown  a  disposition  t»  >.'Xtcnd  her  jurisdiction  over  territory  which  Rhode 


V 


MEMOIR. 


XXI 


I  no  internal 

me  by  Mr. 
'  applied  by 
gotialing  for 
Jeccnd,  first 
i  excited  in 
s  here,"  he 
less  I  might 
ihould  char- 
severer  Ian- 
laid  to  me. 
guidance  of 
stly,  relied 
the  slightest 
ectual  merit 
le's  veracity 
New  Yort 
me  himself, 

ly  withdrew 
unwarranted 
tenable  than 

ion  referred 
t  of  Rhod(> 
jic  worth  of 
be  "a  true 

his  natural 
ply  and  un- 
d  "  the  line 
)  have  been 
f  to  exoner- 
dition  of  his 
:asioned  the 
iation  with  a 
y  bought "  ; 
as  he  •  v?d 
I  respect  of 
:h  he   '     f  n 

apology  Jor 
rted  beyond 
s  that  which 


ol.  I.,  p.  224. 

(acta  and  cir- 

people  of  the 

re  BO  poreevur- 

ition  above  ad- 

loth  present  by 

-i........ e  .1.' 

Island  of  Mas- 
'  which  Rhode 


From  Mr.  Grahame's  position  as  a  distant  observer,  his  views  of  charac- 
ter and  events  may  sometimes  conflict  with  those  entertained  in  this  country  ; 
yet  his  spirit  is  wUolly  American,  and  it  is  his  desire  and  delight  to  do  jus- 
tice to  the  actors  in  the  scenes  he  describes.  The  high  moral  tone,  and 
the  ever  active,  all-controlling  religious  principle  and  feeling,  which  pervade 
his  work,  inspire  the  strongest  confidence  in  all  that  he  writes  ;  and  it  seems 
impossible  for  any  one,  in  the  exercise  of  a  sound  and  unprejudiced  judg- 
ment, to  believe  that  a  mind  impelled  by  motives  so  pure  and  elevated,  hav- 
ing no  personal  ends  to  serve,  no  party  purposes  to  answer,  could,  under 
any  circumstances,  knowingly  warp  the  truth,  invent  or  suppress  facts,  or 
give  to  them  any  false  or  delusive  coloring.  Mr.  Grahame  never  visited  the 
United  States,  and  his  opportunities  for  intercourse  with  its  citizens  were  few  ; 
but  he  sparu!  nei'.hei  li.jie,  labor,  nor  expense  to  acquaint  himself  with  the 
authentic  m^terin's  of  its  history  ;  he  laid  the  public  libraries  of  Scotland, 
Engbnd,  I  rauce,  and  Germany  under  contribution,  to  the  completeness  and 
acci'r .  y  of  his  work  ;  and  if  he  has  occasionally  fallen  into  mistakes,  they 
are  eitijer  such  as  all  historians,  who  rely  for  their  facts  on  the  authority  of 
others,  are  subject  to,  or  such  as  might  naturally  be  expected  under  the  pe- 
culiar circumstances  of  the  case,  —  being  chiefly  on  points  of  local  history, 
in  their  nature  of  Jittle  interest  or  importance  beyond  the  immediate  sphere 

Island  claimnd,  aa  also  to  interfere  with  the  local  ffovernmont  and  rcliffioua  libertioa  of  thia 
colony.  It  was  no  motive  of  loyalty  that  induced  the  appearance  of  either  of  them  at  court ; 
nor  waa  there  any  thing  in  their  previoua  history  which  could  entitle  the  deputies  of  either 
colony  to  vaunt  any  sentiment  of  this  sort  on  the  part  of  their  conatituents. 

In  this  state  of  things,  and  notwithstanding  "  Rhode  Island  had  solicited  and  accepted  a  pa- 
tent from  the  Long  Parliomcnt,  in  the  commencement  of  its  atriigglea  with  Charles  the  First, 
while  Massachusetts  declined  to  make  a  similar  recognition,  even  when  the  Parliament  wua 
at  the  utmost  height  of  its  power  and  success,"  (Grahame,  I.,  323,)  —Chalmers  represents 
Clarke  as  boasting  of  the  loyalty  of  the  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island,  and,  in  order  to  depre- 
ciate MassachusetU  in  the  opinion  of  King  Charles  the  Second,  and  exalt  Rhode  Island,  as 
challenging  the  deputies  of  the  former  colony  "  to  display  any  one  act  of  duty  or  loyalty  shown 
by  their  constituente  to  Charles  the  First  or  to  the  present  king,  from  their  first  establishment 
in  New  England."  "  The  challenge  thus  confidently  given,^'  adds  Chalmers,  "  was  not  ac- 
cepted. •  —  Political  Mnala  of  the  United  Colmits,  p.  273.  —  The  agents  of  Massachusetts 
would  not  condescend,  for  the  sake  even  of  saving  their  charter,  to  feign  a  sentiment  which 
they  were  sensible  had  no  existence.  Their  silence,  under  such  circumstances,  it  is  impossible 
for  any  fair  mind  not  to  honor  and  approve. 

Furthermore,  Chalmers  states  that  the  Rhode-Islanders  "  procured  from  the  chiefs  of  the 
Narragnnsets  a  formal  surrender  of  their  country,  which  was  atlerwnrda  called  the  King's 
Province,  to  Charles  the  First,  in  right  of  his  crown,"  and  that  their  "deputies  boasted  to 
Charles  the  Second  of  the  merits  of  this  transaction."  —  Ihid.  —  Now,  in  point  of  fact,  the  name 
of  King's  Province  was  not  given  to  the  Narroganset  country  until  1666,  three  years  aRcr 
Clarke's  negotiation  ;  —  see  Collections  of  Rhode  Island  Historical  Society,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  69 ;—  and 
in  respect  of  the  surrender  of  the  Narraganset  country,  Gorton,  who  was  the  chief  agent  in  re- 
ceivin  r  it,  explicitlj  states,  that  it  was  self-motcd  on  the  part  of  the  Indians;  that  they  sent  to 
the  c  I  0  bts  and  voluntarily  offered  it ;  and  does  not  pretend  that  the  Rhode-Islanders  had  any 
further  agency  in  the  affair  than  encouraging  the  disposition  of  the  Indians  to  make  the  sur- 
render, aiding  tlicm  in  doing  it  in  legal  form,  and  promising  to  transmit  their  deed  and  desire 
of  protection  to  the  English  government.  —  See  Gorton's  Simplicities  Drfenee,  pp.  79-81. 

In  view  of  Clarke's  hollow  pretences  of  loyalty  on  the  part  of  his  constituents,  and  the  sup- 
posititious proofs  of  it  adduced  by  him,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  a  mind  like  that  of  Mr.  Grahaino 
should  have  become  immovably  fixed  in  the  opinion,  that  the  conduct  of  the  Rhode  Island 
deputy  was  not  reconcilable  with  truth  and  integrity,  and  that  it  was  unbecoming  a  historian 
who  meant  to  be  just,  and  was  conscious  of  being  impartial,  to  refrain  from  expressing  with 
fidelity  the  convictions  forced  upon  him  by  a  knowledge  of  the  facts  and  circumstances. 

Clarke  was  unquestionably  faithful  to  his  agency.  He  acted  according  to  the  views  and  wish- 
wi  of  his  constituents,  and  in  vaunting  their  loyalty  probably  followed  their  instructions  ;  he 
was  therefore  fully  entitled  to  all  the  thanks  they  expressed,  and  all  the  honors  they  conferred 
upon  him.  A  Christian  moralist,  like  Grahame,  who  had  drunk  deep  of"  Siloa's  brook,  which 
flowed  fast  by  the  oracles  of  God,"  naturally  can  allow  no  comnroniise  with  truth  for  the  sake 
of  effect  or  success,  and  must  unavoidably  apply  to  the  conduct  of  men,  whether  acting  as  pri 
vate  individuals  or  ns  public  agents,  one  and  the  same  pure  and  elevated  moral  standard ;  a 
■trictnesa  of  moral  principle,  which,  it  must  bo  confessed,  in  respect  of  public  agents,  the  cu»- 
touM  and  opinions  of  the  world  do  not  regard  as  either  practicable  or  politic. 


xxu 


BfEMOIR. 


EM'f 


1;;  I 


II' 

If- ' 


h\ 


or  the  partlculnr  persons  they  affect ;  and  when  traciefl  to' their  sources,  it 
will  often  be  found  that  even  into  these  he  was  led  by  authorities  whose  er- 
rors have  been  detected  only  by  recent  research,  in  some  instances  subse- 
quent to  the  publication  of  his  volumes. 

In  February,  1839,  Mr.  Grahame  writes  to  Mr.  Walsh,  —  "  You  pro- 
pose (and  deeply  I  feel  the  honor  and  kindness  of  the  proposal)  to  have 
an  American  edition  of  my  work  published  at  Philadelphia.     Now,  pray, 

{)onder  wisely  and  kindly  these  suggestions.  Much  as  I  should  otherwise 
ike  a  republication  of  my  work  in  America,  1  could  not  enjoy  it,  '  with  un- 
reproved  pleasure  free,'  if  I  thought  it  would  be  at  all  disagreeable  to  Mr. 
Bancroft,  or  that  it  would  be  construed  in  America  as  a  competitory  chal- 
lenge of  an  English  to  an  American  writer.  Let  there  be,  it  it  be  neces- 
sary or  profitable,  a  rivalry  (a  generous  one')  between  England  and  America. 
But  I  am  far  too  much  Americanized  to  think,  without  chagrin  and  impa- 
tience, of  my  seeming  the  rival  (the  foreign  rival)  ofa  great  American  writ- 
er. Dear  to  me  is  the  fame  of  every  man  whose  fame  is  interwoven  with 
the  fame  of  America,  and  whose  career  tends  to  justify  to  myself  and  to  the 
world  the  delightful  feelings  of  admiration  and  hope  with  which  she  inspires 
me."  And,  in  a  subsequent  letter  on  the  same  topic,  he  writes  to  the  same 
correspondent,  —  "  Most  sincerely  do  I  wish  that  an  American  may  prove 
the  great,  the  conclusive,  and  the  lasting  historian  of  America.  I  shall  be 
content,  if  of  my  work  some  Englishmen  and  perhaps  a  few  Americans  say, 
'  So  thought  an  Englishman  who  loved  his  country,  but  affected  still  more 
warmly  the  cause  of  truth,  justice,  and  universal  human  welfare.' " 

In  his  correspondence  with  this  gentleman  during  this  and  the  ensuing 
year,  the  American  bias  of  his  mind  appears  on  almost  every  occasion  and 
every  subject.  Intermingled  with  this,  we  continually  meet  with  manifesta- 
tions of  that  all-pervading  religious  sentiment,  and  of  that  tenderness  of  tte 
domestic  affections,  which  constituted  the  most  striking  and  beautiful  elements 
of  his  character.  Thus,  in  congratulating  Mr.  Walsh  on  the  restored  health 
of  his  "tci/c,"  he  remarks,  —  "  They  say  that  Americans,  in  general,  say 
lady  and  female,  when  we  say  wife  and  woman.  Now,  I  reckon  wife, 
woman,  and  mavima  to  be  the  three  loveliest  words  in  the  English  language." 
And,  writing  concerning  his  having  completed  the  forty-ninth  year  of  his  age, 
he  adds,  —  "  The  period  of  life,  at  which,  I  believe,  Aristotle  fixes  the 
decline  of  human  abilities.  I  would  give  all  the  abilities  I  have,  and  ten 
times  more,  if  I  had  them,  for  a  deep,  abiding  sense  of  piety  and  the  love 
of  God.  May  that,  my  dear,  kind  friend,  be  yours  and  mine  !  And  can  we 
wish  a  happier  portion  to  those  whom  we  love  ?     All  else  fades  away." 

In  the  course  of  this   year  (1839),  a  highly  laudatory  review  of  the 
"  History  of  the  United  States  "  was  read  before  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Nantes,  by  M.  M  ilherbe,  in  which  its  merits  were  analyzed  and  acknowl- 
edged ;  and  Mr.  Grahame  was,  in  consequence,  unanimously  elected  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Academy. 

In  August,  of  the  same  year,  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  was  confer- 
red on  Mr.  Grahame  by  the  Corporation  and  Overseers  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. It  was  the  first  public  evidence  of  respect  he  had  received  from 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  ;  and  it  drew  from  him  unqualified  expressions  of  sat- 
wfaciion.  In  a  letter  to  the  Rev.  George  E.  Ellis,  pf  Massachusetts,  in 
November  foHowing,  he  writes,  —  "  Harvard  College  has  bng  been  a  spot 
irt  hovered. 


my 


'1II«  terrarum  mihi  prater  omnet 
Angulua  ridet.' 


Mr  sources,  it 
ties  whose  er- 
stances  siibse- 

-  "  You  pro- 
)Osal)  to  nave 
Now,  pray, 
uld  otherwise 
^  it,  '  with  un- 
eeable  to  Mr. 
ipetitory  chal- 
it  it  be  neces- 
and  America, 
rin  and  impa- 
imerican  writ- 
terwoven  with 
self  and  to  the 
h  she  inspires 
;s  to  the  same 
!an  may  prove 
I.  I  shall  be 
Lmericans  say, 
ted  still  more 
re.»" 

id  the  ensuing 
r  occasion  and 
vith  manifesta- 
Jerness  of  the 
utiful  elements 
restored  health 
n  general,  say 

reckon  wt/if, 
ish  language." 
ear  of  his  age, 
totlc  fixes  the 

have,  and  ten 
Y  and  the  love 
!  And  can  we 
ies  away." 
•eview  of  the 
I  Academy  of 

and  acknovvl- 
(lected  a  mem 


vs  was  confer- 
Harvard  Uni- 
rcceived  from 
•cssions  of  sat- 
isarhusetts,  in 
ig  been  a  spot 


m 


I 


^m9m'.  xxiii 

Now,  indeed,  it  is  doubly  dear  to  me  ;  for  I  feel  myself,  in  a  manner,  one 
of  its  sons.  The  view  of  the  College  buildings  in  Peirce's  History  awaken- 
ed and  detained  my  fondest  regards.  May  truth,  virtue,  and  happiness  flour- 
ish within  those  walls,  and  beam  forth  from  them  to  the  divine  glory  and 
human  welfare  !  Though  somewhat  broken  by  years  and  infirmities,  I  yet 
cherish  the  hope  to  see  Harvard  University  before  I  die."  In  a  letter  to 
Mr.  Walsh,  in  October  following,  he  thus  refers  to  the  sanie  topic  :  —  "I 
am  now  an  American.  Your  dear  country  has  adopted  me.  Never  let  me 
hear  again  of  America  or  Americans  owing  any  thing  to  me.  I  am  the  much 
indebted  party.  I  feel  with,  the  keenest  sensibihty  the  honor  that  Harvard 
University  has  conferred  upon  me." 

The  writer  of  a  critical  notice  of  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States, 
in  the  North  American  Review,  for  January,  1841,  introduced  some  inci- 
dental remarks  on  that  of  Mr.  Graharae.  After  bearing  testimony  to  his 
capacity,  though  a  foreigner,  to  appreciate  the  motives  and  institutions  of  the 
Puritans,  and  acknowledging  the  fidelity  and  candor,  the  extent  and  accura- 
cy, of  his  researches,  the  critic  adds,  —  "Mr.  Grahame's  work,  with  all  its 
merit,  is  the  work  of  a  foreigner.  And  that  word  comprehends  much  that 
cannot  be  overcome  by  the  best  writer.  He  may  produce  a  beautiful  com- 
position, faultless  in  style,  accurate  in  the  delineation  of  prominent  events, 
full  of  sound  logic  and  most  wise  conclusions.  But  he  cannot  enter  into  the 
sym|jathies,  comprehend  all  the  minute  feelings,  prejudices,  and  peculiar  ways 
of  thinking,  which  form  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  natir/i." 

The  author  of  this  review  was  well  understood  to  be  William  H.  Prescolt, 
Esq.,  and  Mr.  Grah^me  thus  remarks  upon  it  in  his  journal :  —  "  Prescott's 
critical  notice  of  Bancroft's  third  volume,  in  the  North  American  Review, 
contains  some  handsome  commendation  of  my  work  ;  —  qualified  by  that 
favorite  canon  of  American  literary  jurisprudence,  that  no  man  not  born  and 
bred  in  America  can  perform,  as  such  a  function  ought  to  be  performed,  the 
task  of  describing  the  people,  or  relating  even  their  distant  history.  Now, 
I  am  inclined  to  suspect  that  this  theorem  is  unsound  in  principle  and  false 
in  fact.  1  think  a  man  may  better  describe  objects,  from  not  having  been 
inveterately  habituated  and  familiarized  to  them  ;  and  at  once  more  calmly 
contemplate  and  more  impartially  estimate  national  character,  of  which  he  is 
not  a  Uillj  necessitated,  born  partaker,  —  and  national  habits,  prejudices, 
usages,  and  peculiarities,  under  the  dominance  of  which  his  own  spirit  has 
not  been  moulded,  from  its  earliest  dawn  of  intelligent  perception." 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Prescolt,  dated  March  3d,  1841,  he  recurs  to  this  topic, 
"  On  the  general  censure  of  your  countrymen,  that,  '  personally  unacquaint- 
ed with  America,  I  cannot  correctly  delineate  even  her  distant  history,*  — 
Queen  Elizabeth  desired  that  her  portrait  should  be  painted  without  shade  ; 
because,  by  a  truly  royal  road  to  the  principles  of  that  art,  she  had  discov- 
ered that  shade  is  an  accident.  Are  not  some  of  your  countrymen  possessed 
of  a  similar  feeling,  and  desirous  that  every  historic  portrait  of  America 
should  represent  it  as  it  ought  to  be,  and  not  as  it  is  9  When  I  look  into 
the  works  of  some  of  your  greatest  American  writers,  and  see  how  daintily 
they  handle  certain  topics,  —  elusively  playing  or  rather  fencing  with  them, 
as  if  they  were  burning  ploughshares,  —  I  must  respectfully  doubt,  if,  as  yet 
at  least,  an  American  is  likely  to  be  the  best  writer  of  American  history. 
That  the  greatest  and  most  useful  historian  that  has  ever  instructed  mankind 

Tiii   Vvl  aiist;   III   xiiiiciIUU 


xijiiciicu. 


r_- ji.- 
luiiuiy 


hope, 


dcoire,  and  believe.     It  woi'd.bo 
ray  pride  to  be  regarded  as  the  pioneer  of  such  a  writer,  and  to  have,  in 

A*  ■     • 


XXIV 


MEMOIR. 


I  I 


li;  . ;;  .i 


any  wise,  contributed  to  the  utility  of  his  work  and  the  extension  of  Amen- 
can  fame.  I  trust  it  is  with  you,  as  it  is  with  me,  a  sacred  maxim,  that  to 
good  historiography  elevation  and  rectitude  of  soul  are  at  least  as  requisite 
as  literary  resource  and  intellectual  range  and  vigor." 

In  June  of  this  year,  he  received,  and  in  his  journal  thus  comments  on, 
Quincy's  History  of  Harvard  University  :  —  "  Read  it  with  much  interest. 
No  other  country,  from  the  first  syllable  of  recorded  time,  ever  produced  a 
seat  of  learning  so  honorable  to  its  founders  and  early  supporters  as  Harvard 
University.  This  work  is  the  only  recent  American  composition  with  which 
[  am  acquainted  that  justifies  his  countrymen's  plea,  that  there  is  something 
in  their  history  that  none  but  an  American  born  and  bred  can  adequately 
conceive  and  render.     His  account  of  the  transition  of  the  social  system  of 
Massachusetts,  from  an  entire  and  punctilious  intertexture  of  church  and 
state,  to  the  restriction  of  municipal  government  to  civil  affairs  and  occupa- 
tions, is  very  curious  and  interesting,  and  admirably  fills  up  an  important  void 
in  New  England  history.     He  wounds  my  prejudices  by  attacking  the  Math- 
ers, and  other  persons  of  a  primitive  cast  of  Puritanism,  with  a  severity  tho 
more  painful  to  me  that  I  see  not  well  how  I  can  demur  to  its  justice.     But 
though  I  disapprove  and  dissent  from  many  of  their  views,  and  regret  many 
of  their  proceedings,  yet  the  depths  of  my  heart  are  with  the  primitive  Puri- 
tans and  the  Scottish  Covenanters  ;  and  even  their  errors  I  deem  of  nobler 
kind  than  the  frigid  merits  of  some  of  the  emendators  of  their  policy." 

In  the  same  strain  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Quincy  on  the  4th  of  July  following, 
—  "I  rp;]'ard  the  primitive  Puritans  much  as  I  do  the  Scottish  Covenanters  ; 
respectfully  disapproving  and  completely  dissenting  from  many  of  their  views 
and  opinions  ;  especially  their  favorite  scheme  of  an  intertexture  of  church 
and  state,  which  appears  to  me  not  only  unchristian,  but  antichristian.  But 
I  cordially  embrace  all  that  is  purely  doctrinal  in  their  system,  and  regard 
their  persons  with  a  fond,  jealous  love,  which  makes  me  indulgent  even  to 
their  errors.  Carrying  their  heavenly  treasures  in  earthly  vessels,  they  could 
not  fail  to  err.  But  theirs  were  the  errors  of  noble  minds.  How  different 
from  those  of  knaves,  fools,  and  lukewarm  professors  !  I  forget  what  poet 
it  is  that  says, 

'Some  failings  are  of  nobler  kind 
Than  virtues  of  a  narrow  mind.'  " 

The  complete  restoration  to  health  of  his  only  daughter,  and  her  marriage 
to  John  Stewart,  Esq.,  the  brother-in-law  of  the  friend  of  his  youth  and 
manhood.  Sir  John  F.  W.  Herschel,  shed  bright  rays  of  happiness  over  the 
last  years  of  Mr.  Grahame's  life.     These  were  passed  at  Nantes  in  his  do- 
mestic circle,  in  the  companionship  of  the  exemplary  and  estimable  lady  who 
had  united  her  fortunes  with  his,  and  cheered  by  the  reflected  happiness  and 
welfare  of  his  children.     His  only  son,  who  was  pursuing  successfully  the 
career  of  a  solicitor  in  Glasgow,  occasionally  visited  him  as  his  professional 
avocations  permitted.     His  daughter  and  son-in-law  divided  their  time  be- 
tween Nantes  and  England.     Always  passionately  fond  of  children,  and  hav- 
ing the  power  of  rendering  himself  singularly  attractive  to  them  by  his  gentle, 
quiet,  playful  manner,  he  was  devotedly  attached  to  his  little  granddaughter, 
who  became  his  frequent  companion.      Under  the  influence  of  these  tran- 
uuil  scenes  of  domestic  happiness  his  health  visibly  improved  ;  nor  was  there 
the  slightest  suspicion  of  the  organic  disease  which  was  destined  soon  to 
terminate  his  life.     By  direction  of  his  medical  atinndani   Dr.  Fr.v.vf'   an 
eminent  physician  of  Nantes,  he  abstained  from  all  severe  literary  toil ;  'yet 


■J 


ages. 


MEMOU;,, 


XXV 


>n  of  Ameri- 
ixim,  that  to 
t  as  requisite 

Dftiments  on, 
luch  interest, 
r  produced  a 
i  as  Harvard 
n  with  which 
is  something 
n  adequately 
al  system  of 
church  and 
and  occupa- 
iportant  void 
ig  the  Math- 
severity  the 
ustice.  But 
regret  many 
mitive  Puri- 
sm of  nobler 
alicv." 
ly  lollowing, 
ovenanters  ; 
f  their  views 
e  of  church 
istian.  But 
,  and  regard 
jent  even  to 
,  they  could 
ow  different 
it  what  poet 


ler  marriage 
1  youth  and 
3ss  over  the 
s  in  his  do- 
le lady  who 
ppiness  and 
essfully  the 
professional 
lir  time  be- 
n,  and  hav- 
'•  his  gentle, 
iddaughter, 
these  tran- 
r  was  there 
ed  soon  to 

»    ^  'Ml  -_  J    au 

y  toil  ;  yet 


'j 


: 


whatever  study  was  permitted  to  him  was  directed  to  the  improvement  of  his 
History  of  the  United  States,  to  which  he  made  many  additions  and  amend- 
ments, and  which  he  declared,  shortly  before  his  death,  he  had  6nally  com- 
pleted to  his  own  satisfaction,  and  thoroughly  prepared  for  a  second  edition. 

Circumstances  in  which  Mr.  Grahame  had  been  accidentally  placed  had 
forcibly  directed  his  mind  to  the  subject  of  slavery,  the  enormity  of  the  evil, 
and  its  effects  on  the  morals  and  advancement  of  the  people  among  whom 
it  existed.  Ke  had  acquired,  in  right  of  his  first  wife,  aa  estate  in  the  West 
Indies,  which  was  cultivated  by  slaves.  His  feelings  in  respect  of  this  slave- 
derived  income  are  strongly  expressed  in  a  letter  to  Sir  John  F.  W.  Her- 
schel,  dated  the  24th  of  February,  1827.  "  A  subject  has  for  some  time 
been  giving  me  uneasiness.  My  children  are  proprietors  of  a  ninth  share  of 
a  West  India  estate,  and  I  have  a  life-rent  in  it.  Were  my  children  of  age, 
I  could  not  make  one  of  the  negroes  free,  and  could  do  nothing  but  appro- 
priate or  forego  the  share  of  produce  the  estate  yielded.  Often  have  I 
wished  it  were  in  my  power  to  make  the  slaves  free,  and  thought  this  bar- 
ren wish  a  sufficient  tribute  to  duty.  My  conscience  was  quite  laid  asleep. 
Like  many  others,  I  did  not  do  what  I  could,  because  I  could  not  do  what 
I  wished.  For  years  past,  something  more  than  a  fifth  part  of  my  income 
has  been  derived  fron)  the  labor  of  slaves.  God  forgive  me  for  having  so 
long  tainted  my  store  I  and  God  be  thanked  for  that  warning  voice  that  has 
roused  me  from  my  lethargy,  and  taught  me  to  feel  that  my  hand  offended 
me  !  Never  more  shall  the  price  of  blood  enter  my  pocket,  or  help  to  sus- 
tain the  lives  or  augment  the  enjoyment  of  those  dear  children.  They  sym- 
pathize with  me  cordially.  Till  we  can  legally  divest  ourselves  of  our  share, 
every  shilling  of  the  produce  of  it  is  to  be  devoted  to  the  use  of  some  part 
of  the  unhappy  race  from  whose  suffering  it  is  derived."  Subsequently, 
with  the  consent  of  his  children,  Mr.  Grahame  entirely  gave  up  this  slave- 
property,  amounting  to  several  thousand  pounds. 

His  interest  in  the  fate  of  the  African  race  had  been  excited  several  years 
before  by  a  circumstance  which  he  thus  relates  in  his  diary,  under  date  of 
October,  1821  :  —  "My  father  is  most  vigorously  engaged  in  protecting 
three  poor,  forlorn  Africans  from  being  carried,  against  their  wills,  back  to 
the  West  Indies.  They  were  part  of  the  crew  of  a  vessel  driven  by  stress 
of  weather  into  the  port  of  Dumbarton.  While  the  vessel  was  undergoing 
some  repairs,  the  people  of  the  town  remarked  with  surprise  the  precautions 
by  which  unnecessary  communication  with  the  shore  was  prevented  ;  and 
their  surprise  was  converted  into  strong  suspicion,  when  they  perceived 
sometimes,  in  the  evening,  a  few  black  heads  on  the  deck,  suffered  to  be 
there  a  short  time,  and  then  sent  below.  A  number  of  the  citizens  applied 
to  the  magistrates,  but  the  magistrates  were  afraid  to  interfere  ;  so  the  peo- 

f)le  had  the  sense  and  spirit  to  convey  the  intelligence  by  express  to  my 
ather,  whose  zeal  for  the  African  race  was  well  known.  He  instantly  caused 
the  vessel  to  bo  arrested,  and  has  cheerfully  undertaken  the  enormous  dam- 
ages, as  well  as  the  costs  of  suit,  to  which  he  will  be  subjected,  if  the  case 
be  decided  against  him."  In  a  subsequent  entry  in  his  diary,  Mr.  Grahame 
Writes,  —  "  But  it  was  decided  in  his  favor." 

By  the  same  daily  record  it  appears,  that,  in  1823,  his  feelings  were  still 
Airther  excited  on  the  subject  of  slavery  by  an  incident  which  he  thus  no- 
tices :  —  "  Zachary  Macaulay  showed  me  to-day  some  of  the  laws  of  Ja- 
maica, SHu  poHited  out  liOvv  coniDietclv  evefv  orovision  foi 


poi 


;Oinp 


iy 


ly  pn 


siruiuiii 


g 


I1U 


memoir: 

cruelty  of  the  masters  and  alleviating  the  bondage  of  the  slaves  is  defeated 
by  counter  provisions  that  render  the  remedy  unattainable.  —  What  a  stain 
on  the  history  of  the  church  of  England  is  it,  that  not  one  of  her  wealthy 
ministers,  not  one  of  her  bishops  who  sit  as  peers  of  the  realm  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  has  ever  attempted  to  mitigate  the  evils  of  negro  slavery,  or  ever 
called  the  public  attention  to  that  duty  !  No,  they  leave  the  field  of  Chris- 
tian labor  to  Methodists  and  Moravians." 

Actuated  by  such  feelings  and  sentiments,  he  published,  in  1823,  a  pam- 
phlet, entitled  "  Thoughts  on  the  Projected  Abolition  of  Slavery,"  —  a 
S reduction,  whicli,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  he  declared  that  he  looked 
ack  upon  with  unalloyed  pleasure  and  satisfaction.  In  1828,  Mr.  Grahame 
relates  in  his  journal,  that  he  had  had  a  long  conversation  on  this  subject  with 
the  celebrated  Abbe  Gregoire,  to  whom  he  had  been  introduced  by  La 
Fayette.  In  the  course  of  this  conversation,  the  Abbe  stated  to  him  that 
he  "  had  written  to  Jefferson,  combating  the  opinions  expressed  in  Jeffer- 
son's '  Notes  on  Virginia,'  of  the  inferiority  of  the  intellectual  capacity  of 
the  negroes,  and  that  Jefferson  had  answered,  acknowledging  his  error." 

The  prevalent  language  on  the  subject  of  negro  slavery  in  some  parts  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  apparently  general  acquiescence  of  the  people  in 
the  continuance  of  that  institution,  led  him,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  to 
apprehend,  that,  in  the  first  edition  of  his  History,  he  had  treated  that  sub- 
ject with  more  indulgence  than  was  consistent  with  truth  and  duty.  Under 
this  impression,  he  remarks  in  his  diary,  in  December,  1837,  —  "  My  ad- 
miration of  America,  my  attachment  to  her  people,  and  my  interest  in  their 
virtue,  their  happiness,  their  dignity,  and  renown,  have  increased,  instead  of 
abating.  But  research  and  reflection  have  obliged  me,  in  the  edition  of  my 
work  which  I  have  been  preparing  since  the  publication  in  1835,  to  beat 
down  some  American  pretensions  to  virtue  and  apologies  for  wrong,  which 
I  had  formerly  and  too  hastily  admitted.  Much  as  I  value  the  friendship 
and  regard  of  the  Americans,  I  would  rather  serve  than  gratify  them, — 
rather  deserve  their  esteem  than  obtain  their  favor." 

Early  in  the  year  1842,  a  pamphlet,  published  in  London  in  1835,  entitled 
*'  A  Letter  to  Lord  Brougham  on  the  Subject  of  American  Slavery,  by  an 
American,"  was  put  into  Mr.  Grahame's  hands,  as  he  states,  "  by  another 
American,  most  honorably  distinguished  in  the  walks  of  science  and  philan- 
thropy," who  bid  him  ^^  read  there  the  defence  of  his  (the  American's) 
country."'  The  positions  maintained  by  this  writer  —  that  "  slavery  was 
introduced  into  the  American  colonies,  now  the  United  States,  by  the  Brit- 
ish government,"  and  that  "  the  opposition  to  it  there  was  so  general,  that, 
with  propriety,  it  may  be  said  to  have  been  universal  ", —  roused  Mr.  Gra- 
hame's indignation  ;  which  was  excited  to  an  extreme  when  he  perceived 
these  statements  repeated  and  urged  in  a  memorial  addressed  to  Daniel 
O'Connell  by  certain  Irish  emigrants  settled  at  Pottsville,  in  the  United 
States.     Having  devoted  some  lime  to  a  careful  perusal  of  tliis  pamphlet,  he   ' 
felt  himself  called  upon  as  a  Briton,  from  a  regard  to  the  reputation  of  his 
country  and  to  truth,  and  from  a  belief  that  '*  no  living  man  knew  more  of 
the  early  history  of  the  American  people  than  himself,"  to  contradict,  in  the 
most  direct  and  pointed  manner,  the  statements  referred  to  ;  pledging  him- 
self "to  prove  that  the  abovemcntioned  pamphlet  was  a  production  more 
disgraceful  to  American  literature  and  character  (in  so  far  as  it  was  to  be 


SICCXIICU 


tne  iuj;ri;sciuaiivc  of  cither)  than 


with  which  he  was  acquainted. 


any  otner  literary  periormance 


MiinmM^ 


xiifii- 


i 


He  accordingly  applied  himself  forthwith  to  an  extended  discussion  of 
this  subject  in  a  pamphlet  to  which  he  affixed  the  title, — "Who  is  to 
blame  ?  or  Cursory  Review  of  American  Apology  for  American  Accession 
to  Negro  Slavery."  In  this  pamphlet  Mr.  Grahame  admits  that  Great 
Britain  "facilitated  her  colonial  offspring  to  become  slaveholders,"  —  that 
"  she  encouraged  her  merchants  in  templing  them  to  acquire  slaves,"  —  that 
"  her  conduct  during  her  long  sanction  of  the  slave-trade  is  indefensible,"  — 
that  "  she  excelled  all  her  competitors  in  slave-stealing,  for  the  same  reason 
that  she  excelled  them  in  every  other  branch  of  what  was  then  esteemed  le- 
gitimate traffic  "  ;  —  but  denies  that  she  ^^  forced  the  Americans  to  become 
slaveholders,"  —  denies  that  "the  slave-trade  was  comprehended  within 
the  scopeC  and  operation  of  the  commercial  policy  of  the  British  government 
until  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,"  —  and  asserts,  that,  "prior  to  that  reign, 
negro  slavery  was  established  in  every  one  of  the  American  provinces  that 
finally  revolted  from  Great  Britain,  except  Georgia,  which  was  not  planted 
until  1733."  The  argument  in  this  pamphlet  is  pressed  with  great  strength 
and  spirit,  and  the  whole  is  written  under  the  influence  of  feelings  in  a  state 
of  indignant  excitement.  Without  palliating  the  conduct  of  Great  Britain, 
he  regards  the  attempt  to  exculpate  America,  by  criminating  the  mother  coun- 
try, as  unworthy  and  unjust ;  contending  that  neither  was  under  any  peculiar 
or  irresistible  temptation,  but  only  such  as  is  common  to  man,  when,  in  the 
language  of  the  Apostle,  "  he  is  drawn  away  of  his  own  lust  and  enticed." 
His  argument  respecting  the  difference,  in  point  of  criminality,  between 
America  and  Great  Britain  results  as  another  identical  question  has  long  since 
resulted  concerning  the  comparative  guilt  of  the  receiver  and  the  thief. 

In  the  month  of  June,  1842,  at  the  urgent  request  of  his  and  his  father's 
friend,  Thomas  Clarkson,  the  early  and  successful  asserter  of  the  rights  of 
Africans,  he  repaired  to  London,  for  the  purpose  of  superintending  the  pub- 
lication of  this  pamphlet.  On  arriving  there,  he  placed  his  manuscript  in 
the  hands  of  a  printer,  and  immediately  proceeded  to  Playford  Hall,  Ipswich, 
the  residence  of  Mr.  Clarkson.  Concerning  this  distinguished  man,  Mr. 
Grahame,  under  date  of  the  25th  of  June,  thus  writes  in  his  diary  :  —  "  Mr. 
Clarkson's  appearance  is  solemnly  tender  and  beautiful.  Exhausted  with 
age  and  malady,  he  is  yet  warmly  zealous,  humane,  and  affectionate.  Fifty- 
seven  years  of  generous  toil  have  not  relaxed  his  zeal  in  the  African  cause. 
He  watches  over  the  interests  of  the  colored  race  in  every  quarter  of  the 
world,  desiring  and  promoting  their  moral  and  physical  welfare,  rejoicing  in 
their  improvement,  afflicted  in  all  their  afflictions.  The  glory  of  God  and 
the  interests  of  the  African  race  are  the  mastersprings  of  his  spirit." 

After  two  days  passed  in  intercourse  with  this  congenial  mind,  Mr.  Gra- 
hame returned  to  London  and  occupied  himself  zealously  in  correcting  the 
])roof-sheets  of  his  pamphlet.  On  the  morning  of  the  30th  of  June,  he  was 
assailed  by  severe  pain,  which  his  medical  attendant  attributed  at  first  to 
indigestion,  and  treated  as  such.  But  it  soon  assumed  a  more  alarming 
character.  Eminent  physicians  were  called  for  consultation,  and  his  broth- 
er, Thomas  Grahame,  was  sent  for.  From  the  nature  and  intensity  of  his 
suffering,  Mr.  Grahame  soon  became  sensible  that  his  final  hour  was  ap- 
proaching, and  addressed  himself  to  meet  it  with  calmness  and  resignation. 
He  proceeded  to  communicate  his  last  wishes  to  his  son-in-law,  directed 
where  he  should  be  buried,  and  dictated  his  epitaph  :  —  "  James  Grahame, 
Advocate,  Edinburgh,  Author  ofllie  History  of  the  United  States  of  North 
America  ;  aged  51."     He,  at  the  same  time,  expressed  the  hope  concern- 

VOL.  I.  9 


XXVUl 


MEMOIB. 


,,,, '  r 

>     I 


ing  his  recently  published  pamphlet,  that  no  efforts  might  be  spared  to  secure 
its  sale  and  distribution,  *'as  he  had  written  it  conscientiously  and  with  sin- 
gle-heartedness, and  had  invoked  the  blessing  of  God  upon  it." 

Notwithstanding  the  distinguished  skill  of  his  physicians,  every  remedy 
failed  of  producing  the  desired  effect.  His  disorder  was  organic,  and  beyond 
the  power  of  their  art.  Such  was  the  excruciating  agony  which  preceded 
his  death,  that  his  friends  could  only  hope  that  his  release  might  not  be  long 
delayed.     This  wish  was  granted  on  Sunday  morning,  the  3d  of  July. 

"  His  endurance  of  the  pain  and  oppression  of  breathing  which  preceded 
his  death,"  says  Mr.  Stewart,  "  was  perfectly  wonderful.  His  features 
were  constantly  calm,  placid,  and  at  last  bore  a  bright,  even  a  cheerful  ex- 
pression. His  attendants,  while  bending  close  towards  him,  caugjjt  occa- 
sionally expressions  of  prayer  ;  his  profound  acquaintance  with  the  Scriptures 
enabling  him,  in  this  hour  of  his  need,  to  draw  strength  and  support  from 
that  inexhaustible  source,  where  he  was  accustomed  to  seek  and  to  find  it." 

He  was  buried  in  KenSlall  Green  Cemetery,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Lon- 
don. His  son-in-law,  John  Stevva.!,  and  his  brother,  Thomas  Grahame, 
attended  his  remains  to  the  grave.  His  son,  also,  who  had  set  out  from 
Scotland  on  hearing  of  his  illness,  though  arriving  too  late  to  see  him  before 
he  expired,  was  not  denied  the  melancholy  satisfaction  of  being  present  at 
his  interment.  A  plain  marble  monument  has  been  erected  over  his  tomb, 
bearing  the  exact  inscription  he  himself  dictated. 

These  scanty  memorials  are  all  that  it  has  been  possible,  in  this  country, 
to  collect  in  relation  to  James  Grahame.  Though  few  and  disconnected, 
they  are  grateful  and  impressive. 

The  habits  of  his  life  were  domestic,  and  in  the  family  circle  the  harmony 
and  loveliness  of  his  character  were  eminently  cqnspicuous.  His  mind  was 
grave,  pure,  elevated,  far-reaching ;  its  enlarged  views  ever  on  the  search 
after  the  true,  the  useful,  and  the  good.  His  religious  sentiments,  though 
exalted  and  tinctured  with  enthusiasm,  were  always  candid,  liberal,  and  tol- 
erant. In  politics  a  republican,  his  love  of  liberty  was  nevertheless  qualified 
by  a  love  ol  order,  —  bis  desire  to  elevate  the  destinies  of  the  many,  by  a 
respect  for  the  rights  and  interests  of  the  /cw.  As  in  his  religion  there  was 
nothing  of  bigotry,  so  in  his  political  principles  there  was  nothing  of  radicalism. 

As  a  historian,  there  were  combined  in  Mr.  Grahame  all  the  qualities 
which  inspire  confidence  and  sustain  it ;  —  a  mind  powerful  and  cultivated, 
patient  of  labor,  indefatigable  in  research,  independent,  faithful,  and  fearless  ; 
engaging  in  its  subject  with  absorbing  interest,  and  in  the  development  of 
it  superior  to  all  influences  except  those  of  truth  and  duty. 

To  Americans,  in  all  future  times,  it  cannot  fail  to  be  an  interesting  and 
gratifying  circumstance,  that  the  foreigner,  who  first  undertook  to  write  a 
complete  history  of  their  republic  from  the  earliest  period  of  the  colonial 
settlements,  was  a  Briton,  eminently  qualified  to  appreciate  the  merits  of 
its  founders,  and  at  once  so  able  and  so  willing  to  do  justice  to  them.  The 
people  of  the  United  States,  on  whose  national  character  and  success  Mr. 
Grahame  bestowed  his  affections  and  hopes,  owe  to  his  memory  a  recipro- 
cation of  feeling  and  interest.  As  the  chief  labor  of  his  life  was  devoted  to 
illustrate  the  wisdom  and  virtues  of  their  ancestors  and  to  do  honor  to  the 
institutions  they  established,  it  is  incumbent  on  the  descendants  to  hold  and 
perpetuate  in  grateful  remembrance  his  talents,  virtues,  and  services. 


TO 


ROBERT  GRAHAME,  Esq., 

or  waiTGHUX,  lanarxshibb,  icotland, 
THIS  WORK  IS  DEDICATED, 

WITH   IBHTIMKNT8   OF  PROFOUNDEST   RBVERENCK   AND   AFPBCTIOIf 

BT 

HIS  SON. 


1 


i 


PREFACE. 


This  historibal  work  is  the  fruit  of  niore  than  elevien  years  of  eager  re- 
search, intense  meditation,  industrious  composition,  and  solicit6u<<  revisal. 
To  the  author,  the  scene  of  labor  which  he  how  concludes  has  been  one  of 
the  most  agreeable  features  of  his  life.  And,  should  the  perusal  of  his 
work  afford  to  others  even  a  slight  share  of  the  entertainment  that  its  pro- 
duction has  yielded  to  himself,  he  may  claim  th#  honor  and  gratification  of 
a  successful  contributor  to  the  stock  of  human  happiness  and  intelligence. 

In  the  year  1827,  I  published  a  work  in  two  flumes,  entitled  Th6  His- 
tory of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  United  Statei  of  Jforth  Amttica^till 
the  British  Revolution  in  1688.  My  plan,  as  1  then  announced,  was,  and 
it  still  is,  restricted  to  the  history  of  those  provinces  of  North  AmeHca 
(originating,  all  except  New  York  and  Delaware,  fforti  British  colonization), 
which,  at  the  era  of  the  American  Revolution,  were  included  in  the  confed- 
eracy of  The  United  States  ;  —  the  illustration  of  the  parentage  and  birth 
of  this  great  republic  being  the  main  object  of  rny  labors. 

The  first  and  second  volumes  of  the  present  woirk  rtiay  be  eoriiSideV^'  as 
a  republication  of  the  forrner  one.  They  enibrabe  the  rise  of  such  6i  t!»6se 
States,  comprehended  within  my  getteral  plan^  as  wete  founded  'prior  lb'  the 
British  Revolution  in  1688  ;  and  trace  their  jprogress  till  that  epoch,  and,  in 
several  instances,  till  a  period  somewhat  later.  Various  additional  researches 
which  I  have  rtiade  since  my  first  historical  publication,  and  in  which  I  l^ave 
been  assisted  by  suggestions  communicated  to  me  from  America,  have  ena- 
bled me  to  correct  some  important  errors  by  which  that  work  was  deforitied, 
and  now  to  reproduce  it  in  an  enlarged  and  greatly  ameiided  condition.  Of 
some  of  these  emendations  the  nature  and  effect  are  such  as  to  render  it  im- 
possible (without  making  one  volume  contradict  the  statements  in  another)  to 
publish  a  continuation  of  the  History,  except  in  connection  with  the  present 
republication  of  the  first  portion  of  it,  —  a  circumstance  which  will  perhaps 
expose  me  to  blame,  and  which  I  most  sincerely  regtet.  The  respect  wiiich 
I  feel  foi  the  judgment  of  some  intelligent  and  estimable  frieWds  (and  in  par- 
ticular of  my  brother')  has  induced  mo  to  cancel  various  passages  in  the 
original  publication,  which  were  censured  as  obtruding  duperfiuous  (perhaps 
irrelevant)  reflections,  or  accumulating  an  excess  of  d'^tail  and  illustration. 
A  diligent  and  laborious  revision,  frequently  repeated,  ha*  been  prodiictive 

'Author  of  Jl  Treatis$on  IntenuU  intereouru  and  Commtmitatioii  iii  CivEtittd  SuUtitad 
other  icientifio  works. 


4 


If'',  ff 


xxxu 


PREFACE. 


of  numerous  alterations,  and,  I  hope,  proportional  improvement,  in  the  style 
of  my  performance. 

The  third  and  fourth  volumes  of  the  present  work  form  the  second  com- 
position which  was  prospectively  announced  in  the  preface  to  my  first  histor- 
ical publication.  They  continue  the  history  (commenced  in  the  first  two  vol- 
umes) of  the  older  American  States,  and  also  embrace  the  rise  and  progress 
of  tliose  younger  colonial  commonwealths  which  were  subsequently  founded, 
—  till  the  revolt  of  the  United  Provinces  from  the  dominion  of  Britain,  and 
their  assumption  of  national  independence.  Strictly  speaking,  they  form  a 
continuation,  not  of  my  original  publication,  but  of  my  original  work  as  it 
has  been  subsequently  altered  and  amended. 

In  the  preface  to  my  first  publication,  I  announced  a  third  historic  com- 
position, which  was  intended  to  embrace  the  Revolutionary  War,  and  the 
establishment  and  consolidation  of  the  North  American  republic.  But  I  have 
been  induced,  on  farther  reflection,  to  abandon  the  purpose  I  had  entertained 
of  this  ulterior  effort.  Since  my  first  publication,  I  have  met  with  and  read 
Botta's  History  of  the  IVar  oJJlmtrican  Independence,  —  a  work  of  so  much 
merit,  and  so  well  suited,  I  think,  to  the  present  era,  that  it  seems  to  me  to 
render  any  other  composition  (at  least,  any  other  European  composition)  on 
the  same  subject,  at  present,  superfluous.  Fifty  or  sixty  years  hence,  a  final 
and  more  compendious  delineation  of  the  scene  may  be  required. 

In  the  collection  of  materials  for  the  production  of  this  work,  I  have  been 
obliged  to  incur  a  degreti  of  toil  and  expense,  which,  in  my  original  contem- 
plation of  the  task,  I  was  far  from  anticipating.  Considering  the  connection 
that  so  long  subsisted  between  Great  Britain  and  the  American  States,  the 
information  concerning  the  early  condition  and  progress  of  many  of  these 
communities,  which  the  public  libraries  of  Britain  are  capable  of  supplying, 
is,  or  at  least  till  very  lately  was,  amazingly  scanty.  Many  valuable  works, 
illustrative  of  the  history  and  statistics  both  of  particular  States  and  of  the 
whole  North  American  commonwealth,  I  found  had  no  place  and  were  en- 
tirely unknown  in  the  British  libraries  ;  a  defect  the  more  discreditable,  as 
the  greater  part  of  these  works  might  have  been  obtained  without  much 
difficulty  in  London  or  from  America. 

After  borrowing  all  the  materials  that  I  could  so  procure,  and  purchasing 
as  many  more  as  I  could  find  in  Britain  or  obtain  from  America,  my  collec- 
tion proved  still  so  defective  in  many  respects,  that,  in  the  hope  of  enlarging 
it,  and  in  compliance  with  the  advice  of  my  friend.  Sir  William  Hamilton  *  (of 
whose  counsel  and  assistance  I  can  better  feel  the  obligation  than  express 
the  value),  I  underlook  a  journey,  in  the  year  1825,  from  Edinburgh,  where 
I  then  resided,  to  Gdttingen ;  and  in  the  library  of  this  place,  as  I  had  been 
taught  to  expect,  I  found  a  richer  treasury  of  North  American  literature  than 
any,  or  indeed  all,  of  the  libraries  of  Britain  could  at  that  time  supply.    From 
the  resources  of  the  Gottingen  library,  and  the  liberality  with  which  its  ad- 
ministrators have  always  been  willing  to  render  it  subservient  to  the  purposes 
of  literary  inquiry,  I  derived  great  advantage  and  assistance.    I  am  indebted, 
also,  to  the  private  collections  of  various  individuals  in  England  and  France 
for  the  perusal  of  sorne  very  rare  and  not  less  valuable  and  interesting  works, 
illustrative  of  the  subject  of  my  labors.     To  particularize  all  the  persons  who 
have  thus  or  otherwise  assisted  my  exertions  and  enriched  my  stock  of  ma- 

. '  '*™r*"^'  of  Univeraal  Hiitury.  and  anerwarda  of  Losic  and  MeUDhvuca.  in  tho  Univer 
City  01  l^Uiuburgb.  ~  ... 


i 


nt,  in  the  style 

3  second  com- 
my  first  histor- 
le  first  two  vol- 
e  and  progress 
lently  founded, 
of  Britain,  and 
g,  they  form  a 
nal  work  as  it 

I  historic  corn- 
War,  and  the 
3.  But  I  have 
lad  entertained 

with  and  read 
)rk  of  so  much 
eems  to  me  to 
imposition)  on 

hence, a  final 
red. 

:,  I  have  been 
iginal  contem- 
he  connection 
an  States,  the 
Tiany  of  these 

of  supplying, 
iluable  works, 
es  and  of  the 

and  were  en* 
icreditable,  as 
tvithout  much 

nd  purchasing 
;a,  my  collec- 
le  of  enlarging 
Hamilton '  (of 
than  express 
iburgh,  where 
is  I  had  been 
iteraiure  than 
jpply.  From 
which  its  ad- 
the  purposes 
am  indebted, 
i  and  France 
esting  works, 
persons  who 
stock  of  ma- 

.  in  tho  llniver 


I 


terials  would  weary  rather  than  interest  the  reader,  ~  whom  it  less  imports 
to  know  what  opportunities  I  have  had  than  what  use  I  have  made  of  them 
Yet  I  must  be  indulged  in  one  grateful,  perhaps  boastful,  allusion  to  the  ad- 
vantage I  have  enjoyed  in  the  communications  which  I  had  the  honor  of 
receiving  from  that  illustrious  friend  of  America  and  ornament  of  human  na- 
ture, the  late  General  La  Fayette, 

History  addresses  her  lessons  to  all  mankind  ;  but  when  she  records  the 
fortunes  of  an  existing  people,  it  is  to  them  that  her  admonitions  are  espe- 
cially directed.  Ihere  has  never  been  a  people  on  whose  character  their 
own  historical  recollections  were  calculated  to  exercise  a  more  animating  or 
salutary  influence  than  the  nation  whose  early  history  I  have  undertaken  to 
relate. 

In  national  societies  established  as  the  United  States  of  North  America 
Jmve  been,  history  does  not  begin  with  obscure  traditions  or  fabulous  legends 
The  origin  of  the  nation,  and  the  rise  and  progress  of  all  its  institutions,  may 
be  distinctly  ascertained  ;  and  the  people  enabled  to  acquire  a  complete  and 
accurate  conception  of  the  character  of  their  earliest  national  ancestors,  as 
well  as  of  every  succeeding  generation  through  which  the  inheritance  of  the 
national  name  and  fortunes  has  devolved  on  themselves.     When  the  inter- 
esting knowledge  thus  unfolded  to  them  reveals,  among  other  disclosures 
that  their  existence  as  a  nation  originated  in  the  noblest  efforts  of  wisdom' 
fortitude,  and  magnanimity,  and  that  every  successive  acquisition  by  which 
their  liberty  and  happiness  have  been  extended  or  secured  has  proceeded 
from  the  exercise  of  the  same  qualities,  and  evinced  their  faithful  preserva- 
tion and  ummpaired  efficacy,  —  respect  for  antiquity  becomes  the  motive 
and  pledge  of  virtue  ;  the  whole  body  of  the  people  feels  itself  ennobled  by 
the  consciousness  of  ancestors  whose  renown  will  constitute,  to  the  end  of 
time,  the  honor  or  reproach  of  their  successors  ;  and  the  love  of  virtue  is  so 
interwoven  with  patriotism  and  with  national  glory,  as  to  prevent  the  one 
from  becoming  a  selfish  principle,  and  the  other  a  splendid  or  mischievous 
Illusion.      If  an  inspired  apostle  might  with  complacency  proclaim  himself 
a  citizen  of  no  mean  city,  a  North  American  may  feel  grateful  exultation 
in  styling  himself  the  native  of  no  ignoble  land,  —  but  of  a  land  that  has 
yielded  as  rich  a  harvest  of  glory  to  God  and  of  happiness  to  man,  as  any 
other  portion  of  the  world,  from  the  earliest  lapse  of  recorded  time,  has  ever 
had  the  honor  of  affording.     Were  the  dark  and  horrible  blot  of  negro  slav- 
ery obliterated  from  this  scene,  the  brightness  of  its  aspect  would  awaken 
universal  admiration,  and  shed  a  cheering  and  ameliorating  ray  through  the 
whole  expanse  of  human  nature  and  society.     A  more  elevated  model  of 
human  character  could  hardly  be  proposed  to  the  imitation  of  the  American 
people  than  that  which  their  own  early  history,  and  the  later  scene  of  their 
achievement  of  national  independence,  bequeath  to  them.    It  is  at  once  their 
interest  and  their  honor  to  preserve  with  sacred  care  a  bequest  so  richly 
fraught  with  the  instructions  of  wisdom  and  the  incitements  of  duty.      Ac- 
quaintance with  the  past  is  essential  to  a  wise  estimate  and  use  of  the  pres- 
ent,  and  to  enlightened  consideration  of  the  future.    The  diffusion  of  knowl- 
edge^jhe^progressjof  popular  liberty  and  improvement,  have  deprived  of 

n^iin^^J^^iaVlut"  u''""j'  wish  to  8ce  perpetuated  among  us  the  old  Asiatic  and  Eurooean 
ZTZ^A  '"''«''»»•« .''•'"d'tary  excellence.  '^But  surely  thfro  is  a  point  at  Xch  good  fS 
l'raTr„t£TrfL''^=r„.r!i',-^^^  "l«  »>-'  P?rts  of  our  charit:';!;! 


UXIV 


PBEFACE. 


K'i 


■r  1 
III 


iu  exclusive  and  sristocratic  import  Uie  oft-repeated  maxim  of  other  dava, 
that  Uiitory  is  the  U$$on  of  ktngt.  Tlie  American  people  will  cherish  a 
generous  and  profitable  sell-respect,  while  tliev  comply  with  the  canon  of 
divine  wisdom,  to  "  remember  the  days  of  old,  and  consider  the  years  of 
many  generations  "  ;  and  the  venerated  ashes  of  their  fathers  will  dispense 
a  nobler  influence  than  the  relics  of  the  prophet  of  Israel  in  reviving  piety 
and  invigorating  virtue.* 

The  most  important  requisite  of  historical  compositions,  and  that  in  which, 
I  suspect,  they  are  commonly  most  defective,  is  truth,** —  a  requisite,  of  which 
even  die  sincerity  of  the  historian  is  insuificicnt  to  assuro  us.     In  tracing  as- 
certained and  remarkable  facts,  either  backward  to  their  source,  or  forward 
in  their  operation,  the  historian  frequently  encounters,  on  either  hand,  a  per- 
plexing variety  of  separate  causes  and  diverging  cfl^ects  ;  among  which  it  is 
no  less  difficult,  than  important  to  discriminate  the  predominant  or  peculiar 
springs  of  action,  and  to  preserve  the  main  and  moral  stream  of  events.    In- 
Oiscriminate  detail  would  produce  intolerable  fatigue  and  confusion ;  while 
selection  necessarily  infers  the  risk  of  error.     The  sacred  historians  often  re- 
cord events  with  little  or  no  reference  to  their  moral  origin  and  lineage .: 
and  have  thus  given  to  some  parts  of  the  only  history  that  is  infallibly  authen- 
tic an  appearance  of  improbability,  which  the  more  reasoning  narratives  of 
uninspired  writers  have  exchanged,  at  least  as  frequently,  for  substantial 
misrepresentation.     It  may  be  thought  an  imprudent  avowal,  and  yet  I  have 
no  desire  to  conceal,  that,  in  examining  and  comparing  historical  records, 
I  have  more  than  once  been  forcibly  reminded  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole's  as- 
surance to  his  son,  that  "  History  must  be  false."  ^    Happily,  this  auothegm 
■  tppiies,  if  not  exclusively,  at  least  most  forcibly,  to  that  which  Waipole 
probably  regarded  as  the  main  trunk  of  history,  but  which  (especially  in 
;  modern  times,  and  in  relation  to  free  and  civilized  communities)  isi  indeed, 
.  the  most  insignificant  branch  of  it, ->-the  intrigues  of  cabinets,  the  secret 
schemes  and  machinatibhs  of  ministers,  and  the  conflicts  of  selfish  and  trad 
ing'^oliticians. 

In  contemplating  scenes  of  liuman  dissension  and  strife,  it  is  difficult,  or 
rather  it  is  impossible,  for  an  observer,  partaking  the  infirmities  of  human 

*  nature,  to  escape  entirely  the  contagion  of  those  passions  which  the  contro- 
versies arose  from  or  engendered.     Thus  partiaHties  are  secretly  insinuated 

.  into  the  mind  ;  and,  in  balancing  opposite  testimony,  they  find  a  subtle  and 
,  90  much  the  surer  means  of  exerting  their  influence.  I  am  not  desirous  of 
i.  concealing  that  I  regard  America  with  sentiments  of  ardent,  perhaps  partial, 

'  "  No  people  can  be  liound  to  acknowledge  and  adore  the  invhtible  hand  which  conducts 
J.  the  afTuirt)  ofmen  more  than  the  people  of  the  United  States.  Every  step  bv  which  they  have 
.'  kdvanccd  to  the  character  of  an  independent  nation  seems  to  have  been  nistingiiished  by  some 
"token  of  providential  agency."    Washincton's  Speech  to  Concrem,  30t1i  April,  17B0. 

'"Truth  is  the  eye  (»  History."    Polybius.    No  writer,  ancient  or  modern,  has  so  well  ex- 
plained and  inculcated  the  main  duties  ofa  historian  as  Polybius;  and  few,  if  any,  have  better 
^exemplified  them.    He  is  one  of  the  rare  exceptions  to  Dr.  Johnaon'R  maxim,  that  EteryhUto- 

*  riait  aueorers  Ms  enuntry. 

*  Horace  Walpole's  Works.    A  curious  illustration  of  historical  inafccurncy  was.  related  by 
.the  latn  President  Jefferson  to  an  intolligont  English  Iravellor     "Phe  Abb6  Raynal,  in  hia  His- 

*  ttrjf  nf  the  British  Settlements  in  America,  has  recounted  a  remarkable  atory  which  implies  the 
existence  of  a  particular  law  in  New  England.  Some  Americans,  being  in  company  whit  the 
Abb4  at  Purls,  questioned  the  truth  of  the  story,  alleging  that  no  such  law  had  ever  existed  in 


r^  New  England.  'J 
|1ry;  Dr.  Franklin, ' 
Jliid,  "  I  can  accni 


mtf. 


The  Abb6  maintained  tho  authenticity  of  his  History,  till  he  was  intcmiplod 

who  was  present,  and,  af\er  listening  for  aoMo  time  in  silence  to  the  dispute, 

:an  account  lor  all  this:  you  took  the  anecdote  from  a  ncJwspaper,  of  which  1  Was  at 

Hall »  Travtls  in  Canada  and  the  Unittd  States. 


PREFACE. 


IMMf 


I  of  other  days, 
le  will  cliurish  a 
b  tho  canon  of 
er  the  years  of 
rs  will  dispense 
n  reviving  piety 

id  that  in  which, 
juisite,  of  which 
In  tracing  as- 
rce,  or  forward 
ler  hand,  a  per- 
long  which  it  is 
lant  or  peculiar 
of  events.  In- 
mfusion  ;  while 
lorians  often  re- 
;in  and  lineage .: 
ufallibly  authen- 
ig  narratives  of 
for  substantial 
and  yet  I  have 
orical  records, 
t  Walpole's  as- 
,  this  apothegm 
vhich  Walpole 
I  (especially  in 
ies)  isj  indeed, 
lets,  the  secret 
elfish  and  trad 

t  is  difUcult,  or 
nitles  of  human 
ich  the  cootro- 
retly  insinuated 
id  a  subtle  and 
not  desirous  of 
>erhaps  partial, 

id  wbioh  conducts 
f  which  they  have 
nxiiished  by  iomo 
pril,  17B0. 
rn,  ham  so  «rdl  ex- 
ifpny,  have  hotter 
I,  that  Etery  histo- 

icy  wa»  related  by 
laynal,  in  hiii  Hit- 
which  implies  tho 
company  with  the 
nd  over  existed  in 
le  was  interrupted 
ICC  to  the  dlqtote, 
nf  which  I  was  at 


■a 
1 


I 


ifTection  ;  and,  in  surveying  various  scenes  in  her  history,  I  d«r!ve  a  warm, 
unreproved  pleasure  from  the  conviction,  that,  in  dignity,  wisdom,  and  worth, 
they  transcend  the  hijjhest  conce{)iion  suggested  by  the  annals  of  any  other 
people  in  ancient  or  in  modern  times.  If  my  consciousness  of  the  exist- 
ence of  feelings  somewhat  partial  should  not  exempt  my  judgment  from  their 
influence,  I  hope  the  avowal,  at  least,  will  prevent  the  error  from  extending 
to  my  readers. 

I  am  far  from  thinking,  or  from  purposing  to  assert  or  insinuate,  that  every 
part  of  the  conduct  of  the  American  States,  throughout  tho  various  contro- 
versies in  which  they  have  been  involved,  was  pure  and  blameless.  Guile, 
evil  passion,  violence,  and  injustice  have  in  some  instances  dishonored  tli« 
councils  and  transactions  of  the  leaders  and  assemblios  of  America ;  and  it 
was  the  conduct  of  one  of  the  States,  the  most  renowned  for  piety  and  vir- 
tue, that  suggested  to  her  historian  the  melancholy  observation,  that,  "  in  all 
ages  and  countries,  communities  of  men  have  done  that,  of  which  most  of  th  J 
individuals  of  whom  they  consisted  would,  acting  separately,  have  been 
ashamed."  »  But  mingled  masses  are  justly  denominated  from  the  elements 
and  qualities  that  preponderate  in  their  composition  ;  and  sages  and  patriots 
must  be  regarded  as  the  mere  creations  of  fancy,  if  we  can  never  recognize 
the  lineaments  of  worth  and  wisdom  under  the  vesture  of  human  imperfection. 
There  exists  in  some  romantic,  sjieculative  minds  a  Platonic  love  of  liberty, 
as  well  as  virtue,  that  consists  with  a  fastidious  disgust  for  every  visible  and 
actual  incarnation  of  either  of  these  principles  ;  and  which,  when  not  cor- 
rected by  sense  and  experience,  conducts  to  ingenious  error  or  to  seemingfy 
generous  misanthropy. 

Whoever,  with  attention  minute  and  impartial,  examines  the  histories  of 
individuals  or  communities,  should  prepare  himself  to  be  disappointed  and 
perplexed  by  numberless  imperfections  and  inconsistencies,  which,  wisely 
pondered,  confirm  the  Scriptural  testimony  of  the  inherent  frailty  of  human 
nature  and  the  reflected  lustre  of  human  virtue.  Much  error  is  produced 
and  prolonged  in  the  world  by  unwillingness  or  inability  to  make  candid  con- 
cessions or  to  admit  charitable  interpretations,  —  to  acknowledge  in  an  ad- 
versary the  excellence  that  condemns  our  undiscriminating  hate,  —  in  a  friend 
or  hero,  the  defects  that  sully  the  pleasing  image  of  virtue,  that  diminish  our 
exultation,  and  rebuke  the  excesses  of  inordinate  confidence.  There  is  not 
a  more  conrimon  nor  more  unhappy  mistake  than  that  which  confounds  the 
impulse  of  sincerity  with  the  virtue  of  candor.  Widi  partial  views,  sincerely 
embraced,  but  not  candidly  appreciated,  we  encounter  the  opposite  partialities 
of  antagonists  ;  and,  by  mutual  commission  and  perception  of  injustice,  con- 
firm, augment,  and  reciprocate  each  other's  misapprehensions.  It  should  be 
the  principal  object  of  every  man,  who  undertakes  the  office  of  a  historian, 
to  correct,  as  far  as  he  may,  the  errors  by  which  experience  is  thus  render- 
ed useless  ;  and  this  object  I  have  purposed  and  endeavoured  to  keep  steadi- 
y  in  view. 

li'EpERONNII^RE,   NEAR   NaNTES, 

September,  1835. 

'  Hutchinson's  History  ofMassachusettsT^rUjr^h^rvation  referred  immediately  to  tho  di»- 
pute  between  Massachusetts  and  the  confederated  States  of  New  England  in  1649 ;  but  the  gen- 
eral  proposition  winch  it  involves  is  one  which  Hutchinson  (himself  an  ambitious  and  disap 
pointed  antaRonist  of  popular  assemblies)  snatches,  throughout  his  work,  every  occasion  to 
propound  and  illustrate.  '' 

VOL.    I.  3  p* 


ZXXVI 


PREFACE. 


P.  S.  The  variations  which  distinguish  the  second  from  the  first  edition 
of  this  work  consist  of  the  retrenchment  of  superfluities  in  some  quarters, 
the  introduction  of  additional  facts  and  remarks  in  others,  and  numerous 
emendations  of  the  style,  —  the  result  of  a  severe  revision,  in  which  I  have 
been  aided  by  the  taste  and  sagacity  of  some  accomplished  friends,  and  espe- 
cially of  my  father-in-law,  the  Rev.  John  Wilson,  President  of  the  Protes- 
tant Consistory  of  Nantes  and  La  Vendee.  To  the  kindness  of  those  dis- 
tinguished American  writers,  Robert  V/alsh  and  Josiah  Quincy  (whose 
friendship  has  been  one  of  the  most  agreeable  fruits  of  my  labors),  I  owe 
my  recent  access  to  some  valuable  literary  materials  and  my  acquaintance 
with  some  curious  historic  details. 

It  may  be  proper  to  observe  (which  I  omitted  to  do  in  the  preface  to  the 
former  edition) ,  that,  in  the  course  of  tliis  historical  digest,  I  have  frequently 
illustrated  particular  portions  of  my  narrative  by  citation  of  various  authorities 
not  one  of  which  accords  entirely  either  with  the  statements  of  the  others  or 
with  my  own.  To  explain,  in  every  such  instance,  how  I  have  been  led, 
from  comparison  of  conflicting  authorities,  to  the  view  that  I  have  considerate- 
ly embraced,  would  encumber  evefy  chapter  of  my  work  with  a  long  series 
of  subsidiary  disquisitions.  Much  of  the  labor  of  an  honest  historian  must 
either  be  painfully  shared  by  his  readers,  or  remain  wholly  unknown  to 
them. 

5  Placz  db  Launay,  NAnxES, 
June,  1842. 


5/,  i 


CONTENTS 


OF 


THE    FIRST    VOLUME 


BOOK   I. 


PLANTATION  AND  PROGRESS  OF  VIRGINIA,  TILL  THE  BRITISH  REV 

OLUTION,  IN  1688. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Cabot  despatched  by  Henry  the  Seventh  —  visits  the  Coast  of  North  America.  —  Ntglect 
of  Cabot  s  Discovery  by  Henry  —  and  by  iiis  immediate  Successors.  —  Reign  of  Eliza- 
beth—favorable to  maritime  Adventure.  —  Rise  of  the  Slave-trade.  —  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  —  projects  a  Colony  in  North  America  —  first  Expedition  fails.  —  Elizabeth 
names  the  Country  Virginia.  —  Grenvillo  despatched  by  Raleigh  —  establishes  a  Colony 
at  Roanoke.  —  Misfortunes  of  the  Colonists  —  their  Return.  -  Use  of  Tobacco  introduc- 
ed into  England.  —  Farther  Ellbrts  of  Raleigh  —  terminate  unsuccessfully.  —  Accession 
of  James  to  the  English  Crown.  —  Gosnold's  Voyage  —  its  Effects.  —  James  divides 
North  Ainericii  bc.twton  two  Companies.  —  Tenor  of  their  Charters.  —  Royal  Code  of 
»  ^^^rT.!  *'"'  ^"^y  of  Colonists  embarked  by  the  London  Company  —  arrive  in  the 
Bay  of  Chesapeake—  found  Jamestown. —  Dissensions  of  the  Colonists.  — Hostility  of 
the  Indians.  —  Distress  and  Disorder  of  the  Colony.  —  Services  of  Captain  Smith  —  he 
IS  taken  Prisoner  by  the  Indians  —  his  Liberation  —  ho  preserves  the  Colony.  —  The 
Colonists  deceived  by  Appearances  of  Gold.—  Smith  surveys  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake 
—  elected  President  of  the  Colony.—  New  Charter.  —  Lord  Delaware  appointed  Gov- 
ernor.—Newport,  Gates,  and  Somers  sent  to  preside  till  Lord  Delaware's  Arrival — 
are  wrecked  on  the  Coast  of  Bermudas.  —  Captain  Smith  returns  to  England.      . 


25 


CHAPTER  II. 

The  C-jlony  a  Prey  to  Anarchy  —  and  Famine.  —  Gates  and  Somers  arrive  from  Bermudas. 

—  Abandonment  of  the  Colony  dotorinincd  upon  —  prevented  by  the  Arrival  of  Lord 
Delaware.  —  His  wise  Administration  —  liis  Rolurn  to  England.  —  Sir  Thomas  Dale's 
Administration.  —  Martial  Law  established.  —  Indian  Chief's  Daughter  seized  by  Argal 

—  married  to  Rolfe.  —  Right  of  private  Property  in  Land  introduced  into  the  Colony.— 
Lxpcdition  of  Argal  against  Port  Royal  and  New  York.  —  Tobacco  cultivated  by  the 
Colonists.  —  I  list  Assembly  of  Representative's  convened  in  Virginia.—  New  Consti- 
tution of  the  Colony.  —  Introduction  of  Negro  Slavery.  —  Migration  of  young  Women 
Irom  England  to  Virginia.  — Dispute  between  the  King  and  the  Colony.  — Conspiracy 
of  the  Indians,  —  Ma.ssacre  of  the  Colonists.  —Dissensions  of  the  London  Company.  — 
1  he  Company  dissolved.  — The  King  assumes  the  Government  of  the  Colony— his 
Death.  — Charles  the  First  pnrsiips  his  Fathers  arbitrary  Policy.  —  Tyrannical  Govern- 
ment of  Sir  John  Harvey.  — Sir  William  Berkeley  appointed  Governor.  —  The  nrovin- 
cial^  Liberties  restored.  —  Virginia  espouses  tlio  royal  Cause  — subdued  by  the  Long 

"|!:i'""^."[.  —  '*estf:tinls  'itipt.scd  on  the  Trade  of  the  Colony.  —  IlevoU  of  the  Coioiiy 

—  Sir  William  Berkeley  resumes  the  Government.  —  Restoration  of  Charles  the  Second. 


I 


59 


XXXVIU 


CONTENTS. 


l^       i' 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Navigation  Act —  its  Impolicy.  —  Discontent  and  Distress  of  the  Colonists.  —  Natu 
ralization  of  Aliens. —  Progress  of  the  provincial  Discontent.  —  Indian  Hostilities. — 
Bacon's  Rebellion.  —  Death   o    Bacon  —  and   Restoration  of  Tranquillity. —  Bill  of 
Attainder  passed  by  the  colonial  Assembly. — Sir  William  Berkeley  superseded  by  Colo 
nel  Jefl'reys.  —  Tartiality  of  the  now  Governor  —  Dispute  with  the  Assembly.  —  Ro 
newal  of  Discontents.  —  Lord  Culpepper  appointed  Governor  —  Severity  and  Rapacity 
of  his  Administration.  —  An  Insurrection  —  Punishment  of  the  Insurgents.  —  Arbitra- 
ry Measures  of  the  Crown.  —  Jaraes  the  Second  —  augments  the  Burdens  of  the  Colo- 
nists.—  Corrupt  and   oppressive  Government  of  Lord   Eflinghain.  —  Revolution   in 
Britain.  —  Complaints  oitho  Colonies  against  the  former  Governors  discouraged  by  King 
William.  —  Eflect  of  the  English  Revolution  on  the  American  Colonics.  —  State  of  Vir 
ginia  at  this  Period  —  Population  —  Laws  —  Manners 90 


BOOK    II. 

FOUNDATION   AND    PROGRESS    OF    THE   NEW    ENGLAND    STATES,  TILL 

THE  YEAR  1698. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Attempts  of  the  Plymouth  Company  to  colonize  the  northern  Coasts  of  America.  —  Popham 
establishes  a  Colony  at  Fort  Saint  George.  —  SntFeriiigs  and  Return  of  the  Colonists.  — 
Cantain  Smith's  Voyage  and  Survey  of  the  Country  —  which  is  named  New  England. 

—  His  ineffectual  Attempt  to  conduct  a  Colony  thitlier.  —  The  Company  relinquish  the 
Design  of  colonizing  New  England.  —  History  and  Character  of  the  Puritans.  —  Rise  of 
the  Brownists  or  .Independents.  —  A  Congregation  of  Independents  retire  to  Holland 

—  they  resolve  to  settle  in  America —  their  Negotiation  with  Iting  James  —  they  Arrive 
in  Massachusetts  — and  found  New  Plymouth.  —  Hardships  —  and  Virtue  of  the  Colo- 
nists. —  Their  civil  Institutions.  —  Community  of  Property.  —  Increase  of  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  Tyranny  in  England. —  Project  of  a  new  Colony  in  Massachusetts. — 
Salem  built.  —  Charter  of  Massachusetts  Bay  obtained  from  Charles  tlie  First  by  an 
Association  of  Puritans.  —  Embarkation  of  the  Emigrants  —  Arrival  at  Salem.  —  Their 

ecclesiastical  Institutions.  —  Two  Persons  banished  from  tho  Colony  for  Schism. 

Intolerance  of  some  of  the  Puritans .  I5il 


I         ! 


*m 


CHAPTER  II. 

The  Charter  Government  transferred  from  England  to  Massachusetts.  —  Numerous  Emi- 
gration.—  Foundation  of  Boston. —  Hardships  endured  by  the  new  Settlers.  —  Dis- 
franchisement of  Dissenters  in  the  Colony.  —  Influence  of  the  provincial  Clergy. 

John  Cotton  and  his  Colleagues  and  Succes-sors.  —  Williams's  Schism  —  he  founds  Prov- 
i(?"ni;o.  — Representative  Assembly  established  in  Ma.'isachiisetts.  — Arrival  of  Hugh 
Peters  —  and  Henry  Vane,  who  is'olccted  Governor. —  Foundation  of  Connecticut  — 
and  New  Haven.  —  War  with  the  P.quod  Indians.  —  Severities  exercised  by  the  vic- 
torious Colonists. —  Disturbances  created  by  Mrs.  Hutchinson.  —  Colonization  of  Rhode 
Inland  —  andofNew  Hampshire  and  Maine.  — Jealousy  and  fluctuating  Conduct  of  tho 
'^.'If  •  —  Measures  adopted  against  the  Liberties  of  Massachusetts  —  interrupted  by  the 
Civil  Wars.  —  State  of  New  England  —  Population  —  Laws  —  Manners. 

CHAPTER  III. 

Now  England  embraces  the  Cause  of  the  Parliament.  —  Federal  Union  between  tho  Now 
England  States.  —  Provincial  Coinage  of  Money.  —  Disputes  occasiimcd  by  the  Dis- 
franchisement of  DisHcnters  in  Massaciiusetts.  —  liiipenclinicnt  and  Trial  of'^Cfovernor 
Winthrop.  —  Arbitrary  Proceedings  against  the  Dis-^entcrs.  —  Attempts  to  convert  and 
civilize  the  Indians.  —  Character  and  Labors  of  Flint  and  .Maj  hew.  —  Indian  Bible 
printed  in  Massiichiisetts.  —  Etie<tH  of  the  missionary  Labor.  —  A  Synod  of  tlie  Now 
England  Churches.  —  Dispute  between  MahsacliUHitts  and  the  Long  Parliament.  —  The 
Colony  foils  the  Parliament  —  and  i»  ]  vored  bv  Cromwell.  —  Tim  Proiortnr's  Adinin- 
isiration  benelicial  to  New  England.  —  He  conquers  Acadia.  —  His  Propositions  to  the 


161 


CONTENTS. 


XXXIX 


lists.  —  Natu 
Hostilities. — 
tv.  — Bill  of 
iJod  by  Colo 
inbly.  —  Ro 
and  Rapacity 
8.  —  Arbitra- 
of  the  Colo- 
ovolution    in 
aged  by  King 
•  State  of  Vir 


90 


STATES,   TILL 


».  —  Popham 

Colonists.  — 
ew  England, 
elinrjuish  the 
IS.  —  Ri.se  of 
e  to  Holland 
-  they  arrive 

of  the  Colo- 
of  civil  and 
achusetts.  — 

First  by  an 
cm.  —  Their 
r  Schism.  — 

.  1^1 


nerous  Emi- 
tters. —  Dis- 
il  Clergy. — 
founds  Vrov- 
va\  of  Hugh 
mnccticut  — 
1  by  the  vie- 
on  of  Rhode 
induct  of  tho 
jpted  by  the 
.        .         .  161 


en  tho  Now 
by  the  Dis- 
:)(*  (lovcrnor 
ronvcrt  and 
ndiiiii  Rihlo 
')f  the  Now 
lent.  —  The 
i>r'H  Admin- 
itions  to  the 


Inhabitants  of  Maasachuselts  —  declined  by  them.  — Persecution  of  the  Anabaptists  in 
Massachusetts.  —  Conduct  and  Sufferings  of  tlie  Quakers.  —  The  Restoration.  —  Ad- 
dress of  Massachusetts  to  Charles  the  Second.  —  Alarm  of  the  Colonists  —  their  Decla- 
ration of  Rights.  —  The  King's  Message  to  Massachusetts—  how  far  complied  with.  — 
Royal  Charter  of  Incorporation  to  Rhode  Island  and  Providence  —  and  to  Connecticut 
and  New  Haven. ^  jgj 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Emigration  of  ejected  Ministers  to  New  England.  —  Royal  Commissioners  sent  thither 

Petition  of  the  Assembly  of  Massachusetts  to  the  King  —  rejected.  —  Policy  pursued  by 
the  Commissioners.— 1  heir  Disputes  with  the  Government  of  Massachusetts  —  and 
Return  to  England.  —  Policy  of  the  Colonists  to  conciliate  the  King  —  Effects  of  it.  — 
Cessior.  of  Acadia  to  the  French.  —  Prosperous  State  of  New  England.  —  Conspiracy  of 
the  Indians.  —  Philip  s  War.  —  The  King  resumes  his  Designs  against  Massachusetts. 
—  Controversy  respecting  tho  Right  to  Maine  and  New  Hampshire.  —  Progress  of  the 
Dispute  between  the  King  and  the  Colony.  —  State  of  Parties  in  Mateachusetts.  —  State 
of  Religion  and  Morals  in  New  England.  —  Surrender  of  tho  Charter  of  Massachusetto 
demanded  b^  the  King  — refused  by  the  Colonists.  —  Writ  of  Quo  Warranto  issued 
against  the  Colony.  —  Firmness  of  the  People.  —  Their  Charter  adjudged  to  be  forfeited.  287 

CHAPTER  V. 

Designs—  and  Death  of  Charles  the  Second.  —  Government  of  Massachusetts  under  a 
temporary  Commission  from  James  the  Second.  —  Andros  appointed  Governor  of  New 
tngland.  —  Submission  of  Rhode  Island.  —  Effort  to  preserve  the  Charter  of  ConnectjL- 
f"'"  — ,VPP''<'ssive  Government  of  Andros.  —  Colonial  Policy  of  the  King.  —  Sir  Wil- 
ham  Phips.  —  Indian  Hostilities  renewed  by  the  Intrigues  of  the  French.  —  Insurrection 
at  boston.  — Andros  deposed— and  the  ancient  Government  restored.  —  Connecticut 
and  Rhode  Island  resume  their  Charters— William  and  Mary  proclaimed.  — War  with 
the  1-  rench  and  Indians.  — Sir  William  Phips  conquers  Acadia.— Ineffectual  Expedition 
against  Quebec.  —  Impeachment  of  Andros  by  the  Colony  discouraged  by  the  English 
Ministers  — and  dismissed.  — Tho  King  refuses  to  restore  the  ancient  Constitution  of 
Massachusetts. -Tenor  of  the  new  Charter.— Sir  William  Phips  Governor.  —  The 
New  England  Witchcraft.  -  Death  of  Phips.  —  War  with  the  French  and  Indians.  — 
Loss  of  Acadia.  —  Peace  of  Rygwick.  —  Moral  and  Political  State  of  New  England.     .  8S5 


BOOK    III. 

PLANTATION   AND   PROGRESS   OF   MARYLAND,  TILL  THK  CLOSB  OF 
THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY. 

ChartOT  of  Maryland  obtained  from  Charles  the  First  by  Lord  Baltimore.  —  Condition  of 
the  Roman  Catholics  in  England.- Emigration  of  Roman  Catholics  to  the  Province.— 
Friendly  Treaty  with  the  Indians.  —  Generosity  of  Lord  Baltimore— Opposition  and 
Intrigues  of  Cla^yborne.  —  First  Assembly  of  Maryland.— Representative  Governmenl 
established.  —  Early  Introduction  of  Negro  Slavery.  — An  Indian  War.  — Clayborne's 
Rebellion.  — Religious  Toleration  established  in  the  Colony.  —  Separate  Establishment 
ot  tlie  House  of  Burgesses.  —Clayborne  declares  for  Cromwell  —  and  usurps  the  Ad- 
ministration. —  Toleration  abolished.  —  Distractions  of  the  Colony  —  terminated  by  the 
Restoration.- Establishment  of  a  provincial  Mint.  —  Happy  State  of  the  Colony. — 
Naturalization  Acts.  —  Death  of  the  first  Proprietary.  -Wise  Government  of  his  Son 
and  Successor.  — Law  against  importing  Felons.— Establisliment  of  the  Church  of 
fcngland  suggested.  — Dismemberment  of  the  Delaware  Territory  from  Maryland.— 
Arbitrary  Projects  of  James  the  Second.  —  Rumor  of  a  Popish  Plot.  —  A  Protestant  As- 
sociation is  formed  — and  usurps  the  Administration.  — The  Proprietary  Government 
•usponded  by  King  William.  —  Establishment  of  tho  Church  of  Englqad,  aod  PeraeoM- 
tion  of  the  CathorMa.-Suto  of  t}ie  Province  — MaoDers-Uw*.  .       .       .  301 


xl 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK    IV. 

PLANTATION   AND  PROGRESS  OF   NORTH  AND  SOUTH  CAROLINA,  TILL 
THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Early  Attempts  of  the  Spaniards  an  the  French  to  colonize  this  Territory. First  Char- 
ter of  Carolina  granted  by  Charles  the  Second  to  Lord  Clarendon  and  others.  —  Forma- 
tion of  Albemarle  Settlement  in  North  Carolina.  —  Settlement  of  Ashley  River  in  South 
Carolina.  —  Second  Charter  of  the  whole  united  Province.  —  Proceedings  at  Albemarle 
—  The  Proprietaries  enact  the  Fundamental  Constitutionsof  Carolina.  — Expedition  of 
Emigrants  to  South  Carolina.  —  John  Locke  created  a  Landgrave.  —  Hostilities  with  the 
Spaniards  in  Florida  — and  with  the  Indians.  — Disgusts  between  the  Proprietaries  and 
the  Colonists.  — AfTaiVs  of  North  Carolina.—  Culpepper's  Insurrection.  — He  is  tried  in 
England  —  and  acquitted.  —  Discord  among  the  Colonists.  —  Sothel's  tyrannical  Admin- 
istration. —  He  ia  deposed 340 

CHAPTER  II. 

Affairs  of  South  Carolina.  — Indian  War.  —  Practice  of  kidnapping  Ir  dians.  —  Emigrations 
from  Ireland  —  Scotland  —  and  England.  —  Pirates  entertained  in  the  Colony.  —  Emigra- 
tion of  French  Protestants  to  Carolina.  —  Disputes  created  by  the  Navigation  Laws — 
Progress  of  Discontent  in  the  Colony.  —  Sothel  usurps  the  Gfovernment.  —  Endeavours 
of  the  Proprietaries  to  restore  Order.  —  Naturalization  of  French  Refugees  lesistcd  by 
the  Colonists.—  The  Fundamental  Constitutions  abolished.  —  Wise  Administration  of 
Archdale.  — Restoration  of  general  Tranquillity.—  Ecclesiastical  Condition  of  the  Prov- 
ince.  —  Intolerant  Measures  of  the  Proprietaries.  —  State  of  the  People  —  Manners  — 
Trade,  &c ggn 


f'Vl 


£  » 


BOOK    V. 

•    FOUNDATION  AND  PROGRESS  OF  NEW  YORK,  TILL  THE  BEGINNING 
OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

CHAPTER   I. 

Hudson's  Voyage  of  Discovery  —First  Settlement  of  the  Dutch  at  Albany.— Tho  ProT- 
ince  granted  by  tho  States  General  to  the  West  India  Company  of  Holland.— The 
Dutch  Cojonists  extend  their  Settlements  into  Connecticut.  —  Disputes  with  tho  New 
fcngland  colonics. —  Delaware  first  colonized  by  tho  Swedes.— War  between  the 
Dutch  and  Indians.  — Further  Disputes  with  New  England.  —  Designs  of  Charles  tho 
Second.- Alarm  and  Exertions  of  the  Dutch  Governor. —  The Province  granted  by 


recaptures  it 
Arbitrary  Gov- 
The  Duke  consents  to  give  Nevr 


Charter  to  the  Duke  of  York  —  invaded  by  an  English  Fleet  —  surrenders.  —  Wisi 

i'*'  'J,"'®"'  of  Colonel  Nichols.  —  Holland  cedes  New  York  to  England  — 
—  finally  cedes  it  again.  —  New  Charter  granted  to  the  Diike  of  York 
ernment  of  Andros.  —  Discontent  of  the  Colonists 
York  a  free  Constitution 

CHAPTER  II. 

^'S"^'  -9°"?,""'*  Administration.  -  Account  of  the  Five  Indian  Nations  of  Canada.  — 
Their  Hostility  to  the  French.  -  Missionary  Labors  of  the  French  Jesuits.  -  James  tho 
Becond  abolishes  the  Liberties  of  New  York  -  commands  Dcngan  to  abandon  tho  Five 
ilj  T^i."  '^« '^'■p""''-  -Andros  again  appointed  Governor.  —  War  between  tho  French 
and  tho  Five  Nations.  -  Discontents  at  New  York.  -  Leislcr  declares  for  King  William, 
and  assumes  the  Government.  -  The  French  attack  the  Province,  and  burn  Schenec- 
tady. ~  Arrival  of  Governor  Sloiighter.  —  Perplexity  of  Leisler  -  his  Trial  -  and  Ex- 
Bcution.— Wars  and  mutual  Cruelties  of  the  French  and  Indians.  —  Governor  Fletch- 

FnMTr„'""'™"""-7.''T''r"*"  '^>:''.^''''<-l''r'"y  at  New   York. -Captain   Kidd. 
-  Factions  occasioned  by  the  Fate  of  L-  isler.  -  Trial  of  Ua  vard.  -  Corrunt  and  onnr«.. 

te^oth  c"'"ti^"'''"**"  "^^""^  Curnbury.-  State  of  the  Colony  at  the  Close'of  the  lioven- 


387 


4X7 


■1 


CONTENTS. 


Xli 


mnera  — 


GINNING 


nnnrng. 


BOOK    VI. 

PLANTATION  AND  PROGRESS    OF  NEW  JERSEY,  TILL  THE   BEGINNING 
OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Sale  of  the  Territory  by  the  Duke  of  York  to  Berkeley  and  Carteret.  -  Liberal  Frame  of 
Coverninent  enacted  by  tiie  Proprietaries.- Emigration  from  Long  Island  to  New  Jer- 
."^liaT  •"'^!'  r  *'«''"•«' Governor  and  Settlers  from  England. -Discontent  and  Dis- 
,M  nr?h  n'!^''^°v^  r^«"°^"^'°"  °/j''«'fi"«s  to  Now  Jersey.- Equivocal  Con- 
iltfJll  P  **  ^?''^r  ?'t"""°n.?f » 'p  Quakers  in  England.  -  Sale  of  Berkeley'* 
S]  a  e  of  the  Provmce  to  Quakers.  -Partition  of  the  Province  between  them  and  Car- 

nl;7f  Vn  f  h"  ^?''"'  'rT  ^i'JS'?''  '"  ^^''  •'*''««y-  -  Encroachments  of  the 
Duke  of  York—  Remonstrance  of  the  Quakers -causes  the  Independence  of  New  Jer- 

J?K  I  Tr\'-y,''  T  '•"•«»  Assc.nblv  of  West  Jersey. -The  Quakers  purchase  East 
tZl'  ~  nl;  ""/^'^y-  opPO'nteJ  Covernor.-  Emigration  from  Scotland  to  East 
oH  h^tl.7i7  f  f-  ■'"'T"  ^'".^''•=°"**  "g"'"«»  l''e  Proprietary  Governments- defeat- 
ed by  the  Revo  uuon.-lncfficicnt  State  of  the  Proprietary  Government.  -  Surrender 
ot  the  provincial  Patent  to  the  Crown  -  and  Reunic.  of  East  and  West  Jersey.  -  Con- 
the"colon  Provincial  Government.  — Administration  of  Lord  Cornbury.  -  State  of 

■•••..  ..  461 

BOOK    VII. 

PLANTATION  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  AND  DELAWARE 
TILL  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY. 

CHAPTER    I. 

"'ni!  "?''  ^'"'™<'t«'  of  William  Pcnn.-He  solicits  a  Grant  of  American  Territory  from 
Charles  the  Second.  -  Charter  of  Pennsylvania.  -  Object  and  Meaning  of  tho7lauX 
peculiar  to  this  Charter. -Engish  and  American  Oprnions  thereon,  i  PennlS 
o  peoDle  his  Territories.  -  Emigration  of  Quakers  to  the  Province.  -  Letter  from  Penn 
to  the  Indians.  -Pcnn's  first  Frame  of  Government  for  the  Province.  -  Grant  o"  DeZ 


499 


ware  by  the  Duke  of  Vork  t^  P^.r^- wirsX'ii;  AmeWcrrsi;yVu?"^^^ 
there.  -  Numerous  Emigrations  to  the  Province.  -  First  legislative  A^emb  v  -  iW 
jylvan.a  and  Delaware  united.  -  Controversy  with  Lord  Baltimore. -Sy  with  Z 
eZfT'!i~^^'"'"^  Assembly -new  Frame  of  Government  adopted. -pKkdelphia 
founded.  -  Ponn's  Return  to  England  -  and  Farewell  to  hia  People.        '^[""'"^'P'"* 

CHAPTER  II. 

''Tit  n"'*"'"  tho  Court  of  James  the  Second. -Dissensions  amon^  ^m  Colonists - 
the.  Disagreement  with  Penn  about  his  Quitrents.-  He  appoinU  filr.  Commissionem 
of  State.  -Rumor  of  an  Indian  Conspiracy.  -  Penn  dissatisfied  with  his  Commission- 
ers-  appoints  Blackwell  Deputy-Governor.  -  Arbitrary  Conduct  of  Blackwell.  -  Dk- 
pleasure  of  the  Assembly.  -  Dissension  between  the  Peopleof  Delaware  and  PennVyl- 
vama.  -Delaware  obtains  a  separate  executive  Government.  -  George  Keith's  SchiL 
in  Pennsylvania.  -  Peiin  deprived  of  his  Authoritv  by  King  William.  -  Fletcher  a^ 

Cer  aZZ'hT  w""  '  "^."."'"V'^  restored. -J  T^ird  frame  of  Govemmen  .fl 
Quaker  Accession  to  War.  — Ponn's  second  Visit  to  his  Colony.  -  Sentiments  and 
Conduct  of  the  Quakers  relative  to  Negro  Slavery.  -Renewal  of  the  Disp"  teTbeTween 
Delaware  and  Pennsylvania.-  Fourth  and  last  F?ame  of  Government.  -Penn  tZZ 
to  England. -Union  of  Pe,.nsylvnnia  and  Delaware  dissolved.  -  Complaints  of  hS 
SXn  ^  TnT  ,^«»"-;Mi«'=°nd»ct  of  Governor  Evans. -He  i,  s^pTseded  K 
.  .1  V^r  r".  *  *i«"non8tranco  to  his  People.- State  of  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware 
at  the  Close  ofthc  seventeenth  Century.        ...      "J["""|"  ""°  ^'^'^w"*  ^.^^ 


APPENDIX    I. 

Htato  and  Prosnocfs  of  the  North  American  Provinces  at  the  Cloae  of  the  seventeenth 

Jl.?!"^ •.  ~?n '"^".r  "•  "^  ^P'"'"""  "''   *'"'  <^^°'°"''"»  respccUng  the  Sovereignty  and 
~ '  "•  "•'"•  ""Win,  »*e 

NOTES     


551 


Cabot 
Cab( 

—  fi 
proj( 

—  F 

Engl 

Bod^ 

—  fd 
and 
Indii 
pear 
Colo 
8om 
mud 

It 

pher  < 
ever  < 
sail  fi 
Octol 
vador 
forth 

'  Dr 
the  wc 
but  of  I 
tea,  Bo 
some  t 
The  pi 


Thw 
op  Am 
that  it 


n, 


ity  thai 

vol 


THE 


HISTORY 


OF 


NORTH    AMERICA. 


BOOK    I. 

VIRGINIA. 

CHAPTER    I. 

Cabot  despatched  by  Henry  the  Seventh  —  visits  the  Coast  of  North  America.  —  Neglect  of 
Cabot's  Discovery  by  Henry  —  and  by  his  immediate  Successors.  —  Reign  of  EUzabeth 

—  favorable  to  Maritime  Adventure.  —  Rise  of  the  Slave-trade.  —  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  — 
projects  a  Colony  in  North  America  — first  Expedition  fails.  — Elizabeth  names  the  Couo<> 
try  Virginia.  —  Grenville  despatched  by  Raleigh  —  establishes  a  Colony  at  Roanoke.  — 
Misfortunes  of  the  Coloniste  —  their  Return.  —  Use  of  Tobacco  introduced  into  England 

—  Farther  Efforts  of  Raleigh  —  terminate  unsuccessiully.  —  Accession  of  James  to  the 
English  Crown.  —  Gosnold's  Voyage  —  its  Effects.  —  James  divides  North  America  be» 
tween  two  Companies.  —  Tenor  of  their  Charters.  —  Royal  Code  of  Laws.  —  The  first 
Body  of  Colonists  embarked  by  the  London  Company  —  arrive  in  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake 

—  found  Jamestown.  —  Dissensions  of  the  Colonists.  —  Hostility  of  tho  Indians.  —  DiBtrew 
and  Disorder  of  the  Colony.  —  Services  of  Captain  Smith  —  he  is  taken  Prisoner  by  the 
Indians  — his  Liberation  —  he  preserves  the  Colony.— The  Colonists  deceived  by  Aj>- 
pearancee  of  Gold.  —  Smith  surveys  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake  —  elected  President  of  tfi» 
Colony.— New  Charter.  —  Lord  Delaware  appointed  Cfovernor.  —  Newport.  Gates,  and 
Somers  sent  to  preside  till  Lord  Delaware's  Arrival  —  are  wrecked  on  tne  Coast  of  Ber- 
mudas. —  Captain  Smith  returns  to  England. 

It  was  on  the  third  of  August,  1492,  a  little  before  sunrise,  that  Christo- 
pher Colunibus,  undertaking  the  grandest  enterprise  that  human  genius  has 
ever  conceived,  or  human  talent  and  fortitude  have  ever  accomplished,  set 
sail  from  Spain  for  the  discovery  of  the  western  world.  On  the  13th  of 
October,  about  two  hours  before  midnight,  a  hght  in  the  island  of  San  Sal- 
vador was  descried  b/  Columbus  from  the  deck  of  his  vessel,  and  America 
for  the  first  time  beheld  by  European  eyes.'     Of  the  wide  train  of  impor- 

'  Dr.  Robertson  espoused  the  opinion,  that  the  ancients  had  no  notion  of  the  exietence  of 
tbe  western  world,  and  has  collected  from  ancient  writers  many  proofs,  not  only  of  ignorance, 
but  of  most  barbarous  error,  respectii.g  the  extent  and  dimensions  of  the  earth.  Hist.  ofJimer- 
wa,  Book  I.  Yet  a  Roman  writer,  to  whose  sentiments  he  has  not  adverted,  is  supposed  by 
some  to  have  prophesied  the  discovery  of  America,  1400  years  before  this  •vent  took  place 
The  passage  occun  in  one  of  Seneca's  tragedies. 

"  Venient  annis 
Secula  scris,  quibus  oceanus 
Vincula  rerum  laxet,  et  ingens 
Pateat  tellus,  Tiphysque  novos 
Petegat  orbes ;  nee  sit  terris 
_,..  ,     Ultima  Thulc."  Jlf^rfea,  Act  H.  Chorus. 

X  nw  passage  attracted  a  good  deal  of  comment  from  the  early  Spanish  and  Flemish  writen 
op  America.  Acp»t»  opposed  the  common  notion  of  its  bein^  n  prophecy,  and  maintained 
Uiat  It  was  (as  matt  prpbably  it  was)  a  mere  conjecture  of  the  poet.  A'alurnl  and  Morml 
Uiftnryqf  (he  #ndi«»,.B._  I.  Certain  passages  in  Virgil's  JRneid,  in  Lucan's  PhnrsaJia,  and 
^I*"L''"'  j*^  ""f''"  "'  °""  "'°"  writers,  have  been  equally  uiled,  with  tnure  eeai  and  insenu- 
ity  than  discreUou  and  jtmsmt,  as  containing  allusions  to  America.  S«e,  on  thia  Mibject,  thai 
VOL     I  4  C 


I 


26 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


tant  consequences  that  depended  on  this  spectacle,  perhaps  not  even  the 
penetrating  and  comprehensive  mind  of  Columbus  was  adequately  sensiMe ; 
but  to  the  end  of  time,  the  heart  of  every  human  being  who  reads  the  story 
will  confess  the  interest  of  that  eventful  moment,  and  partake  ihc  feelings 
of  the  illustrious  man.     On  the  following  day,  the  Spanish  adventurers, 
preceded  by  their  commander,  took  possession  of  the  soil ;  the  external 
emblems  of  Christianity  were  planted  on  the  shores  of  the  western  hemi- 
sphere;  and  a  connection,  pregnant  with  a  vast  and  various  progeny  of  good 
and  evil,  was  established  between  Europe  and  America.     By  one  of  those 
accide.its  to  which  the  solidest  titles  to  human  fame  are  exposed,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  new  world  was  defrauded  of  the  honor  of  blending  his  own 
name  with  the  great  fruit  of  his  noble  adventure  ;  which  has  derived  its 
now  unalterable  denomination  from  the  bold  imposture  by  which  an  earlier 
writer,  though  much  later  visitor  of  the  region,  Amerigo  Vespucci,  of  Flor- 
ence, contrived  for  a  while  to  persuade  mankind  that  he  was  the  first  Euro- 
pean to  whom  America  had  revealed  her  existence.* 

The  intelligence  of  the  successful  voyage  of  Columbus  was  received  in 
Europe  with  the  utmost  surprise  and  admiration.  In  England,  more  espe- 
cially, it  was  calculated  to  produce  a  strong  impression,  and  to  awaken  at 
once  emulation  and  regret.  While  Columbus  was  proposing  his  schemes 
with  little  prospect  of  success  at  the  court  of  Spain,  he  had  despatched  his 
brother  Bartholomew  to  the  court  of  Henry  the  Seventh  in  England,  there 
to  solicit  patronage  and  tender  the  fruits  of  discovery.  Bartholomew  was 
taken  prisoner  by  pirates,  and  after  a  long  detention  was  reduced  to  such 
poverty,  that,  on  his  arrival  in  London,  he  was  compelled  by  the  labor  of 
his  hands  to  procure  the  means  of  arraying  himself  in  habiliments  becoming 
his  interview  with  a  monarch.  His  propositions  were  favorably  entertained 
by  Henry ;  but  before  a  definitive  arrangement  was  concluded,  Bartholomew 
was  recalled  by  the  intelligence,  that  his  brother's  plans  had  at  length  been 
sanctioned  and  espoused  by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  of  Spain. 

If  the  warefu)  and  penurious  disposition  of  Henry  contributed  to  diminish 
his  regrets  for  the  abandonment  of  a  hazardous  and  expensive  undertaking 
the  astonishing  success  which  attended  its  actual  prosecution  by  other'^  re- 
vived the  former  projects  of  his  mind,  and  inspired  a  degree  of  enterprise 
that  showed  him  both  instructed  and  provoked  by  the  better  fortune  of  the 
bpanish  crown.8     In  this  temper  he  hearkened  with  satisfaction  to  the  pro- 
posals of  one  Gabato  or  Cabot,  a  Venetian,  residing  in  Bristol ;  who,  Irom 
retlection  on  the  discoveries  of  Columbus  towards  the  southwest,  had  con- 
ceived the  opinion,  that  lands  might  likewise  be  discovered  towards  the 
northwest,  and  now  offered  to  the  king  to  conduct  an  expedition  in  this 
direction.     Henry,  prompted  by  his  avarice  and  stung  with  envy  and  dis- 
appointment, readily  closed  with  this  proposal,  and  not  only  bestowed  on 
Its  author  a  commission  of  discovery,  but,  on  two  subsequent  occasions, 
issued  similar  commissions  to  other  individuals  for  exploring  and  appropri- 
atingjhe^  territorial  resources  of  unknown  portions  of  the  globe.^ 

htrlUjTJnJt  .''''""™'''«;f.P"'"'<>n  «/ thiB  injustice,  at  the  period  when  Amcricn  nchicved 
UnitnH  <^^^    .7       "'"  •;•"»''''«''•"«"»  "fthe  independence  nnd  the  fedcnil  ronntitution  of  tha 

JeSTthttvIro?  AinS;f  ^^     '''""'"*'"  is  .ho  grandest  poetical  tribute  ever  ran 
»  Baeoa '■  Uislory  of  Henry  tju'seventk.  »  BwoB. 


[BOOK  I. 

lot  even  the 
oly  sensil'le ; 
ids  the  story 
'  ihe  feehngs 
adventurers, 
the  external 
?stern  henii- 
;eny  of  good 
one  of  those 
ed,  the  dis- 
!ing  his  own 
derived  its 
;h  an  earHer 
ci,  of  Flor- 
3  first  Euro- 
received  in 
more  espe- 
0  awaken  a( 
lis  schemes 
patched  his 
^land,  there 
)lomew  was 
led  to  such 
he  labor  of 
:s  becoming 
entertained 
irtholomew 
length  been 

to  diminish 
ndertaking, 
r  Others  re- 
enterprise 
tune  of  the 
to  the  pro- 
who,  from 
,  had  con- 
)wards  the 
ion  in  tliis 
y  and  dis- 
stowed  on 
occasions, 
appropri- 

9n  of  Jahn'f 

•icn  npliicved 
tution  of  the 

jtc  over  ren 


CHAP.  I.] 


CABOT'S  DISCOVERIES. 


S7 


M 


!     ) 

F  1 


The  commission  to  Cab(  i,  the  only  one  which  was  productive  of  inter- 
esting consequences,  was  granted  on  the  5th  of  March,  1495,  (about  two 
years  after  the  return  of  Columbus  from  America,)  and  empowered  that 
adventurer  and  his  sons  to  sail  under  the  flag  of  England  in  quest  of  coun- 
tries yet  unappropriated  by  Christian  sovereigns  ;  to  take  possession  of  them 
m  the  nanie  of  Henry,  and  plant  the  English  banner  on  the  walls  of  their 
castles  and  cities,  and  to  maintain  with  the  inhabitants  a  traflic  exclusive  of 
all  competitors  and  exempted  from  customs  ;  under  the  condition  of  paying 
a  tilth  part  of  the  free  profit  of  every  voyage  to  the  crown. ^  About  two 
years  alter  tlie  date  of  his  commission,  Cabot,  with  his  second  son,  Sebastian, 
embarked  at  Bristol  ,n  a  ship  provided  by  the  king,  and  attended  by  four 
small  vessels  equipped  by  the  merchants  of  that  city.  Sebastian  Cabot 
appears  to  have  greatly  excelled  his  father  in  genius  and  nautical  science  ; 
and  It  IS  to  him  alone  that  historians  have  ascribed  all  the  discoveries  with 
which  the  name  of  Cabot  is  associated. 

The  navigators  of  that  age  were  as  much  influenced  by  the  opinions  as 
incited  by  the  example  of  Columbus,  who  erroneously  supposed  that  the 
islands  he' discovered  in  his  first  voyage  were  outskirts  or  dependencies  of 
India,  not  lar  remote  from  the  Indian  continent.     Impressed  with  the  same 
notion,  Sebastian  Cabot  conceived  the  hope,  that,  by  steering  to  the  north- 
west, he  might  fulfil  the  design  and  improve  the  performance  of  Columbus 
and  reach  India  by  a  shorter  course  than  the  great  navigator  himself  had 
attenipted.     Accordingly  pursuing  that  track,  he  discovered  die  islands  of 
Newfoundland  and  St.  John  ;  and,  continuing  to  hold  a  westerly  course, 
soon  reached  the  continent  of  North  America,  and  sailed  along  it  from  the 
confines  of  Labrador  to  the  coast  of  Virginia.     Thus,  conducted  by  Cabot, 
whose  own  lights  were  derived  from  the  genius  of  Columbus,  did  the  Eng- 
lish achieve  the  honor  of  being  the  second  European  nation  that  visited  the 
western  world,  and  the  first  that  discovered  the  vast  continent  that  stretches 
Irom  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  towards  the  North  Pole  :  for  it  was  not  till  the 
succeeding  year  [1498]  that  Columbus,  in  his  second  voyage,  was  enabled 
to  complete  his  own  discovery,  and  advance  beyond  the  islands  he  had  first 
visited  to  the  continent  of  America. 

Cabot,  disappointed  in  his  main  object  of  findh.g  a  western  passage  to 
India,  returned  to  England  to  relate  the  discoveries  he  had  already  accom- 
plished, —  without  attempting,  either  by  settlement  or  conquest,  to  gain  a 
footing  on  the  American  continent.^*  He  would  willingly  have  resumed  his 
exploratory  enterprise  in  the  service  of  England,  but  he  found  that  in  his 
absence  the  king's  ardor  for  territorial  discovery  had  greatly  abated.  Seated 
on  a  throne  which  he  acquired  by  conquest,  in  a  country  exhausted  by  civil 
wars,  —  involved  in  hostilities  with  Scotland,  —  and  harassed  by  tlie  insur- 
rections of  his  subjects  and  the  machinations  of  pretenders  to  his  crown,  — 
Henry  had  little  leisure  for  the  execution  of  distant  projects  ;  and  his  sordid 
disposition  found  small  attraction  in  the  prospect  of  a  colonial  settlement 
which  was  not  likely  to  be  productive  of  immediate  pecuniary  gain.  He 
was  engaged,  likewise,  at  this  time,  in  negotiating  the  marriage  of  his  son 
with  the  daughter  of  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  —  a  transaction  that  supplied  ad- 
ditional reasons  for  relinquishing  designs  which  could  not  fail  to  give  umbrage 

to  this  jealous  prince,  who  claimed  the  whole  continent  of  America  in  virtue 

• »»  » I    .     — *  -  — - — ' — — ^ 

naKiiiyi. 


•ta    ■  "7*-   .Chaimers'B  Jinmah  »/  the  United  Colonies.     Hazard  s  Historical 
l?!i\',u""Z''}f.  "/.'■'»'•«'«■'•'■''.  JV'w  England,  and  tht  Smtt  M^. 


(JoUectiow^ 


28 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  ) 


of  a  donative  from  the  pope.  Nor  were  the  subjects  of  Henry  in  a  con- 
dition to  avail  tliempelves  of  the  ample  field  tlirown  open  by  Cabot's  discov- 
erv  to  their  enterprise  and  activity.  The  civil  wars  had  dissipated  wealth, 
repressed  commerce,  and  even  excluded  tlie  English  people  from  partaking 
the  general  improvement  of  tlie  otlier  nations  of  Europe  ;  and  all  the  benefit, 
which  for  the  present  they  derived  from  the  voyage  of  Cabot,  was  lliat  right 
of  territorial  property  which  is  supposed  to  arise  Irom  priority  of  discovery, 
—  an  acquisition,  which,  from  the  extent  of  the  region,  the  mildness  of  its 
climate,  and  the  fertility  of  its  soil,  afforded  an  inviting  prospect  of  advan- 
tageous colonization.  But  by  the  counteracting  circumstances  to  which  we 
liave  already  adverted,  was  England  prevented  from  occupying  this  impor- 
tant field,  till  tlie  moral  and  religious  advancement  which  her  people  were 
soon  to  attain  should  qualify  her  to  become  the  parent  of  civihty  and  popu- 
lation in  North  America.  Cabot,  finding  that  Henry  had  abandoned  all 
colonial  projects,  soon  after  transferred  his  own  services  to  the  Spaniards  ; 
and  the  English  seemed  contented  to  surrender  tlieir  discoveries  and  the 
discoverer  to  the  superior  fortune  of  that  successful  people.  The  only  im- 
mediate fruit  of  his  enterprise  is  said  to  have  been  the  importation  from 
America  of  the  first  turkeys  •  that  were  ever  seen  in  Europe. 

It  is  remarkable,  that,  of  these  earliest  expeditions  to  the  western  world 
by  Spain  and  England,  not  one  was  either  projected  or  conducted  by  a  citi- 
zen of  the  state  which  supplied  the  subordinate  adventurers,  defrayed  the 
expense  of  the  equipment,  and  reaped  the  benefit  of  the  enterprise.  The 
honor  of  the  achievement  was  thus  more  widely  distributed.  The  Spanish 
adventurers  were  conducted  by  Columbus,  a  native  of  Genoa  ;  the  English, 
by  John  Cabot,  a  citizen  of  Venice  ;**  and  though  Sebastian  Cabot,  whose 
superior  genius  assumed  the  direction  of  the  enterprise,  was  bom  in  Eng- 
land, it  was  by  the  experience  and  instructions  of  his  fatlier  that  his  ca- 
pacity was  trained  to  naval  affairs,  and  it  was  to  the  father  that  the  projeor 
tion  of  the  voyage  was  due,  and  the  chief  command  of  it  intrusted.  Happily 
for  the  honor  of  the  English  people,  the  parallel  extends  no  farther ;  and  thfi 
treatment  which  the  two  discoverers  experienced  from  the  nations  that  en)r 
ployed  them  differed  as  widely  as  the  histories  of  the  two  empires  whicja 
they  respectively  contributed  to  found.  Columbus  was  loaded  with  chains 
in  the  region  which  he  had  the  glory  of  discovering,  and  died,  the  victim  pf 
ingratitude  and  disappointment,  among  the  people  whom  he  had  condiict^ 
to  wealth  and  renown.  Cabot,  after  spending  some  years  in  the  service  of 
Spain,  also  experienced  her  ingratitude  ;  and  returning  in  his  old  age  to 
England,  obtained  a  kind  and  honorable  reception  from  tlie  nation  wlilo^ 
had  as  yet  derived  only  barren  hopes  and  a  seemingly  rehnquished  litis 
from  his  expedition.  He  received  the  dignity  of  knighthood,  the  appoint- 
ment of  Grand  Pilot  of  England,  nnd  a  pension  that  enabled  liim  to  &pea4 
his  declining  years  in  circumstances  of  honor  and  comfort.^ 

From  Uiis  period  till  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  no  fixed  views  were  enter- 
tained nor  any  deliberate  purpose  evinced  in  England  of  occupying  territory 
fft  establishing  colonies  in  America.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the  reign  0| 
Henry  the  Eighth,  the  attention  and  energy  of  the  English  govcrniuont  were 

'  Why  tbu  4>trd  received  tlie  name  it  cnjova  in  England  line  never  been  aatiffiMttiriJy 
nploined.  Bjr  the  French  it  was  cnllnd  eoq  ifhde,  on  account  of  its  American  pngunUj 
Ani«rica  bfUnK,W«n  i^enernlly  termed  Western  India. 

Italian,  John  Verazzan,  a  native  of  Florence. 
*  Smith. 


"i 


t^nntjtt^ttkA^   im   litrA  tnnnnmr. 


-7  ■ 


CHAP.  I.] 


NEGLECT  OF  CABOT'S  DISCOVERIES. 


ary  in  a  con- 
bot's  discov- 
tated  wealth, 
3111  partaking 
il  the  benefit, 
vas  tliat  right 
)f  discovery, 
ildness  of  its 
ct  of  advan- 
to  which  we 
g  this  impor- 
people  were 
ty  and  popu- 
bandoned  all 
J  Spaniards  ; 
ries  and  the 
rhe  only  ii»- 
>rtotion  from 

estern  world 
ted  by  a  citi- 
defrayed  the 
•prise.  The 
The  Spanish 
the  Enghsh, 
/abot,  whose 
bom  in  Kng- 
that  his  car 
t  the  projecr 
:ed.  Happily 
her ;  and  tb|B 
ions  that  eii)r 
upires  whtcti 
i  with  chains 
he  victim  pf 

id  conduct,(^ 
16  service  of 
s  old  age  U^ 
nation  wliic^ 
quished  titLs 
the  appoint* 
um  to  &pefi4 

were  enter- 

yring  territory 

the  reign  ,o? 

Tnmont  were 

an  satiyfimtirily 
jricim  ,origioiJi 

tnaffUMT.   hm  an 

: 7  -y  — 


29 


sbsorbed  by  wars  and  intrigues  on  the  continent  of  Europe  ;  and  the  inno- 
vations in  religious  doctrine  and  ecclesiastical  constitution,  that  attended  its 
cJose,  supplied  ample  employment  at  home  for  the  minds  of  the  king  and  of 
the  great  bulk  of  the  people.    It  was  during  this  reign  that  (after  many  pre- 
lusive gleams  supphed  during  successive  ages  by  that  small  Christian  com- 
munity which  never  admitted  the  sway  nor  adopted  the  errors  of  the  church 
of  Rome  •)   the  full  hgln  of  the  Reformation  broke  forth  in  Germany, 
whence  it   was   rapidly  diffused   on  all  sides  over  the  rest  of  Europe! 
Henry,  at  first,  resolutely  opposed  himself  to  the  adversaries  of  the  church 
of  Rome,  and  even  attempted  by  his  pen  to  stem  the  progress  of  the  inno- 
iTZ'T^f  service  which  the  pope  rewarded  by  conferring  on  him  the 
title  of  Defender  of  the  Faith.     But  his  subsequent  controversy  with  the 
papal  see  awakened  and  sanctioned  a  spirit  of  inquiry  among  his  own  sub- 
jects, which  spread  far  beyond  his  expectations  and  desiresfand  eluded  all 
his  attempts  to  control  and  restrain  it.     A  discussion  of  the  pretensions  of 
the  church  of  Rome  naturally  begot  inquiry  into  her  doctrines;  for  her 
grand  pretension  to  infallibility  formed  the  only  authority  to  which  many  of 
these  doctrines  were  indebted  for  their  currency.     This  pretension,  indeed, 
was  so  c  osely  interwoven  with  the  whole  fabric  of  her  canons  and  institu- 
tions, that  even  a  partial  dissent  from  any  one  of  them  attacked  a  principle 
that  pervaded  them  all.     In  a  system  so  overgrown  with  abuses,  the  spirit 
of  inquiry,  wherever  ,t  gained  admission,  could  not  fail  to  detect  error  ;  and 

^?^"ArL"P^  '"'*'• ''^  "f  u"''^  detection,  by  shaking  the  fundamental  tenet 
of  infalhbiluy,  arraigned  the  solidity  of  the  whole  structure.     This  danger 
which  could  not  have  been  entirely  evaded,  was  aggravated  by  the  alarm 
with  which  It  inspired  the  Roman  pontiffs,  and  thetprudenceVf  the  de 
fensive  pohcy  which  they  adopted.     Utterly  proscribing  Uie  spirit  of  inquiry 

hnl':!''  '"""^^  ^"^,7  rr^t  '/"  '"PP^"^'''  '^^y  °"'>^  "'flamed  its  vigor  and 
Kn  ^'f  th  Tf  "'"*  ^'  Reformers  to  extend  their  views  from  an  emen- 
dation  of  the  actual  state  of  the  church  of  Rome  to  an  unqualified  impugna- 
tion  of  her  authority  and  revolt  from  her  communion.  ^  ^ 

,nl.^n^^T^''  °^  this  growing  spirit  of  inquiry  operated  with  strong  and 
salutary  influence  on  the  character  and  fortune  of  the  nations  in  which  it 

fi!Jl  t  •  ^  '  -T^^n  '■^*'°""*  investigation  had  at  length  been  found, 
that  could  interest  the  dullest  and  engross  the  most  vigorous  capacities  ;  the 
contagion  of  fervent  zeal  and  bold  excursive  thought  was  wkly  propa- 
gated  ;  and  every  people  by  which  the  reformed  doctrines  were  embraced 
was  elevated  m  force  and  dignity  of  intellectual  character.  Introduced  into 
Ji^ngland  by  the  power  of  a  haughty,  capricious,  and  barbarous  tyrant,  whose 
otnect  was,  not  the  emancipation  of  his  subjects,  but  the  deliverance  of  him- 
self from  an  authority  which  he  wrested  from  the  pope  only  to  wield  with 
his  own  hands, --some  time  elapsed  before  these  doctrines  worked  their 
way  mto  the  minds  of^  the  people,  and,  expelling  the  corruptions  and  adul- 
terations of  the  royal  teacher,  attained  a  full  maturity  of  reasonable  influ- 
ence. Besides  leavening  the  national  creed  with  the  spirit  of  the  ancient 
siiperstition,  Henry  encumbered  the  national  worship  with  many  of  the 
Komish  institutions  ;  retaining  whatever  was  calculated  to  prove  a  useful 
auxiliary  to  royal  prerogative,  or  to  gratify  the  pomp  and  pride  of  his  own  • 
sensual  imagination  In  the  composition  of  the  ecclesiastical  body,  he  pre- 
1 — ' ^r„i,_nj  ,  ana  m  tnc  suicmnnies  of  worship,  tiie  gor 

'  Bogfg  History  of  the  Moravian  Church.  ~  ' 


30 


HISTORY  or  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


geous  ceremonial  of  the  church  of  Home.  But  he  found  it  easier  to  promul- 
gate ecclesiastical  ordinances,  than  to  confine  tlie  strean>  of  human  opinion, 
or  stay  the  heavenly  shower  by  which  it  was  gradually  reinforced  and  en- 
larged ;  and  in  an  after  age,  the  repugnan('e  that  manifested  itself  between 
the  constitution  of  the  English  church  and  the  reUgious  sentiments  of  the 
English  people  produced  consequences  of  very  great  importance  in  the 
history  of  England,  and  the  origination  of  civilized  society  in  North 
America. 

The  ruptqre  between  Henry  the  Eighth  and  the  Roman  see  removed 
whatever  obstacle  the  papal  donative  to  Spain  might  have  opposed  to  the 
appropriation  of  American  territory  by  the  English  crown  ;  but  of  the  two 
immediate  successors  of  that  monarch,  the  one  neglected  this  advantage,  and 
the  other  renounced  it.     During  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Sixth,  the  court 
of  the  royal  minor  was  distracted  by  faction,  or  occupied  with  the  conduct 
and  the  vicissitudes  of  a  war  with  Scotland  ;  and  the  attention  of  the  king, 
and  of  a  great  portion  of  his  people,  was  engrossed  by  the  care  of  extend- 
ing and  confirming  the  establishment  of  the  Protestant  doctrines.    Introduced 
by  Henry  and  patronized  by  Edward,  these  doctrines  multiplied  their  con- 
verts with  a  facility  that  savored  somewhat  of  the  influence  of  human  au- 
thority and  the  suggestions  of  secular  interest  ;  till,  under  the  direction  of 
Providence,  the  same  temporal  power  that  had  been  employed  to  promote 
the  introduction  of  truth  was  permitted  to  attempt  its  extinction.    The  royal 
authority,  which  Henry  had  blindly  made  subservient  to  the  spread  and 
recognition  of  the  Protestant  doctrines,  was  now  employed  by  Mary,  with 
equal  blindness,  as  an  instrument  to  sift  and  purify  the  collective  mass  of 
Protestant  professors,  to  separate  the  genuine  from  the  spurious  portions 
of  it,  and  to  enable  the  sound  and  sincere  believers,  by  a  wonderful  display 
of  fortitude,  faithfulness,  and  patience,  to  illustrate  the  perfection  of  Chris- 
tian character  in  unison  with  the  purity  of  Christian  faith.     This  princess, 
restoring  the  connection  between  England  and  the  church  of  Rome,  and 
united  in  marriage  to  Philip  of  Spain,  was  bound  by  double  ties  to  refrain 
from  contesthig  the  Spanish  claims  on  America.     It  ws?  not  till  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth,  that  the  obstacles  created  by  the  pretensi.ms  of  Spain  were 
finally  removed  ;  and  then,  indeed,  tlie  prospect  of  collision  with  the  de- 
signs of  this   state,  so  far  from   appearing   objection9ble,  presented  the 
strongest  attraction  to  tlie  minds  of  the  English. 

But  although,  during  this  long  period,  the  occupation  of  America  was 
entirely  neglected,  the  naval  resources  adapted  to  the  formation  and  main- 
tenance of  colonies  were  diligently  cultivated  in  England,  and  a  vigorous 
impulse  was  communicated  to  the  spirit  of  commercial  enterprise.  Under 
the  directions  of  Cabot,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  the  English  mer- 
chants visited  the  coast  of  Brazil,  and  traded  with  the  colonial  settlements 
of  the  Portuguese.  In  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Sixth,  tlie  fisheries  on  the 
Banks  of  Newfoundland,  which  had  been  previously  established,  were  ex- 
tended and  encouraged  ;  and  an  association  of  adventurers  for  the  discovery 
of  new  countries  was  incorporated  by  royal  charter.  Even  Mary  contributed 
to  promote  this  direction  of  the  national  disposition  and  faculties  :  she 
founded  the  Corporation  of  Merchants  trading  to  Russia,  and  studied  to 
augment  the  security  of  their  traffic  by  cultivating  a  friendly  relation  with 
sovereign  of  that  country.  During  her  reign,  an  attempt  highly  cred- 
.e  to  i^ngiiSn  enterprise  anu  energy,  and  noi  wholly  unsuccessful)  wa 


the 

itoKI 


vus 


CHAP.  I.] 


SPANISH  CONaUESTS  IN  AMERICA. 


•  to  promul- 
lan  opinion, 
e.d  and  en- 
ilf  between 
lents  of  the 
ance  in  the 
'   in   North 

;e  removed 
ased  to  the 

of  the  two 
antuge,  and 
1,  the  court 
:he  conduct 
)f  the  king, 

of  extend- 
Introduced 

I  their  eon- 
huniun  au- 
hrcction  of 
to  promote 

The  royal 
spread  and 
Mary,  with 
^e  mass  of 
js  portions 
rful  display 
J  of  Chris- 
s  princess, 
lome,  and 
s  to  refrain 

II  the  reign 
5pain  were 
ith  the  de- 
sented  the 

nerica  was 
and  main- 
a  vigorous 
3.  Under 
iglish  mer- 
iettlements 
■ies  on  the 
,  were  ex- 
discovery 
contributed 
kies  :  she 
studied  to 
ation  with 
ghlv  cred- 
;55iul,  was 


3] 


made  to  reach  India  by  land ; »  and  a  commercial  intercourse  was  estab- 
lished with  the  coast  of  Africa.    Many  symptoms  conspired  to  indicate  with 
what  adventurous  vigor  and  persevering  ardor  the  Kngjish  might  be  expected 
to  improve  every  opportunity  of  exerting  and  enlarging  their  resources,  and 
how  high  a  rank  they  were  destined  to  hold  in  the  scale  of  nations,  when  the 
force  o|  their  genius  should  be  thoroughly  developed  by  the  progress  of  their 
recent  improvement,  and  when  the  principles  and  policy  of  their  government 
shoud  more  perfectly  coincide  with  the  temper  and  character  of  the  people. 
Ihe  Spaniards,  meanwhile,  had  spread  their  settlements  over  the  southern 
regions  of  the  new  world  and  achieved  an  extent  of  conquest  and  accession 
of  treasure  that  dazzled  the  e^es  and  awakened  the  emulation  of  all  Europe 
Men  of  active  and  enterprising  disposition  in  Spain,  curbed  and  restricted 
at  home  by  the  illiberal  genius  of  their  municipal  government,  eagerly  rushed 
into  tiie  outlet  of  grand  adventure  presented  to  them  on  the  vast  theatre  of 
Mexico  and  Peru,     rhe  paganism  of  the  natives  of  these  regions  allured  the 
invasion  of  bigots  wedded  to  a  faith  that  recognized  compulsion  as  an  in- 
strument of  conversion  ;  and  their  wealth  and  effeminacy  not  less  powerfully 
tempted  the  cupidity  and  ambition  of  men  in  whom  pride  inflamed  the  thiri 
ol  riches,  while  it  inspired  contempt  of  useful  industry.     Thus  every  pros- 
pect that  could  address  itself  prevailingly  to  human  desires,  or  to  the  peculi- 
arities of  Spanish  taste  and  character,  contributed  to  promote  that  seri.-s 
of  rapid  and  vigorous  invasions  by  which  the  Spaniards  overran  so  large  a 
portion  of  the  continent  of  South  America.     The  real  and  lasting  effect  of 
their  acquisitions  has  corresponded,  in  a  manner  very  satisfactory  to  the 
moral  eye,  with  the  character  and  merit  of  the  achievements  by  which  thoy 
were  earned.     The  history  of  the  expeditions  which  terminated  in  the  con- 
quest of  Mexico  and  Peru  displays,  perhaps,  more  strikingly  than  any  oth^r 
portion  of  the  records  of  the  human  race,  what  amazing  exertions  the  spirit 
ol  man  can  prompt  him  to  attempt,  and  sustain  him  to  endure,  —  how  sig- 
nally he  IS  capable  of  misdirecting  the  energy  with  which  his  Creator  has 
endowed  him,  and  of  disgracing  the  most  admirable  capacities  of  his  nature, 
by  rendering  them  instrumental   to  sordid,   unjust,  and  barbarous  ends. 
Iteligion,  the  grand  corrective  of  human  evil,  error,  and  woe,  shared  this 
tatal  perversion  ;  and  the  crosses,  which,  as  emblems  of  Christianity,  suc- 
cessively announced  the  advent  of  this  faith  to  each  newly  discovered  re- 
gion, proved  far  other  than  the  harbingers  of  glory  to  God  or  good-will  to 
men.     1  he  deliberate  pride,  and  stern,  unsparing  cruelty  of  the  Spanish  ad- 
venturers, their  arrogant  disregard  of  the  rights  of  human  nature,  and  calm 
survey  of  the  desolation  of  empires  and  destruction  of  happiness  and  life,  are 
rendered  the  more  striking  and  impressive  by  the  humility  of  their  own  oriz- 
inal  circumstances,  which  seemed  practically  to  level  and  unite  them  by 
habit  and  sympathy  with  the  mass  of  mankind.     Their  conquests  were  ac- 
complished with  such  rapidity,  and  followed  with  such  barbarous  oppres- 
sion, that  a  very  few  years  sufficed  not  only  to  subjugate  but  almost  vvholly 
to  extirpate  the  slothful  and  effeminate  idolaters  who  were  fated  to  perish  by 
their  hands.     Yet  tlie  fate  of  these  victims  of  Spanish  cruelty  was  not  tin- 
avenged.    To  their  conquerors,  and  through  them  to  all  Europe,  they  com- 
^       municated  the  most  loathsome  and  horrible  disease  that  has  ever  afflicted  and 
corrupted  the  human  frame.    The  settlements  that  were  founded  in  the  con- 
quered  countries  produced,  from  the  nature  of  the  soil,  a  vast  influx  of  gold 

'  Hakluyt.  ~ 


32 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


'  and  silver  into  Spain,  and  finally  exercised  a  pernicious  influence  on  the  lib- 
erty, industry,  and  prosperity  of  her  people.  But  it  was  long  before  the  bit- 
ter harvest  of  i'lis  golden  shower  was  reaped ;  and  in  an  age  so  darkly  blind 
to  the  liberal  truths  of  pohtical  science,  it  could  not  be  foreseen  through  the 
dazzling  pomp  and  renown  with  which  the  acquisition  of  so  much  empire 
and  the  administraUon  of  so  much  treasure  invested  the  Spanish  monarchy. 
The  exploits  of  the  original  adventurers,  embellished  by  the  romantic  genius 
of  Spain,  and  softened  by  national  partiality,  had  now  occupied  the  pens  of 
Spanish  historians,  and  excited  a  thirst  for  kindred  enterprise  and  hopes 
of  similar  enrichment  in  every  nation  to  which  the  tidings  were  conveyed. 
The  study  of  the  Spanish  language,  and  the  acquaintance  with  Spanish  litera- 
ture, which  the  marriage  of  Philip  and  Mary  introduced  into  England,  con- 
tributed to  cherish  this  impulse  in  the  minds  of  the  English,  and  gave  to  the 
rising  spirit  of  adventure  among  them  a  strong  determination  towards  the 
continent  of  America. 

The  reign  of  Eli-iabeth  was  productive  of  the  first  attempts  of  the  English 
people  to  establish  a  permanent  settlement  in  America.  But  many  causes 
conspired  to  enfeeble  their  exertions  for  this  purpose,  and  to  retard  the  ac- 
complishment of  so  great  a  design.  The  civil  government  of  Elizabeth,  in 
the  commencement  of  her  reign,  was  acceptable  to  her  subjects  ;  and  her 
commercial  policy,  though  frequently  perverted  by  the  interests  of  arbitrary 
power  and  the  principles  of  a  narrow  and  erroneous  system,  was  in  the  main, 
perhaps,  not  less  laudably  designed  than  judiciously  directed  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  their  resources  and  the  enlargement  of  their  prosperity.  By  permit- 
ting a  free  exportation  of  corn,  she  promoted  at  once  the  agriculture  and  the 
commerce  of  England  ;  and  by  treaties  with  foreign  powers,  she  endeav- 
oured to  establish  commercial  relations  between  their  territories  and  her  own.* 
Sensible  how  much  the  dignity  and  security  of  her  crown  and  the  welfare  of 
her  people  depended  on  a  naval  force,  she  studiously  encouraged  navigation  ; 
and  so  greatly  increased  the  shipping  of  the  kingdom,  both  by  building  large 
vessels  herself,  and  by  promoting  ship-buildbg  amon;^;  the  merchants,  that 
she  was  styled  by  her  suWects  the  Restorer  of  Naval  Glory  and  the  Queen 
of  the  Northern  Seas.**  Rigidly  just  in  discharging  the  ancient  debts  of  the 
crown,  as  well  as  in  fulfilling  all  her  own  particular  engagements,  —  yet  for- 
bearing towards  her  people  in  the  imposition  of  taxes  ;  frugal  in  the  ex- 
penditure of  her  resources,  and  yet  exerting  a  firm  and  deliberate  persever- 
ance in  tho  prosecution  of  well  directed  projects  ;  the  policy  of  her  civil 
government  at  once  conveyed  good  lessons  to  her  subjects,  and  happily 
coincided  with  the  general  cast  and  bent  of  their  genius  and  disposition. 

Dnrint;  a  reign  thus  favorable  to  commercial  enterprise,  the  spirit  that  had 
been  gradually  pervading  the  steady  minds  of  the  English  was  called  forth 
into  active  and  vigorous  exertion.  Under  the  patronage  of  Dudley,  Earl 
of  Warwick,  and  conducted  by  Martin  Frobisher,  an  expedition  was  de- 

*  She  obtained  from  John  BasilidrH,  the  cznr  of  Muscovy,  a  patent  which  conferred  th« 
whole  trade  of  hia  dominions  on  the  English.  With  this  grant,  the  tyrant,  who  lived  in  con- 
tinual dread  of  a  revolt  of  his  subjectii,  purciiascd  from  Elizabeth  the  assurance  of  an  asylum 
from  tlieir  fury  in  England.  But  Ills  son  Theodore  revoked  il,  mid  answered  to  the  quoenV 
remonstrances,  that  ho  was  determined  to  rob  neither  his  own  subjects  nor  foreigners  by  sub- 
jecting to  monopolies  what  should  be  free  to  all  munUind.  Camden.  Ho  superior  was  ilie 
commercial  policy  which  natural  justice  taught  this  barbarian  to  the  Hystem  which  Elizabeth 
derived  from  her  boosted  learning  and  renowned  ability,  and  which,  in  the  progress  of  her 


r»!K- 


I I..J   tU 


eompaniea. 
*  Camden.    Strypo. 


*u-  £ 1 — 1  :_j.._._..  _r  I 1-  ...:ti.  „„• — »-    -« — .-^i — i;—    -«.!  ..-..1..-:..^ 

tiic  jstrtrtiuiii  auu  iiiuuBtlV  vt   ttvt  pwpit:  mtu   utttciitc,  uivDvpviiTTB,  arit*  r,-A.  tUe»iT^ 


[BOOK  I. 

ce  on  the  lib- 
»efore  the  bit- 
>  darkly  blind 
n  through  the 
much  empire 
sh  monarchy, 
naantic  genius 
i  the  pens  of 
le  and  hopes 
re  conveyed. 
Spanish  litera- 
Cngland,  con- 
d  gave  to  the 
towards  the 

)f  the  English 
many  causes 
retard  the  ac- 
Elizabeth,  in 
cts  ;  and  her 
s  of  arbitrary 
3  in  the  main, 

0  the  cultiva- 
By  permit- 

ilture  and  the 
,  she  endeav- 
and  her  own.^ 
lie  welfare  of 
d  navigation ; 
building  large 
irchants,  tliat 
id  the  Queen 
t  debts  of  the 
;s,  —  yet  for- 
;al  in  the  ex- 
ate  persever- 
'  of  her  civil 
and  happily 
iposition. 
pirit  that  had 

1  called  forth 
Dudley,  Earl 
tion  was  de- 

Ji  conferred  the 
lo  lived  in  con- 
^fi  of  nn  asylum 
I  to  the  queen's 
reigncrs  by  sub- 
uperior  was  tlio 
vhii:h  Eli/.iil>eth 
progress  of  h«^r 


CHAP.  I.] 


MARITLME  ADVENTURE  UNDER  ELIZABETH. 


S3 


5fit 


u  t:A»i 


UWt 


m     as 


spatched  for  the  discoviery  of  a  nortliwest  passage  to  India  [1578]  :  but  after 
exploring  the  coasts  of  Labrador  and  Greenland,  Frobisher  was  compelled 
to  return  with  the  tidings  of  disappointment.  If  the  ardor  of  the  English 
was  damped  by  this  failure,  it  was  speedily  reanimated  by  the  successful 
efibrt  of  Sir  Francis  Drake,  who,  with  a  feeble  squadron,  undertook  and 
accomplished  the  same  enterprise  that  for  sixty  years  had  formed  the  pecu- 
liar glory  of  the  Portuguese  navigator  Magellan,  and  obtained  for  England 
the  honor  of  being  the  second  nation  that  completely  circumnavigated  the 
globe.  A  general  enthusiasm  was  produced  by  this  splendid  achievement, 
and  a  passion  for  naval  exploits  laid  hold  of  almost  all  the  leading  spirits 
of  the  age. 

Yet  still,  no  project  of  effecting  a  permanent  settlement  abroad  had  been 
entertained  or  attempted  by  the  English.  The  social  happiness  enjoyed  by 
the  subjects  of  Ehzabeth  enhanced  those  attractions  that  bind  the  hearts  of 
men'  to  their  native  land,  and  that  are  rarely  surmounted  but  by  the  expe- 
rience of  intolerable  hardships  at  home,  or  the  prospect  of  sudden  enrich- 
ment abroad.  Now  the  territory  of  North  America  presented  none  of  the 
allurements  that  had  incited  and  rewarded  the  Spanish  adventurers  ;  it  en- 
couraged no  hopes  but  of  distant  gain,  and  invited  no  exertions  but  of  patient 
industry.  The  prevalence  of  the  Protestant  doctrines  in  England,  and  the 
increasing  influence  of  a  sense  of  religion  on  the  minds  of  the  people,  dis- 
inclined many  persons  to  abandon  the  only  country  where  the  Reformation 
appeared  to  be  securely  established  ;  engrossed  the  minds  of  others  with 
schemes  for  the  improvement  of  the  constitution  and  ritual  of  their  national 
church ;  and  probably  repressed  in  some  ardent  spirits  the  epidemical  thirst 
of  adventure,  and  reconciled  them  to  that  moderate  competency  which  the 
state  of  society  in  England  rendered  easily  attamable,  and  the  simplicity  of 
manners  preserved  from  contempt. 

But  if  the  immediate  influence  of  religious  principle  was  unfavorable  to 
projects  of  colonization,  it  was  to  the  further  development  of  that  noble 
principle  that  England  was  soon  to  be  indebted  for  the  most  remarkable  and 
interesting  colonial  establishment  that  she  has  ever  possessed.  The  ecclesi- 
astical policy  of  Elizabeth  was  far  from  giving  the  same  general  satisfaction 
that  her  civil  government  afforded  to  her  subjects.  Inheriting  the  arrogant 
temper,  the  lofty  pretensions,  and  the  taste  for  pompous  pageantry  by  which 
her  father  had  been  distinguished,  without  partaking  his  earnest  zeal  and  sin- 
cere bigotry,  she  frequently  blended  religious  considerations  with  her  state 
policy,  but  suffered  religious  sentiments  to  exert  little,  if  any,  influence  on 
her  heart.  Like  him,  she  wished  to  render  the  establishments  of  Chris- 
tian worship  subservient  to  the  indulgence  of  human  pomp  and  vanity,  and, 
by  a  splendid  hierarchy  and  gorgeous  ceremonial,  mediate  an  agreement  be- 
txyeen  the  loftiness  of  her  heart  and  the  humility  of  the  gospel.  But  the 
trials  and  afflictions  which  the  English  Protestants  underwent  from  Mary 
had  deepened  and  purified  the  religious  sentiments  of  a  great  body  of  this 
people,  and  at  the  same  time  associated  with  many  of  the  ceremonies  re- 
tained in  the  national  church  the  idea  of  popery  and  the  recollection  of 
persecution.  This  repugnance  between  the  sentiments  of  the  men  who  now 
began  to  be  termed  Puritans  and  the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  the  Englisli 
government  continued  to  increase  during  the  whole  of  Elizabeth's  reign  :  but 

QQ  tlm  infliionrp  \vliir>li    it  ovor'^iao*!   <->!•>  Atn  nr^\r^^'.^^t'.^-.   -,("     A !__    — , 

J-   ..._ s>  : ,,   ,,,,   ,,„     ,  ,ji^jniiuliun  ui    .iimciiCil   Hits    liul 

manifested  till  the  succeeding  reign,  the  further  account  of  it  must  be  de- 

VOL.    I.  5 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1 


llvi 


I  >»t>    J. 


ferred  till  we  come  to  trace  its  effects  in  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  settle- 
men's  in  New  England. 

During  tlie  present  reign,  there  was  introduced  into  England  a  branch  ol" 
that  inhuman  traffic  in  negro  slaves  which  afterwards  engrossed  so  large  a 
share  of  her  commercial  wealth  and  activity,  and  converted  a  numerous  body 
of  her  merchants  into  a  confederacy  of  robbers,  and  much  of  what  she  termed 
her  trade  into  a  system  of  the  basest  fraud  and  the  most  atrocious  rapine  and 
violence.     The  first  Englishman  who  exposed  himself  and  his  country  to 
this  foul  reproach  was  Sir  John  Hawkins,  who  subsequently  attained  a  high 
nautical  celebrity,  and  was  created  an  admiral  and  treasurer  of  the  British 
navy.     His  father,  an  expert  English  seaman,  having  made  several  voyages 
to  the  coast  of  Guinea  and  from  thence  to  Brazil  and  the  West  Indies,  had 
acquired  considerable  knowledge  of  these  countries,  which  he  transmitted  to 
his  son  in  the  copious  journals  he  preserved  of  his  travels  and  observations. 
In  these  compositions,  he  described  the  soil  of  America  and  the  West  Indies 
as  endowed  by  nature  with  extraordinary  richness  and  fertility,  yet  languish- 
ing in  total  unproductiveness  from  the  actual  want  of  cultivators.    Europeans 
were  represented  as  unequal  to  the  toil  of  agriculture  in  so  sultry  a  climate  ; 
but  the  natives  of  Africa  as  pecuharly  well  adapted  to  this  employment. 
Forcibly  struck  with  his  father's  remarks,  Hawkins  deduced  from  them  the 
project  of  transporting  Africans  into  the  western  world  ;  and  having  com- 
posed a  plan  for  the  execution  of  this  design,  he  produced  it  to  some  per- 
sons with  whom  he  was  acquainted,  of  opulent  estate  and  enterprising  dispo- 
sition, and  sohcited  their  approbation  and  concurrence.     A  subscription 
was  opened,  and  speedily  completed,  by  Sir  Lionel  Ducket,  Sir  Thomas 
Lodge,  Sir  William  Winter,  and  other  individuals,  who  plainly  perceived 
the  large  emolument  that  might  be  derived  from  the  adventiu-e  proposed  to 
them.     By  their  assistance,  Hawkins  was  enabled  to  set  sail  for  Africa  in 
the  year  1562  ;  and  having  reached  Sierra  Leone,  he  began  his  commerce 
with  the  negroes.     While  he  trafficked  with  them  in  the  usual  articles  of 
barter,  he  took  occasion  to  give  them  an  inviting  description  of  the  country 
to  which  he  was  bound  ;  contrasting  the  fertility  of  its  soil  and  the  wealth  of 
its  inhabitants  with  the  barrenness  of  Africa  and  the  poverty  of  the  African 
tribes.     Finding  that  the  unsuspecting  negroes  listened  to  him  with  implicit 
belief,  and  were  greatly  captivated  with  the  European  luxuries  and  orna- 
ments which  he  displayed  to  their  view,  —  he  offered,  if  any  of  them  were 
willing  to  exchange  their  destitute  circumstances  for  a  happier  condition,  to 
transport  them  to  this  more  bountiful  region,  where  he  assured  them  of  a 
friendly  reception,  and  an  ample  participation  in  the  enjoyments  with  which 
he  had  made  them  acquainted,  as  a  certain  recompense  of  easy  labor.    The 
negroes  were  ensnared  by  his  flattering  promises  ;  and  three  hundred  of 
them,  accepting  his  offer,  consented  to  embark  along  with  him  for  Hispan- 
iola.     On  the  night  before  their  embarkation,  they  were  attacked  by  a  hos 
tile  tribe  ;  when  Hawkins,  hastening  with  his  crew  to  their  assistance,  re 
pulsed  the  assauh,  and  carried  a  number  of  the  assailants  as  prisoners  on 
board  his  vessels.    The  next  day  ho  set  sail  with  his  mixed  lading  of  human 
ware,  and  during  the  passage  treated  the  negroes  who  voluntarily  accom- 
panied him  with  more  kindness  and   indulgence  than  he   extended  to  his 
prisoners  of  war.     On  his  arrival  at  Hispaniola,  he  disposed  of  the  whole 
cargo  to  great  advantage,  and  endeavoured  to  inculrnfe  on  the  Rnnniards 
who  bought  the  negroes  the  same  distinction  in  the  treatment  of  them  w  liich 


CHAP.  I] 


RISE  OF  THE  SLAVE-TRADE. 


35 


he  himself  had  observed.  But,  having  now  put  the  fulfilment  of  his  promises 
out  of  his  own  power,  it  was  not  permitted  to  him  so  to  limit  the  evil  con- 
sequences of  his  perfidy  ;  and  the  Spaniards,  who  had  purchased  all-  the 
Africans  at  the  same  rate,  considered  them  as  slaves  of  the  same  condition, 
and  treated  them  all  alike. 

When  Hawkins  returned  to  England  with  a  rich  freight  of  pearls,  sugar, 
and  ginger,  obtained  in  exchange  for  his  slaves,  the  success  of  his  voyage 
excited  universal  interest  and  curiosity  respecting  the  sources  from  which  so 
much  wealth  had  been  derived.  At  first  the  nation  was  shocked  with  the 
barbarous  aspect  of  a  traffic  in  the  persons  of  men  ;  and  the  public  feeling 
having  penetrated  into  the  court,  the  queen  sent  for  Hawkins  to  inquire  in 
what  manner  this  novel  and  extraordinary  description  of  commerce  was  con- 
ducted ;  declaring  to  him,  that,  "  if  any  of  the  Africans  were  carried  away 
without  their  own  consent,  it  would  be  detestable,  and  call  down  the  ven- 
geance of  Heaven  upon  the  undertakers."  Hawkins,  in  vindication  of  him- 
self, protested,  that,  in  no  expedition  which  he  conducted  should  any  of  the 
people  of  Africa  (except  captives  obtained  in  defensive  and  legitimate  war) 
be  compulsorily  removed  from  their  native  soil ;  and  he  declared,  that,  so 
far  from  entertaining  any  scruple  r#specting  the  righteous  nature  of  his  traf- 
fic, he  deemed  it  an  act  of  humanity  to  carry  men  from  a  worse  condition 
to  a  better,  from  a  state  of  heathen  barbarism  to  an  opportunity  of  sharing 
the  blessings  of  Christianity  and  civilization.^  It  is  believed,  indeed,  and 
seems  consonant  with  probability,  that  Hawkins  did  not  himself  contemplate 
the  perpetual  slavery  of  the  negroes  whom  he  sold,  but  expected  that  they 
would  be  advanced  to  the  condition  of  free  servants  whenever  their  labor 
had  produced  to  their  masters  an  equivalent  for  the  expense  of  their  pur- 
chase. The  queen  was  satisfied  with  his  explanation,  and  dismissed  him 
with  the  assurance,  that,  while  he  and  his  associates  acted  with  humanity, 
they  might  depend  on  her  countenance  and  protection. 

The  very  next  voyage  that  Hawkins  undertook  demonstrated  still  more 
clearly  than  the  former  the  deceitfulness  of  that  unction  which  he  had  ap- 
plied to  his  conscience,  and  the  futility  even  of  those  intentions  of  which  the 
fulfilment  seemed  to  depend  entirely  on  himself.  In  his  passage  he  met  with 
an  English  ship-of-war,  which  joined  itself  to  the  expedition  and  accompa- 
nied him  to  the  coast  of  Africa.  On  his  arrival,  he  began  as  formerly  to 
traffic  with  the  negroes,  and  endeavoured,  by  reiteration  of  his  former  topics 
of  persuasion,  to  induce  them  to  embark  in  his  vessels.  But  they  now  treated 
his  advances  with  a  reserve  that  betrayed  jealousy  of  his  designs.  As  none 
of  their  countrymen  had  returned  from  the  former  voyage,  they  were  appre- 
hensive that  the  English  had  killed  and  devoured  them ;  a  supposition  which, 
however  offensive  to  the  English,  did  greatly  and  erroneously  extenuate  the 
inhumanity  of  which  they  were  actually  guilty.  The  crew  of  the  ship-of-war, 
observing  the  Africans  backward  and  suspicious,  began  to  deride  t^^  gentle 
and  dilatory  procedure  to  which  Hawkins  confined  himself,  and  proposed 
immediate  recourse  to  the  summary  process  of  impressment.  The  sailors 
belonging  to  his  own  vessels  joined  with  the  crew  of  the  man-of-war,  and, 

'  This  was  tlic  pica  by  which  nil  tho  conductors  and  apologists  of  the  slave-trade  attempted 
to  vindicate  the  practice  in  its  infancy.    The  danger  of  hearkening  to  a  policy  that  admits  of 


"  doinji 

ants  of  those  men,  whom'wo  have  seen  (both  in  America  and  the  West  Indies)  enact  laws 
proiiibiting  iill  cuucatiun,  moral,  poiiticoi,  or  rciigious,  of  their  negro  slaves,  and  even  of  cmuii- 
cipatcd  negroes. 


:loing  evil  that  good  may  come  "  was  never  more  strikingly  illusUated  than  "by  the  descend- 
ts  of  those  men,  whom  wo  have  seen  (both  in  America  an' 


36 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


applauding  their  suggestion,  made  instant  preparation  for  carrying  it  into 
effect.  Hawkins  protested  against  such  lawless  barbarity,  and  vainly  en- 
deavoured to  prevail  on  them  to  deist  from  their  purpose.  But  the  instruc- 
tions of  the  queen  and  the  dictates  of  conscience  were  ineffectually  cited  to 
men  whom  he  bad  initiated  in  piratical  injustice,  and  who  were  not  able  to 
discover  the  moral  superiority  of  courteous  treachery  over  undisguised  vio- 
lence. They  pursued  their  design,  and,  after  various  unsuccessful  attacks, 
in  which  many  of  them  lost  their  lives,  another  cargo  of  human  beings  was 
at  last  forcibly  collected.^  Such  was  the  origin  of  the  English  branch  of 
the  slave-trade,  which  is  here  related  the  more  minutely,  not  only  on  ac- 
count of  the  remarkable  and  instructive  circumstances  that  attended  the  com- 
mencement of  the  practice,*^  but  on  account  of  the  influence  which  it  subse- 
quently exercised  on  the  colonization  and  condition  of  some  of  the  prov- 
inces of  North  America. 

The  spirit  of  adventure  which  had  been  awakened  in  the  English  nation 
found  a  more  inviting  scene  of  exertion  in  the  southern  than  in  the  northern 
regions  of  America  ;  and  when,  after  twenty  years  of  peace,  Elizabeth  was 
engaged  in  war  with  her  brother-in-law,  Philip,  the  prospect  of  enrichment 
and  renown  to  be  gathered  from  the  pluniJer  of  the  Spanish  colonies  opened 
a  new  career,  which  was  eagerly  embraced  and  successfully  prosecuted  by 
numerous  bands  of  enterprising  men  issuing  from  every  rank  of  society  in 
England.  Accordingly,  for  many  years  the  most  popular  and  notable  ex- 
ploits of  the  English  were  performed  in  the  predatory  hostilities  which  they 
waged  with  the  colonies  and  colonial  commerce  of  Spain.  Even  in  scenes 
so  unfavorable  to  the  production  or  display  of  the  better  qualities  of  human 
nature,  the  manly  character  and  moral  superiority  of  the  English  were  fre- 
quently and  strilangly  disclosed.  Drake  and  other  adventurers  in  the  same 
career  were  men  equally  superior  to  avarice  and  fear ;  and  though  willing  to 
encounter  hardship  and  danger  in  quest  of  wealth,  they  did  not  esteem  it 
valuable  enough  to  be  acquired  at  the  expense  of  honor  and  humanity. 

And  yet  it  was  to  this  spirit,  so  unfavorable  to  industrious  colonization, 
and  so  strongly  attracted  to  a  more  congenial  sphere  in  tlie  South,  that 
North  America  was  indebted  for  the  first  attempt  to  colonize  her  territory. 
Thus  irregular  and  incalculable  (to  created  wisdom)  is  the  influence  of  hu- 
man passions  on  the  stream  of  human  affairs. 

The  most  illustrious  adventurer  in  England  was  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  a 
man  endowed  with  brilliant  genius,  unbounded  ambition,  and  unconquerable 
activity  ;  whose  capacious  mind,  stimulated  by  an  ardent,  elastic,  and  versa- 
tile spirit,  and  strongly  impregnated  with  the  enthusiasm,  credulity,  and 
sanguine  expectation  peculiar  to  the  age,  no  singhe  project,  however  vast  or 
arduous,  could  wholly  absorb.  The  extent  of  his  capacity  combined  ac- 
quirements that  are  commonly  esteemed  remote  and  almost  incompatible 
with  each  other.  Framed  in  the  prodigality  of  nature,  he  was  at  once  the 
most  industrious  scholar  and  the  most  accomplished  courtier  of  his  age  ; 
as  a  projector,  profound,  ingenious,  and  indefatigable ;  as  a  soldier,  prompt, 
daring,  and  heroic  ;  so  contemplative  (says  an  old  writer)  that  he  might 
have  been  judged  unfit  for  action,  so  active  that  he  seemed  to  have  no 
leisure  for  contemplation.'^     The  chief  defect  of  his  mental  temperamant 

'  Hakluyt.    Hill'a  jyaml  History.    Ilewit's  History  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia. 
'  8nn  Note  I.    at  the  end  nf  the  vnl'.in'.!^. 

'  Lloyd's  Slate  Worthies.    Raleigh's  friend,  Edmund  SpcnBer,  the  poet,  with  a  strange, 
fantastic  mixture  of  images,  lias  termed  him,  in  a  sonnet,  The  Shtfherd  of  the  Ocean. 


CHAP.  I] 


PROJECT  OF  A  COLONY  UNDER  GILBERT. 


37 


was  the  absence  of  moderation  and  regulation  of  thought  and  aim.  Smitten 
with  the  love  of  glorious  achievement,  he  had  imfortunately  embraced  the 
maxim,  that  "  whatever  is  not  extraordinary  is  nothing  ";  and  his  mind  (till 
the  last  scene  of  his  life)  was  not  sufficiently  pervaded  by  religion  to  recog- 
nize that  nobility  of  purpose,  which  ennobles  the  commonest  actions,  and 
elevates  circumstances,  instead  of  borrowing  dignity  from  them.  Uncon- 
trolled by  steady  principle  and  sober  calculation,  the  fancy  and  the  passions 
of  Raleigh  transported  him,  in  some  instances,  beyond  the  bounds  of  recti- 
tude, honor,  and  propriety  ;  and,  seconded  by  the  malevolence  of  his  for- 
tune, entailed  reproach  on  his  character  and  discomfiture  on  his  undertakings. 
But  though  adversity  might  cloud  his  path,  it  could  never  depress  his  spirit, 
or  quench  a  single  ray  of  his  genius.  He  subscribed  to  his  fortune  with  a 
noble  grace,  and  by  the  universal  .consent  of  mankind  his  errors  and  in- 
firmities have  been  deemed  within  the  protection  of  his  glory.  The  con- 
tinual discomfiture  of  his  efforts  and  projects  served  only  to  display  the 
exhaustless  opulence  and  indestructible  vigor  of  that  intellect,  of  which  no 
accumulation  of  disaster  nor  variety  of  discouragement  could  either  repress 
the  ardor  or  narrow  the  range.  Amidst  disappointment  and  impoverishment, 
pursued  by  royal  hatred,  and  forsaken  by  his  popularity,  he  continued  to 
project  and  attempt  the  foundation  of  empires  ;  and  in  old  age  and  a  prison 
he  composed  the  History  of  the  World.  Perhaps  there  never  was  another 
instance  of  distinguished  reputation  as  much  indebted  to  genius  and  as  litde 
to  success.  So  powerful,  indeed,  is  the  association  that  connects  merit 
with  success,  and  yet  so  strong  the  claim  of  Raleigh  to  elude  the  censure 
which  this  view  implies,  that  we  find  it  difficult  to  pronounce  him,  even 
amidst  uninterrupted  disaster,  an  unsuccessful  man.  Whatever  judgment 
may  be  formed  of  his  character,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  in  genius  he 
was  worthy  of  the  honor  which  he  may,  perhaps,  be  considered  to  have  at- 
tained, of  originating  the  settlements  that  grew  up  into  the  North  American 
commonwealth. 

In  conjunction  with  a  kindred  spirit,  his  half-brother.  Sir  Humphrey  Gil- 
bert, Raleigh  projected  the  establishment  of  a  colony  in  that  quarter  of  Amer- 
ica which  Cabot  had  visited  ;  and  a  patent  for  this  purpose  was  procured 
without  difficulty,  in  favor  of  Gilbert,  from  Elizabeth.  [1578.]  This  patent 
authorized  him  to  explore  and  appropriate  remote  and  barbarous  lands,  un- 
occupied by  Christian,  powers,  and  to  hold  them  as  a  fief  of  the  crown  of 
England,  to  which  he  was  obliged  to  pay  the  fifth  part  of  the  produce  of 
their  gold  or  silver  mines  ;  it  permitted  the  subjects  of  Elizabeth  to  accom- 
pany the  expedition,*  and  guarantied  to  them  a  continuance  of  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  rights  of  free  denizens  of  England  ;  it  invested  Gilbert  with  the 
powers  of  civil  and  criminal  legislation  over  the  inhabitants  of  the  territory 
which  he  might  occupy  ;  but  with  this  limitation,  that  his  laws  should  be 
framed  with  as  much  conformity  as  possible  to  the  statutes  and  policy  of 
England,  and  should  not  derogate  from  the  supreme  allegiance  due  to  the 
English  crown.  The  endurance  of  the  patent,  in  so  far  as  related  to  the 
appropriation  of  territory,  was  limited  to  six  years  ;  and  all  other  persons 

'  This  provision  was  nooossnry  to  evade  the  obstructions  of  the  existing  law  of  England 
By  the  ancient  law,  as  declared  In  the  Groat  Charter  of  King  John,  all  men  might  go  freely 
out  of  the  kingdom;  retaining,  indeed,  their  allogiatlco  to  the  king.  But  no  such  clause  ap 
pears  m  the  charter  of  liis  successor  ;  and  during  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  it  was  enacted,  that 
■i„y  subject,  drparfinjr  rbr.  r-r.hn  whhr.-.-.t  a  license  under  the  Great  Sea!,  should  forfeit  hiu 
personal  estate,  and  the  rent  of  his  landed  property.     13  Eliz.  cap.  3. 

D 


m 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


were  prohibited  from  establishing  themselves  within  two  hundred  leagues  of 
any  spot  which  the  adventurers  might  occupy  during  that  period. i 

The  arbitrary  power  thus  committed  to  the  leader  of  tlie  expedition  did 
not  prevent  the  accession  of  a  numerous  body  of  subordinate  adventurers. 
Gilbert  had  earned  high  and  honorable  distinction  by  his  services,  both  in 
France  and  Ireland  ;  and  the  attractive  influence  of  his  reputation,  combin- 
ing with  the  spirit  of  the  times,  and  aided  by  the  zeal  of  Raleigh  and  the 
authority  of  Secretary  Walsingham,  enabled  him  speedily  to  collect  a  suffi- 
cient body  of  associates,  and  to  accomplish  the  equipment  of  the  first  expe- 
dition of  British  emigrants  to  America.  But  in  the  composition  of  this  body 
there  were  elements  very  ill  fitted  to  establish  an  infant  commonwealth  on  a 
solid  or  respectable  basis  ;  tlie  officers  were  disunited,  the  crew  mutinous 
and  licentious ;  and,  happily  for  tlie  credit  of  England,  it  was  not  the  will  of 
Providence  tliat  the  adventurers  should  gain  a  footing  in  any  new  region. 
Gilbert,  approaching  the  American  continent  by  too  northerly  a  course,  was 
dismayed  by  the  inhospitable  aspect  of  the  coast  of  Cape  Breton ;  his  largest 
vessel  was  shipwrecked  ;  and  two  voyages,  in  the  last  of  which  he  himself 
perished,  finally  terminated  in  the  defeat  of  the  enterprise  and  dispersion 
of  the  a"d venturers.^  [1583.] 

But  the  ardor  of  Raleigh,  neither  daunted  by  difficulties  nor  damped  by 
miscarriage,  and  continually  refreshed  by  the  suggestions  of  a  fertile  and  un- 
curbed imagination,  was  incapable  of  abandoning  a  project  that  had  gained  his 
favor  and  exercised  his  energy.  Applying  to  the  queen,  in  whose  esteem  he 
then  held  a  distinguished  place,  he  easily  prevailed  with  her  to  grant  him  a 
patent  in  all  respects  similar  to  that  which  had  been  previously  bestowed  up- 
on Gilbert. 3  [1584.]  Not  less  prompt  in  executing  than  intrepid  in  project- 
ing his  schemes,  Raleigh  soon  despatched  two  small  vessels,  commanded  by 
Amadas  and  Barlow,  to  visit  the  districts  wliich  he  intended  to  occupy,  and 
to  examine  the  accommodations  of  their  coasts,  the  productions  of  the  soil, 
and  the  condition  of  the  inhabitants.  These  officers,  avoiding  tlie  error  of 
Gilbert  in  steering  too  far  north,  shaped  their  course  by  the  Canaries,  and, 
approaching  the  North  American  continent  by  the  Gulf  of  Florida,  anchored 
in  Roanoke  Bay,  off  the  coast  of  North  Carolina.  Worthy  of  the  trust 
reposed  in  them,  they  behaved  with  much  courtesy  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
region,  whom  they  found  living  in  all  the  rude  independence,  and  laborless, 
but  hardy,  simplicity,  of  savage  life,  and  of  whose  hospitality,  as  well  as  of 
the  mildness  of  the  climate  and  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  they  published  a  flat- 
tering encomium  on  their  return  to  England.  This  intelligence  diffused  gen- 
era' satisfaction,  and  was  so  agreeable  to  Elizabeth,  that,  in  exercise  of  the 
parentage  she  proposed  to  assume  over  the  country,  and  as  a  memorial  that 
the  acquisition  of  it  originated  with  a  virgin  queen,  she  thought  proper  to 
bestow  on  it  the  name  of  Virginia.* 

A  prospect  so  encouraging  not  only  pricked  forward  the  enthusiastic  spirit 
of  Raleigh,  but,  by  its  influence  on  the  minds  of  his  countrymen,  enabled 
him  the  more  speedily  to  complete  his  preparations  for  a  permanent  colo- 
nial settlement  ;  and  he  was  soon  in  a  condition  to  equip  and  despatch  a 


'  Stith's  History  of  Virginia. 
^  Hakluyt,  III.  14"3. 
'  Stith.     " 
*  Smith. 


Hazard's  Historical  Collections. 


Hazard. 


The  country  was  so  called  Cgnvs  Oldmixon)  either  in  honor  of  tlio  virein  estate 
of  tho  queen,  "  or,  as  tlic  Virginiiins  will  have,  bccausu  it  still  sconicd  to  retain  Uic  virgin 
j-urtty  and  picnij-  of  tho  first  creation."    Oidmixon's  Vritish  Empire  in  jlmerica,  2d  edit. 


CHAP.  I  ] 


COLONY  AT  ROANOKE. 


39 


lusiastic  spirit 
men,  enabled 


squadron  of  seven  ships  under  the  command  of  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  one 
of  the  most  heroic  spirits  of  the  time,  and  eminent  for  valor  in  an  age  distin- 
guished by  the  numbers  of  the  brave.  But  this  gallant  leader,  unfortunately, 
was  more  infected  with  the  spirit  of  predatory  enterprise,  at  that  time  so  prev- 
alent among  the  English,  than  endued  with  the  qualities  which  his  peculiar 
duty  on  the  present  occasion  required  ;  and,  commencing  his  expedition  by 
cruising  among  the  West  India  islands  and  capturing  the  vessels  of  Spain,  he 
initiated  his  followers  in  pursuits  and  views  very  remote  from  peaceful  indus- 
try, patient  perseverance,  and  moderation.  At  length  he  landed  a  hundred 
and  eight  men^  at  Roanoke  [August,  1585]  ,  and  left  them  there  to  attempt, 
as  they  best  might,  the  arduous  task  of  founding  and  maintaining  a  social  es- 
tablishment. The  command  of  this  feeble  band  was  committed  to  Captain 
Lane,  assisted  by  some  persons  of  note,  of  whom  the  most  eminent  were 
Araadas,  who  had  conducted  the  former  voyage,  and  Thomas  Heriot,  the  im 
provcr  of  algebraical  calculation,  —  a  man  whose  generous  worth  and  wisdom 
might  have  preserved  the  colony,  if  these  qualities  had  been  shared  by  his 
associates,  and  whose  unremitted  endeavours  to  instruct  the  savages,  and 
diligent  inquiries  into  their  habits  and  character,  by  adding  to  the  stock  of 
human  knowledge,  and  extending  the  example  of  virtue,  rendered  the  ex- 
pedition not  wholly  unproductive  of  benefit  to  mankind.  The  selection  of 
such  a  man  to  accompany  and  partake  the  enterprise  reflects  additional 
honor  on  his  friend  and  patron,  Raleigh.  On  their  first  arrival,  the  adven- 
turers were  regarded  with  the  utmost  awe  and  veneration  by  the  savages, 
who,  seeing  no  women  among  them,  were  inclined  to  believe  them  not  born 
of  woman,  and  therefore  immortal.  Heriot  endeavoured  to  avail  himself  of 
the  admiration  they  expressed  for  the  guns,  the  clock,  the  telescopes,  and 
other  implements  that  attested  the  superiority  of  their  visitors,  in  order  to 
lead  their  minds  to  the  great  Source  of  all  sense  and  gcience.  But  while 
they  hearkened  to  his  instructions,  they  accommodated  the  import  of  them 
to  their  own  depraved  notions  of  Divine  Nature  ;  they  acknowledged  that 
the  God  of  the  strangers  was  more  powerful  and  more  beneficent  to  his 
people  than  the  deities  whom  they  served,  and  expressed  an  eager  desire  to 
touch  and  embrace  the  Bible,  and  apply  it  to  their  breasts  and  heads. ^  In 
the  hands  of  an  artful  or  superstitious  priest,  such  practices  and  dispositions 
would  probably  have  produced  a  plentiful  crop  of  pretended  miracles  and 
imaginary  cures  of  diseases,  and  terminated  in  an  exchange  of  superstition, 
instead  of  a  renovation  of  moral  nature.  But  Heriot  was  incapable  of  flat- 
tering or  deceiving  the  savages,  by  encouraging  their  idolatry  and  merely 
changing  its  direction  ;  he  labored  to  convince  them  that  the  benefits  of  re- 
ligion were  to  be  obtained  by  acquaintance  with  the  contents  of  the  Bible, 
and  not  by  an  ignorant  veneration  of  the  exterior  of  the  book.  By  these 
labors,  which  were  too  soon  interrupted,  he  succeeded  in  making  such  im- 
pression on  the  minds  of  the  Indians,  that  Wingina,  their  king,  finding  him- 
self attacked  by  a.  dangerous  malady,  rejected  the  assistance  of  his  own 
priests,  and  solicited  the  attendance  and  prayers  of  the  English;  and  his 
example  was  followed  by  many  of  his  subjects.'' 

But,  unfortunately  for  the  stability  of  the  settlement,  the  majority  of  the 
colonists  were  much  less  distinguished  by  piety  or  prudence,  than  by  eager 
and  impetuous  desire;  to  obtain  immediate  wealth  ;  their  first  pursuit  was 
gold  ;  and,  smitten  with  the  persuasion  that  every  part  of  America  was  per- 

•  Smith,  B.  i.  «  Heriot,  apud  Smith.  »  Ibid.  " 


40 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


vaded  by  ramifications  of  the  mines  \v':inh  enriched  the  Spanish  colonies 
their  chief  efforts  were  directed  to  the  acquisition  of  treasures  that  happily 
had  no  existence.     The  natives,  discovering  the  object  which  the  strangers 
sought  with  so  much  avidity,  amused  them  with  tales  of  a  neighbouring  re- 
gion abounding  with  the  precious  metals,  and  possessing  such  quantities  of 
pearl,  that  even  the  walls  of  the  houses  glittered  with  its  lavish  display. * 
Eagerly  listening  to  these  agreeable  fictions,  the  adventurers  consumed  their 
time  and  endured  extreme  hardships  in  pursuit  of  a  phantom,  while  they 
neglected  entirely  the  means  of  providing  for  their  future  subsistence.     The 
detection  of  the  imposture  produced  mutual  suspicion  and  disgust  between 
them  and  the  savages,  and  finally  led  to  open  enmity  and  acts  of  bloodshed 
The  stock  of  victuals  brought  with  them  from  England  was  exhausted  • 
the  additional  supplies  they  had  been  taught  to  expect  did  not  arrive  ;  and 
the  hostdity  of  the  Indians  left  them  no  other  dependence  than  on  the  pre- 
carious resources  of  the  woods  and  rivers.    Thus,  struggling  with  increasing 
scarcity  of  food,  and  surrounded  by  enemies,  the  colonists  were  reduced  to 
a  state  of  the  utmost  distress  and  danger,  when  a  prospect  of  deliverance 
was  unexpectedly  presented  to  them  by  the  arrival  of  Sir  Francis  Drake 
with  a  fleet,  which  he  was  conducting  home  from  a  successful  enterprise 
against  the  Spaniards  in  the  West  Indies.    Drake  consented  to  supply  them 
with  an  addition  to  their  numbers  and  a  liberal  contribution  of  provisions  • 
:ind  if  this  had  been  done,  it  seems  probable,  that,  with  the  ample  reinforce- 
ment soon  after  transmitted  by  Raleigh,  the  colonists  might  have  been  able 
to  maintam  their  establishment  in  America.     But  Drake's  intentions  were 
jrustrated  by  a  storm,  that  carried  out  to  sea  the  very  ship  which  he  had 
reighted  with  the  requisite  supplies  ;  and  as  he  could  rot  afford  to  weaken 
his  fleet  by  a  further  contribution  for  their  defence  or  subsistence,  the  ad- 
venturers, now  completely  exhausted  and  discouraged,  unanimously  deter- 
mined to  abandon  the  settlement.     In  compliance  with  their  desire,  Drake 
accordingly  received  them  on  board  his  vessels,  and  reconducted  them  to 
England.2  [1586.]     Such  was  the  abortive  issue  of  the  first  colonial  settle- 
ment planted  by  the  English  in  America. 

Of  the  political  consequences  that  resulted  from  this  expedition,  the  cata- 
logue, though  far  from  copious,  is  not  devoid  of  interest.     An  important 
accession  was  rr.ade  to  the  scanty  stock  of  knowledge  respecting  North 
America  ;  the  spirit  of  mining  adventure  received  a  salutary  check  ;  and 
the  use  of  tobacco,  already  introduced  by  the  Spaniards  and  Portuguese 
into  other  parts  of  Europe,  was  now  imported  into  England.     This  herb 
tlie  Indians  esteemed  their  principal  medicine  ; '  and  some  tribes  are  said 
to  have  ascnbed  its  virtues  to  the  inhabitation  of  one  of  those  spiritual  bein-s 
which  they  supposed  to  reside  in  all  the  extraordinary  productions  of  nature, 
liane  and  his  associates,  contracting  a  relish  for  its  properties,  brought  a 
(piantity  of  tobacco  with  them  to  England,  and  taught  the  use  of  it  to  their 
countrymen.     Raleigh,  in  particular,  adopted,  and,  with  the  help  of  some 
young  men  of  fashion,  encouraged  the  practice,  which  soon  established 
Itself,  and  spread  with  a  vigor  that  outran  the  help  of  courtiers,  and  defied 
Uie  hinderance  of  kings ;  and  awakening  a  new  and  almost  universal  appetite 
in  human  nature,  formed  an  important  source  of  revenue  to  England,  and 
multiplied  the  ties  that  united  Europe  with  America.'' 

„ ■*■•;•  ?  •■•i'-"f'r!n  iiersdf,  in  tho  close  ol  ii.r  iiii-,  tHViitne  one  of  Raleigh  s  r.unils  in  the 

accomphsluiieiit  of  su.ok.ng.    One  day,  as  she  was  partaking  thi«  indulgence,  Raldgh  betted 


CHAP.  I] 


COLONY  AT  ROANOKE. 


41 


on,  the  oata- 


But  the  disappointment  that  attended  this  enterprise  did  not  terminate 
with  the  return  of  Lane  and  his  followers  to  England.  A  few  days  after 
their  departure  from  Roanoke,  a  vessel,  despatched  by  Raleigh,  reached 
the  evacuated  settlement  with  a  plentiful  contribution  of  all  necessary  stores ; 
and  only  a  fortnight  after  this  bark  set  sail  to  return  from  its  bootless  voyage, 
a  still  larger  reinforcement  of  men  and  provisions  arrived  in  three  ships, 
equipped  bv  Raleigh,  and  commanded  by  Sir  Richard  Grenville.  Discon- 
certed by  the  absence  of  the  vessel  that  preceded  him,  and  unable  to  obtain 
any  tidings  of  the  colonists,  yet  unwilling  to  abandon  the  possession  of  the 
country,  Grenville  landed  filty  men  at  Roanoke,  and,  leaving  them  in  pos- 
session of  an  ample  3upply  of  provisions,  returned  to  England  to  communi- 
cate the  state  of  affairs  and  obtain  further  directions.^ 

These  successive  defeats  and  mishaps  excited  much  gloomy  speculation 
and  superstitious  surmise  in  England,^  but  could  neither  vanquish  the  hopes 
nor  exhaust  the  resources  of  Raleigh,  whose  dauntless  and  aspirins;  mind  still 
rose  superior  to  all  mischance.  In  the  following  year  [1587],  he  fitted  out 
and  despatched  three  ships  under  the  command  of  Captain  White,  with  di- 
rections to  join  the  small  body  that  Grenville  had  established  at  Roanoke, 
and  thence  to  transfer  the  settlement  to  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake,  of  which 
the  superior  advantages  were  remarked  in  the  preceding  year  by  Lane.  A 
charter  of  incorporation  was  granted  to  White  and  twelve  of  his  principal 
associates,  as  Governor  and  Assistants  of  the  City  of  Raleigh  in  Virginia. 
In  the  hope  of  evading  the  unprosperous  issue  of  the  former  expeditions, 
more  efficacious  means  were  adopted,  in  the  equipment  of  this  squadron, 
for  preserving  and  continuing  the  colony.  The  stock  of  provisions  was 
more  abundant;  the  number  of  men  greater,  and  the  means  of  recruiting 
their  numbers  afforded  by  a  competent  intermixture  of  women.  But  the 
full  extent  of  the  precedent  calamities  had  yet  to  be  learned  ;  and  on  land- 
ing at  Roanoke,  in  quest  of  the  detachment  that  Grenville  had  placed 
there.  White  and  his  companions  could  find  no  other  trace  of  it  than  the 
significant  memorial  presented  by  a  dismantled  fort  and  a  heap  of  human 
bones.'  The  apprehensions  excited  by  this  melancholy  spectacle  were  con- 
firmed by  the  intelligence  of  a  friendly  native,  who  informed  them  that  their 
countrymen  had  fallen  victims  to  the  enmity  of  the  Indians.  Instructed 
rather  than  discouraged  by  this  calamity,  they  endeavoured  to  cultivate  the 
good-will  of  the  savages  ;  and  determining  to  remain  at  Roanoke,  they 
hastened  to  repair  the  houses  and  restore  the  colony.  One  of  the  natives 
was  baptized  into  the  Christian  faith,  and,  retaining  an  unshaken  attachment 
to  the  English,  contributed  his  efforts  to  pacify  and  conciliate  his  country- 
men.* But  finding  themselves  destitute  of  many  articles  which  they  judged 
essential  to  their  comfort  and  preservation,  in  a  country  thickly  covered 
with  forests  and  peopled  only  by  a  few  scattered  tribes  of  savages,  the  col- 
onists deputed  their  governor  to  solicit  for  them  the  requisite  supplies  ;  and 
White  repaired  for  this  purpose  to  England.     In  his  voyage  thither  he 

with  her  that  ho  could  ascertain  the  weight  of  tlic  siiioko  that  should  issue  in  a  given  time 
from  her  Majesty's  mouth.  For  this  purpose,  he  weighed  first  the  tobacco,  and  afterwards  tiie 
ashes  left  in  the  pine,  and  assigned  the  difference  as  the  weight  of  the  smoke.  The  queen 
acknowledged  that  lie  liad  gained  his  bet;  adding,  that  she  believed  he  was  the  only  alchemist 
who  had  ever  succeeded  in  turning  smoke  into  gold.     Stith. 

'  Smith.  "  The  Virginians  positively  affirm  that  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  made  this  voyage  in 
person."  Oldmixon's  British  Empire  in  ^meiica,  2d  edit.  But  the  generous  wish  alone  seeins 
to  have  been  the  parent  of  this  notion. 


»  Smith. 
VOL.    I. 


Ibid. 


6 


Ibid. 


42 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1 


touched  at  a  port  in  Ireland,  where  he  is  reported  to  have  introduced  the 
first  specimens  ever  seen  in  Europe  of  the  potato  plant,  which  he  had  brought 
with  him  from  America.  But  wlietlier  this  memorable  importation  was  due 
to  him,  or,  as  some  writers  have  affirmed,  to  certain  of  the  carher  associates 
of  Raleigh's  adventures,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  to  the  enterprise  of 
Raleigh  and  the  soil  of  America,  Great  Britain  is  indebted  for  hor  acquaint- 
ance with  the  potato  and  with  tobacco,  the  staple  article  of  diet,  and  the 
most  cherished,  as  well  as  the  most  innocent,  luxury  of  a  great  portion  of 
her  people. 

White  arrived  at  a  juncture  very  unfavorable  for  the  success  of  his  mis- 
sion.    England  was  now  engrossed  with  the  more  immediate  concern  of 
self-preservation  :  the  formidable  armada  of  Spain  was  preparing  to  invade 
her,  and  the  \yhole  naval  and  military  resources  of  the  empire  were  placed 
under  requisition  for  the  purposes  of  national  defence.     The  hour  of  his 
country's  danger  could  not  fail  to  present  the  most  interesting  employment 
to  the  generous  spirit  of  Raleigh  ;  yet  he  mingled,  with  his  distinguished 
efforts  to  repel  the  enemy,  some  exertions  for  the  preservation  of  the  colony 
which  he  had  planted.     For  this  purpose  he  had,  with  his  usual  prompti- 
tude, equipped  a  small  squadron,  which  he  committed  to  the  conduct  of  Sir 
Richard  Grenville,  when  the  cjjueen  interposed  to  detain  the  ships  that  were 
adapted  for  fight,  and  to  prohibit  Grenville  from  leaving  England  at  such  a 
crisis.     White,  however,  was  enabled  to  reerabark  for  America  with  two 
small  vessels  [1588]  ;  btit,  yielding  to  the  temptation  of  trying  his  fortune 
by  the  way  in  a  cruiso  against  the  Spaniards,  he  was  beaten  by  a  superior 
force,  and   totally  disabled   from   pursuing  his  voyage.     The   colony   at 
Roanoke  was,  in  consequence,  left  to  depend  on  its  own  feeble  resources, 
of  which  the  diligent  cultivation  was  not  likely  vo  be  promoted  by  the  hopes 
tliat  were  entertained  of  foreign  succour.   [1589.]     What  its  fate  was  may 
he  easily  guessed,  but  never  was  certainly  known.     White,  conducting  an 
expedition  to  Roanoke  in  the  following  year,  found  the  territory  evacuated 
of  the  colonists,  of  whom  no  further  tidings  were  ever  obtained.^ 

This  last  expedition  was  not  despatched  by  Raleigh,  but  by  his  succes- 
sors in  the  American  patent  ;  and  our  history  is  now  to  take  leave  of  that 
illustrious  man,  with  whose  schemes  and  enterprises  it  ceases  to  have  any 
farther  connection.    The  ardor  of  his  mind  was  not  exhausted,  but  diverted 
bv  a  multiplicity  of  new  and  not  less  important  concerns.     Intent  on  peo- 
pling and  improving  a  large  district  in  Ireland,  which  the  queen  had  con- 
ferred on  him  ;  engaged  in  the  conduct  of  a  scheme,  and  the  expense  of  an 
armament,  for  establishing  Don  Antonio  on  the  throne  of  Portugal  ;  and 
already  revolving  his  last  and  wildest  project  of  an  expedition  for  the  dis- 
covery of  mines  in  Guiana  ;  he  found  it  impossible  to  continue  cither  the 
ttention  or  the  expenditure  which  he  had  devoted  to  his  American  colony. 
Yet  desiring  with  earnest  inclination  that  a  design,  which  he  had  so  gallantly 
and  steadfastly  pursued,  should  not  be  entirely'abandoned,  and,  hoping  tliat 
the  spirit  of  commerce  would  preserve  an  intercourse  with  America  that 
might  terminate  in  a  colonial  settlement,  he  consented  to  assign  his  patent 
to  Sir  Thomas  Smith  and  a  company  of  merchants  in  London,  who  under- 
took to  establish  and  m&intain  a  traffic  between  England  and  Virginia.    The 
patent  which  he  thus  transferred  had  already  cost  him  fortv  thousand  pounds, 
without  affording  him  the  slightest  return  of  pecuniary  profit  ;  yet  the  only 

'  Smitii.    Stith.    Williiunson's  History  of  S'ortk  Carolina.  ~~~ 


CHAP  1] 


GOSNOLD'S  VOYAGE. 


43 


personal  consideration  for  which  ho  stipulated  with  the  assignees  was  a  small 
sliare  of  <vhatever  gold  or  silver  ore  they  might  eventually  discover ;  and  ho 
now  bestowed  on  them,  in  addition  to  his  previous  disbursements,  a  donation 
of  one  hundred  pounds,  in  aid  of  the  efforts  to  which  they  pledged  them- 
selves for  the  propagation  of  Christianity  in  America.' 

It  appeared,  very  soon,  that  Raleigh  had  transferred  his  patent  to  hands 
very  different  from  his  own.  The  last  mentioned  expedition,  which  was 
productive  of  nothing  but  tidings  of  the  miscarriage  of  a  prior  adventure, 
was  the  most  notable  effort  that  the  London  company  exerted.  Satisfied 
with  a  paltry  traffic  conducted  by  a  few  small  vessels,  they  made  no  attempt 
to  take  possession  of  the  country  ;  and  at  the  period  of  Elizabeth's  death, 
lint  a  single  Englishman  was  settled  in  America.  The  exertions  of  Raleigh, 
however,  had  united  the  views  and  hopes  of  his  countrymen,  by  a  strong 
association,  witli  settlements  in  Virginia,  and  given  a  bias  to  the  national 
spirit,  which  only  the  encouragement  of  more  favorable  circumstances  was 
wanting  to  develope.  But  the  war  with  Spain,  that  endured  till  the  close 
of  Elizabeth's  reign,  allured  men  of  enterprise  and  activity  into  the  career 
of  predatory  adventure,  and  obstructed  tlie  formation  of  peaceable  and  com- 
mercial settlements. 

The  accession  of  James  to  the  English  crown  [1603]  was,  by  a  singular 
coincidence,  an  event  no  less  favorable  to  the  colonization  of  America  than 
fatal  to  the  illustrious  projector  of  this  design.  Peace  was  immediately  con- 
cluded with  Spain  ;  and  England,  in  the  enjoyment  of  uninterrupted  tran- 
quillity, was  enabled  to  direct  to  more  bloodless  pursuits  the  energies  ma- 
tured in  a  war  which  had  excited  the  spirit  of  the  nation  without  impairing  its 
strength.  From  the  inability  of  government,  in  that  age,  to  collect  all  the 
disposable  force  of  the  empire  for  combined  operation,  war  was  chiefly  pro- 
ductive of  a  series  of  partial  efforts  and  privateering  expeditions,  which 
widely  diffused  the  allurements  of  ambition  and  multiplied  the  opportunities 
of  advancement.  This  had  been  remarkably  exemplified  in  the  contest  with 
Spain  ;  and  many  ardent  spirits,  to  which  this  contest  had  supplied  oppor- 
tunities of  animating  exertion  and  flattering  ascendency,  became  impatient 
of  the  restraint  and  inactivity  to  which  the  peace  consigned  them,  and  began 
to  look  abroad  for  a  new  sphere  of  activity  and  distinction. 

The  prevalence  of  such  dispositions  naturally  led  to  a  revival  of  the  pro- 
ject of  colonizing  North  America,  which  gained  an  additional  recommenda- 
tion to  public  favor  from  the  success  of  a  voyage  undertaken  in  the  last 
year  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  Bartholomew  Gosnold,  who  planned  and  per- 
formed this  voyage  in  a  small  vessel  containing  only  thirty  men,  was  led, 
by  his  experience  in  navigation,  to  suspect  that  the  proper  track  from  Eu- 
rope to  America  had  not  yet  been  discovered,  and  that,  in  steering  by  the 
Canary  Islands  and  the  Gulf  of  Florida,  a  circuit  of  at  least  a  thousand 
leagues  was  unnecessarily  made.  In  prosecution  of  his  conjecture,  he 
abandoned  the  southern  track,  and,  steering  more  to  the  westward,  was  the 
first  navigator  who  reached  America  by  this  director  course.  He  arrived 
at  a  more  northerly  quarter  of  the  continent  than  any  of  Raleigh's  colonists 
had  visited,  and,  landing  in  the  region  which  now  forms  the  State  of  Massa- 
chusetts, he  pursued  an  advantageous  traffic  with  the  natives,  and  freighted 
his  vessel  with  abundance  of  rich  peltry.  He  visited  two  adjacent  islands, 
one  of  which  he  named  Martha's  Vineyard,  the  other  Elizabeth's  Island. 

'  Hazard.    Caaipbt'irs  llulury  of  Virginia. 


14 


HISTORY  OP  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


m 


The  aspect  of  the  country  appeared  so  inviting,  and  the  climate  so  salubri- 
ous, that  twelve  of  the  crew  at  first  determined  to  remain  there  ;  but  reflect- 
ing on  the  melancholy  fate  of  the  colonists  at  Roanoke,  they  found  their 
resolution  unequal  to  their  wishes  ;  and  the  whole  party,  reluctantly  quitting 
the  agreeable  region,  returned  to  England  after  an  absence  of  less  than  four 
months.' 

The  report  of  this  expedition  produced  a  strong  impression  on  the  public 
mind,  and  led  to  important  consequences.  (Josnold  had  discovered  a  route 
that  greatly  sliortened  the  voyage  to  North  America,  and  found  a  healthy 
clijuate,  a  fertile  soil,  and  a  coast  abounding  with  excellent  harbours.  He 
liiid  seen  many  fruits,  that  were  highly  esteemed  in  Europe,  growing  plenti- 
fully in  the  American  woods  ;  and  having  sown  some  European  grain,  be- 
held it  germinate  with  rapidity  and  vigor.  Encouraged  by  his  success,  and 
perhaps  not  insensible  to  the  hope  of  finding  gold  and  silver,  or  some  new 
and  lucrative  article  of  commerce,  in  the  unexplored  interior  of  so  fine  a 
country,  he  endeavoured  to  procure  associates  in  an  enterprise  to  transport 
a  colony  to  America.  Similar  projects  were  generated  in  various  parts  of 
the  kingdom  ;  but  the  spirit  of  adventure  was  controlled  by  a  salutary  cau- 
tion, awakened  by  the  recollection  of  former  disappointments. 

These  projects  were  zealously  promoted  by  the  counsel  and  encourage- 
ment of  Richard  Hakluyt,  prebendary  of  Westminster,  a  man  of  eminent 
attainments  in  naval  and  connncrcial  science,  the  patron  and  counsellor  of 
many  of  the  English  expeditions  of  discovery,  the  correspondent  of  the 
leaders  .who  conducted  them,  and  the  historian  of  the  exploits  they  gave  rise 
to.  At  his  suggestion,'  two  vessels  were  fitted  out  by  the  merchants  of 
Bristol,  and  despatched  to  examine  the  discoveries  of  Gosnold,  and  verify 
his  statements.  [1603.]  They  returned  with  an  ample  confirmation  of  the 
navigator's  veracity.  A  similar  expedition  was  equipped  and  despatched 
by  the  Earl  of  Southampton  and  Lord  Arundel  of  Wardour^  [1605],  which 
not  only  produced  farther  testimony  to  the  same  effect,  but  reported  so 
many  additional  particulars  commendatory  of  the  region,  that  all  doubt  and 
hesitation  vanished  from  the  minds  of  the  projectors  of  American  coloniza- 
tion ;  and  an  association,  sufficiently  numerous,  weahhy,  and  powerful  to 
undertake  this  enterprise,  being  speedily  formed,  a  petition  was  presented  to 
the  king  for  his  sanction  of  the  plan,  and  the  interposition  of  his  authority 
towards  its  execution. 

The  attention  of  James  had  been  previously  directed  to  the  advantages 
attending  the  plantation  of  colonies,  at  the  time  when  he  attempted  to  civilize 
the  more  barbarous  clans  of  his  original  subjects  by  introducing  detachments 
of  industrious  traders  from  the  low  country  into  the  Highlands  of  Scotland.'* 
Well  pleased  to  resume  a  favorite  speculation,  and  willing  to  encourage  a 
scheme  that  opened  a  safe  and  peaceful  career  to  the  active  genius  of  his 
new  subjects,  he  hearkened  readily  to  the  application  ;  and,  highly  com- 
mending the  plan,  acceded  to  the  wishes  of  its  projectors.  Letters  patent 
were  issued  [April,  1606]  to  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  Sir  George  Somers,  Rich- 
ard Hakluyt,  and  their  associates,  granting  to  them  those  territories  in  Amer- 
ica lying  on  the  seacoast  between  the  thirty-fourth  and  forty-fifth  degrees  of 
north  latitude,  logetlier  with  all  islands  si'tuated  within  a  hundred  miles  of 
their  shores.     The  design  of  the  patentees  was  declnred  to  be,  "  to  make 


rurcfiiis.     Stnitli.     Stith. 
SiitiiJi      OMmison. 


Smith. 

llobertson's  History  of  Scotland. 


CHAP.  I]  THE   LONDON   AND  PLYMOUTH  COMPANIES. 


45 


liabitalion  and  plantation,  and  to  deduce  a  colony  of  sundry  of  our  people 
into  that  part  of  America  commonly  called  Virginia  "  ;  and,  as  the  main 
a-connnondation  of  the  design,  it  was  proclaimed,  that  '*  so  noble  u  work 
may,  by  the  providence  of  Almighty  Cod,  hereafter  tend  to  the  glory  of  his 
J)ivino  Majesty,  in  propagating  of  Christian  religion  to  such  people  as  yet 
live  in  darkness  and  miserable  ignorance  of  the  true  knowledge  and  worship 
of  Cod,  and  may,  in  time,  bring  the  infidels  and  savages  living  in  those 
parts  to  human  civility,  and  to  a  settled  and  quiet  government."  The 
patentees  were  required  to  divide  themselves  into  two  distinct  companies  • 
the  one  consisting  of  London  adventurers,  whose  projected  establishment 
was  termed  the  first  or  southern  colony  ;  the  second  or  northern  colony 
devolving  on  a  company  composed  of  merchants  belonging  to  Plymouth 
and  Bristol.  ^ 

The  territory  appropriated  to  the  first  or  southern  colony  was  generally 
called  Virginia,  and  preserved  that  appellation  after  the  region  assigned  to 
the  second  or  northern  colony  obtainetl,  in  1G14,  the  name  of  New  Eng- 
land.     The  adventurers  were  authorized  to  transport  to  their  respective  ter- 
ritories as  many  English  subjects  .as  might  bo  willing  to  accompany  them, 
and  to  make  shipments  of  arms  and  provisions  for  their  use,  with  exemp- 
tion from  custom-house  dues  for  the  space  of  seven  years.     The  colonists 
and  thfeir  children  were  to  enjoy  the  same  liberties  and  privileges  in  the 
American  settlements  as  if  they  had  remained  or  been  born  in  England. ^ 
The  administration  of  each  of  the  colonies  was  committed  to  two  boards  of 
council  ;  the  supreme  government  being  vested  in  a  board  resident  in  Eng- 
land, which  was  to  be  nominated  by  the  king,  and  directed  in  its  proceed- 
ings by  such  ordinances  as  he  might  enact ;  and  a  subordinate  jurisdiction, 
which  included  the  functions  of  executive  power,  devolving  on  a  colonial 
council,  which,  like  the  other,  was  to  be  created  by  royal  appointment,  and 
regulated  by  the  apphcation  of  royal  wisdom  and  authority.     Liberty  to 
search  for  and  open  mines  (which,  under  all  die  feudal  governments,  were 
supposed  to  have  been  originally  reserved  to  the  sovereign)  was  conferred 
on  the  colonists,  —with  an  appropriation,  however,  of  part  of  the  mineral 
and  meta  he  produce  to  the  crown  ;  and  the-  more  valuable  privilege  of  un- 
restrained freedom  of  trade  with  other  nations  was  also  extended  to  them. 
1  he  president  and  council  within  the  colonies  were  authorized  to  levy  duties 
on  loreign  commodities,  which,  for  twenty-one  years,  were  to  be  applied 
to  the  use  of  the  adventurers,  and  afterwards  to  be  paid  into  the  royal  ex- 
chequer.'' '' 

The  terms  of  this  charter  afford  an  illustration  both  of  the  character  of 
tiie  monarch  who  granted,  and  of  the  designs  of  the  persons  who  procured 
'V  i»y  neither  of  these  parties  was  the  formation  of  a  solid  and  liberal  so- 
cial establishment  either  aimed  at  or  preconceived.  The  arbitrary  spirit  of 
the  royal  grantor  is  discernible  in  the  subjection  of  the  emigrant  body  to  a 
corporation  m  which  they  were  not  represented,  and  over  whose  delibera- 

r^lnni*!i!^'"°''i"''"  (^•'«"'«'-,f"?gc«ted  ''.V  tlie  cautioH  of  the  prince  or  tho  apprehension  of  the 
n t  of  flrnl?  Ih  ''T°'!  ''"i%  "°'"".'"'  •'■''''"«'''•  *' '«'  '>"^-«^«^  omitted'in  the  most  elabc 
omlont  Inwvl;  .h  f^''^'^^  Ponn«y  van.a,  which  was  revised  and  finally  adjusted  by  that 
eminent  lawyer,  he  Lord  Keeper  Guildford.  When  King  William  was  aLut  to  renew  tho 
n  Fn'Jl„°nH  rr''T"''  ""•'":  '^^  ""''"''  Revolution,  he  was  advised  by  the  ablest  \Zy2 
llX^.\  ■  !  '"  a  provision  was  nugatory  ;  the  law  necessarily  inferring  (they  declared) 
tV'    .  ^^"'' V""  tn^hshmen,  and  both  entitled  to  the  rights,  and  obliged  to  the  dmies^ 


46 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


lions  they  possessed  no  control.     There  is  likewise  -i  manifest  inconsis- 
tency between  the  assurance  of  participation  in  all  the  privileges  of  English- 
men to  the  colonists,  and  the  reservation  of  legislative  power  exclusively  to 
the  king,  the  control  of  whose  legislative  functions  constitutes  the  most  val- 
uable  political  privilege  that  f:nglishmen  enjoy.     But  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  charter  was  unacceptable  to  the  patentees  ;  on  the  contrary 
Its  most  objectionable  provisions  are  not  more  congenial  to  the  character 
ol  the  king,  than  conformable  to  the  views  which  the  leading  members  of 
that  body  plainly  appear  to  have  entertained.  Their  object  (notwithstanding 
the  piore  liberal  designs  professed  in  the  charter)  was  rather  to  explore  the 
continent  and  appropriate  its  supposed  treasures,  by  the  agency  of  a  body 
ol  adventurers  over  whom  they  retained  an  entire  control,  than  to  establish 
a  permanent  and  extensive  settlement.     The  instructions  to  the  provincial 
governors,  which  accompanied  the  second  shipment  despatched  by  the  Lon- 
don company,  demonstrated,  very  disagreeably  to  the  wiser  emigrants  and 
very  injuriously  to  the  rest,  that  the  purposes  with  which  their  rulers  were 
mainly  engrossed  were  not  patient  industry  and  colonization,  but  territorial 
discovery  and  hasty  gain.i     In  furtherance  of  these  views,  the  leadine;  pat- 
entees were  careful,  by  mixing  no  women  with  the  first  emigrants,  to  retain 
the  colony  in  dependence  upon  England  for  its  supplies  of  people,  and  to 
give  Iree  scope  to  the  cupidity  and  the  roving  spirit  of  minds,  undivided  by 
the  cares,  and  unfixed  by  the  habits  and  attachments,  of  domestic  life. 

.1  he  king  appears  to  have  entertained  ideas  somewhat  more  liberal,  and 
a  more  genume  purpose  of  colonization,  than  the  patentees.     While  their 
leaders  w_ere  employed  m  making  preparations  to  reap  the  benefits  of  their 
charter,  James  was  assiduously  engaged  in  the  task,  which  his  vanity  ren- 
dered a  rich  enjoyment,  and  the  well  guarded  hberties  of  England  a  rare 
one,  ot  digesting  a  code  of  laws  for  the  projected  colonies.     This  code 
issued  under  the  sign  manual  and  privy  seal,  enjoined  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel  m  America,  and  the  performance  of  divine  worship,  in  conformity 
Willi  fhe  doctrines  and  rites  of  the  church  of  England.     Legislative  and 
executive  functions  within  the  colonies  were  conferred  on  the  provincial 
councils  ;  but  with  this  controlling  provision,  that  laws  originating   there 
should,  m  substance,  be  consonant  to  the  English  laws  ;  that  they  should 
contniuem  force  only  till  modified  or  repealed  by  the  king  or  the  supreme 
council  in  England  ;  and  that  their  penal  inflictions  should  not  extend  to 
death  or  demembration     Persons  attempting  to  withdraw  the  colonists  from 
their  allegiance  to  the  English  crown  were  to  be  imprisoned  ;  or,  in  cases 
highly  aggravated,  to  be  remitted  for  trial  to  England.     Tumults,  mutiny, 
rebellion,  murder,  and  incest  were  to  be  punished  with  death ;  and  for  these 
oflences  the  culprit  was  to  be  tried  by  a  jury.    Summary  trial  was  appointed 
lor  inferior  inisdemeanours,  and  their  punishment  intrusted  to  the  discretion 
ol  the  president  and  council.    Lands  were  to  be  holden  by  the  same  tenures 
that  prevailed  in  England  ;  but,  for  five  years  after  the  plantation  of  each 
colony,  a  community  of  labor  and  gains  was  to  have  place  among  the  col- 
onists.   Kindness  to  the  heathen  inhabitants  of  America,  and  the  Communi- 
cation of  reh-ious  instruction  to  them,  were  enjoined.     And,  finally,  power 
was  resen«.d  to  the  king  and  his  successors  to  enact  further  laws,  in  consist- 
ence always  with  the  ju-isprudence  of  England.*" 

These  regulations,  in  tlm  innip    arp  r'-^'l^t-i'-lp  tn  thc^  "r>voro;-«  -i 
— "'     —  — 1.,  3i!.  i ..  .j,,.,,,i^.  iQ  jjje  sovereign  wno  com- 

HsiiHith:  ~  » stith.    ' 


CHAP.  I] 


COLONIAL  CODE  OF  JAMES  I. 


47 


posed  them.  No  attempt  was  made,  nor  right  pretended,  to  legislate  for 
the  Indian  tribes  of  America  ;  and  if  the  large  territories,  which  these  sav- 
ages rather  claimed  than  occupied,  were  appropriated  and  disposed  of  with- 
out any  regard  to  their  pretensions,  at  least  no  jurisdiction  ^s  assumed 
over  their  actions,  and,  in  point  of  personal  hberty,  they  were  regarded  as 
an  independent  people.  Ihis  was  an  advance  in  equity  beyond  the  prac- 
tice of  the^  Spariiards  and  the  ideas  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  whose  patent  as- 
serted the  jurisdiction  of  the  English  crown  and  laws  over  the  old  as  well  as 
the  new  inhabitants  of  her  projected  colonies.  In  the  criminal  legislation 
of  this  code,  we  may  observe  a  distinction  which  trial  by  jury  has  enabled 
to  prevail  over  that  ingenious  and  perhaps  expedient  rule  of  ancient  colonial 
policy,  which  intrusted  proconsular  governors  with  the  power  of  inflicting 
death,  but  restrained  them  from  awarding  less  formidable  penalties,  as  more 
likely  to  invite  the  indulgence  of  interest  or  caprice.  If  the  charter,  in  some 
of  its  provisions,  betrayed  a  total  disregard  of  political  liberty,  the  code,  in 
establishing  trial  by  jury,  interwove  with  the  very  origin  of  society  a  habit 
and  practice  well  adapted  to  cherish  the  spirit  and  principles  of  freerlom. 

The  London  company,  to  which  the  plantation  of  the  southern  colony 
ivas  committed,  applied  themselves  promptly  to  the  formation  of  a  colonial 
settlement.  But,  though  many  persons  of  distinction  were  included  among 
iH  the  proprietors,  their  funds  at  first  were  scanty,  and  their  early  efforts  pro- 
portionally feeble.  Three  small  vessels,  of  which  the  largest  did  not  ex- 
ceed a  hundred  tons  burden,^  under  the  command  of  Captain  Newport, 
formed  the  first  squadron  that  was  to  execute  what  had  been  so  long  and  so 
vainly  attempted,  and  sailed  with  a  hundred  and  five  men  destined  to  remain 
in  America.  Several  of  these  emigrants  were  members  of  distinguished 
families,  —  particularly  George  Percy,  a  brother  of  the  Earl  of  Northum- 
berland ;  and  several  were  officers  of  reputation,  —  of  whom  we  mny  notice 
Bartholomew  Gosnold,  the  navigator,  and  Captain  John  Smith,  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  ornaments  of  an  age  that  was  prolific  of  memorable  men. 

Thus,  at  length,  after  a  research  fraught  with  perplexity  and  disappoint- 
ment, but_  assuredly  not  devoid  of  interest,  into  the  ources  of  the  great 
transatlantic  commonwealth,  we  have  reached  the  first  inconsiderable  spring, 
whose  progress,  opposed  by  innumerable  obstructions,  and  nearly  diverted 
in  its  very  outset,  yet  always  continuous,  expands  under  the  eye  of  patient 
inquiry  into  the  grand  and  grandly  spreading  stream  of  American  population. 
After  the  lapse  of  a  hundred  and  ten  years  from  the  discovery  of  the  con- 
tinent by  Cabot,  and  twenty-two  years  after  its  first  occupation  by  Raleigh, 
was  the  number  of  the  Enghsh  colonists  limited  to  a  hundred  and  five  ;  and 
this  handful  of  men  ^  undertook  the  arduous  task  of  peopling  a  remote  and 
uncultivated  land,  covered  with  woods  and  marshes,  and  inhabited  only  by 
tribes  of  savages  and  beasts  of  prey.  Under  the  sanction  of  a  charter, 
which  bereaved  Englishmen  of  their  most  valuable  rights,  and  banished  from 
the  constitution  of  American  society  the  first  principles  of  liberty,  were  the 
foundations  laid  of  the  colonial  greatness  of  England,  and  of  the  freedom 
and  prosperity  of  America.  From  this  period,  or  at  least  very  shortly  after, 
a  regular  and  connected  history  ensues  of  the  progress  of  Virginia  and  New 

England,  the  two  eldest-born  colonies,  whose  example  promoted  the  rise, 
,  -^-.-^^     —  _ __ 

*  "  Never  wns  the  prophetic  dociarntitui,  llmt  '  a  llltJo  one  shaii  becomo  a  thousund,  nnd  si 
small  nnc!  ii  strong  nation,'  more  wonderfully  exemplified  than  in  tho  planting  and  rearing  of 
these  colonics."    General  Casa     Discourse.    (183G.) 


I 


48 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


'^'ii 


4  I 


as  their  shelter  protected  the  weakness,  of  the  others  whicli  were  succes- 
sively planted  and  reared. 

Newport  and  his  squadron,  pursuing,  for  some  unknown  reason,  the  wider 
compass  taten  by  the  first  navigators  to  America,  instead  of  the  less  cir- 
cuitous traft  that  had  been  recently  ascertained,  did  not  accomplish  tlieir 
voyage  in  a  shorter  period  than  four  months  ;  but  its  termination  was  ren- 
dered peculiarly  fortunate  by  the  effect  of  a  storm,  which  defeated  their 
purpose  of  landing  and  settling  at  Roanoke,  and  carried  them  into  the  Bay 
of  Chesapeake.  [April,  1607. J  As  they  advanced  through  its  waters,  they 
easily  perceived  the  advantage  that  would  be  gained  by  establishing  their 
settlement  on  the  shores  of  this  spacious  haven,  replenished  by  the  tributary 
floods  of  so  many  great  rivers,  which  fertilize  the  soil  of  that  extensive  dis- 
trict of  America,  and,  affording  commodious  inlets  into  the  interior  'arts, 
facihtate  their  foreign  commerce  and  mutual  communication.  Newport  first 
landed  on  a  promontory  forming  the  southern  boundary  of  the  bay,  which, 
in  honor  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  he  named  Cape  Henry.  Thence,  coast- 
ing the  southern  shore,  he  entered  a  river  which  the  natives  called  Pow- 
hatan, and  explored  its  banks  for  the  space  of  forty  miles  from  its  mouth. 
Impressed  with  the  superior  convenience  of  the  coast  and  soil  to  which 
they  had  been  tlius  happily  conducted,  the  adventurers  unanimously  deter- 
mined to  make  this  the  place  of  their  abode.  They  gave  to  their  infant 
settlement,  as  well  as  to  the  neighbouring  river,  the  name  of  their  king  ; 
and  Jamestown  retains  the  distinction  of  being  the  oldest  existing  habitation 
of  the  English  in  America.^ 

But  the  dissensions  that  broke  out  among  the  colonists  soon  threatened 
to  deprive  them  of  all  the  advantages  of  their  fortunate  territorial  position. 
Their  animosities  were  inflamed  by  an  arrangement,  which,  if  it  did  not 
originate  with  the  kuig,  at  least  betrays  a  strong  affinity  to  that  ostentatious 
mystery  and  driftless  artifice  which  he  affected  as  the  perfection  of  political 
dexterity.  The  names  of  the  provincial  council  were  not  communicated  to 
the  adventurers  when  they  departed  from  England  ;  but  the  commission 
which  contained  them  was  inclosed  in  a  sealed  packet,  which  was  directed 
to  be  opened  within  twenty-four  hours  after  their  arrival  on  the  coast  of 
Virginia,  when  the  counsellors  were  to  be  installed  in  their  office,  and  to 
elect  their  own  president.  The  disagreements,  incident  to  a  long  voyage 
and  a  band  of  adventurers  rather  conjoined  than  united,  had  free  scope 
among  men  unaware  of  the  relations  they  were  to  occupy  towards  each 
other,  and  of  the  subordination  which  their  relative  and  allotted  functions 
might  imply  ;  and  when  the  names  of  the  council  were  proclaimed,  the  dis- 
closure was  far  from  affording  satisfaction.  Captain  Smith,  whose  superior 
talents  and  spirit  excited  the  envy  and  jealousy  of  his  colleagues,  was  ex- 
cluded from  a  seat  in  the  council  which  the  commission  authorized  him  to 
assume,  and  even  accused  of  traitorous  designs  so  unproved  and  improb- 
able, that  none  less  believed  the  charge  than  the  .persons  who  preferred  it. 
The  privation  of  his  counsel  and  sen'ices  in  the  difficulties  of  their  outset 
was  a  serious  loss  to  the  colonists,  and  might  have  been  attended  with  ruin 
to  the  settlement,  if  his  merit  and  generosity  had  not  been  superior  to  their 
mean  injustice.  The  jealous  suspicions  of  the  individual  who  was  elected 
president  restrained  the  use  of  arms,  and  discouraged  the  construction  of 
fortifications  ;  and  a  misunderstanding  having  arisen  with  the  Indians,  the 

"  •  tjtith.  ^"" 


CHAP.  I.] 


COLONY  AT  JAMESTOWN. 


49 


rere  succes- 


colonists,  unprepared  for  hostilities,  suffered  severely  from  one  of  the  sud- 
den attacks  characteristic  of  the  warfare  of  those  savages.^ 

Newport  had  been  ordered  to  return  with  the  ships  to  England  ;  and  as 
the  time  of  his  departure  approached,  the  accusers  of  Smith,  with  aftected 
clemency,  proposed  that  he  also  should  return  with  Newport,  instead  of 
abiding  a  criminal  prosecution  in  Virginia.  But,  happily  for  the  colony,  he 
scorned  so  to  comproniise  his  integrity  ;  and,  demanding  a  trial,  was  honor- 
ably acquitted,  and  took  his  seat  in  the  council.** 

The  fleet  was  better  victualled  than  the  magazines  of  the  colony  ;  and 
while  it  remained  with  them,  the  colonists  were  permitted  to  share  the  pleiitv 
enjoyed  by  the  sailors.  But  when  Newport  set  sail  for  England,  they  found 
tliemselves  limited  to  scanty  sup])lies  of  unwholesome  provisions  ;  and  the 
sultry  heat  of  the  climate,  and  moisture  of  a  country  overgrown  with  wood, 
(;o()perating  with  the  defects  of  their  diet,  brought  on  diseases  that  raged 
with  fatal  violence.  Before  the  month  of  September,  one  half  of  their  num- 
l)er  had  miserably  perished  ;  and  among  these  victims  was  Bartholomew 
(josnold,  who  planned  the  expedition,  and  materially  contributed  to  its  ac- 
complishment. This  scene  of  suffering  was  embittered  by  internal  dissen- 
sions. The  presidept  was  accused  of  embezzling  the  public  stores,  and 
finally  detected  in  an  attempt  to  seize  a  pinnace  and  escape  from  the  colony 
and  its  calamities.  At  length,  in  the  extremity  of  their  distress,  when  ruin 
tfeemed  to  impend  ahke  from  famine  and  the  fury  of  the  savages,  the  colo- 
nists obtained  a  complete  and  unexpected  deliverance,  which  the  piety  of 
iSmith  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  God  in  suspending  the  passions  and  con- 
trolling the  sentiments  and  purposes  of  men.  The  savages,  actuated  bv 
a  sudden  and  generous  change  of  feeling,  not  only  refrained  from  molesting 
them,  but  gratuitously  brought  to  them  a  supply  of  provisions  so  liberal,  as 
at  once  to  dissipate  their  apprehensions  of  famine  and  hostility.^ 

Resuming  their  spirit,  the  colonists  now  proved  themselves  not  wholly 
unin-tructed  by  their  misfortunes.  In  seasons  of  exigency  merit  is  illus- 
trated, and  the  envy  that  pursues  it  is  absorbed  by  deeper  interest  and  alarm. 
The  sense  of  common  and  urgent  danger  promoted  a  willing  and  even  eager 
submission  to  the  man  whose  talents  were  most  likely  to  extricate  his  com- 
panions from  the  difficulties  with  which  they  were  encompassed.  Every 
eye  was  now  turned  on  Smith,  and  with  universal  acclaim  his  fellow-colonists 
devolved  on  him  the  authority  which  they  had  formerly  shown  so  much 
jealousy  of  his  acquiring.  This  individual,  whose  name  will  be  for  ever 
associated  with  the  foundation  of  civilized  so'ciety  in  America,  was  descend- 
ed of  a  respectable  family  in  Lincolnshire,  and  born  to  a  competent  fortune. 
At  an  early  age,  his  lively  mind  was  deeply  smitten  with  the  spirit  of  adven- 
ture that  prevailed  so  strongly  in  England  during  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  ; 
and  yielding  to  his  inclination,  he  had  passed  through  a  great  variety  of 
military  service,  with  little  pecuniary  gain,  hut  high  reputation,  and  with  the 
acquisition  of  an  experience  the  more  valuable  that  it  was  obtained  without 
exhausting  his  ardor  or  tainting  his  morals."  The  vigor  of  his  constitution 
had  preserved  his  healtli  unimpaired  amidst  the  general  sickness  ;  the  un- 
daunted mettle  of  his  soul  retained  his  spirits  unbroken,  and  his  judgment 
unclouded,  amidst  the  general  misery  and  dejection  ;  and  his  adventurous 
zeal,  which  once  attracted  the  reproach  of  overweening  ambition,  was  now 
felt  to  diffuse  an  animating  glow  of  hope  and  courage  among  all  around  him. 
Smith.  »  Ibid.  a  Ibid.  «  Siitli.  ~ 


I 


VOL.    I. 


50 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


A  strong  sense  of  religion  predominated  over  the  well  proportioned  quali- 
ties of  his  mind,  refreshed  his  confidence,  extended  and  yet  regulated  his 
views,  and  gave  dignity  to  his  character  and  consistency  to  his  conduct. 
Assuming  the  direction  of  the  affairs  of  the  colonists,  he  promptly  adopted 
the  only  policy  that  could  save  them  from  destruction.  Under  his  direc- 
tions, Jamestown  was  fortified  by  such  defences  as  were  sufficient  to  repel 
the  attacks  of  the  savages ;  and  by  dint  of  great  labor,  which  he  was  always 
the  foremost  to  partake,  its  inhabitants  were  provided  with  dwellings  that 
afibrded  shelter  from  the  weather,  and  contributed  to  restore  and  preserve 
their  health.  Finding  the  supplies  of  the  savages  discontinued,  he  put  him- 
self at  the  head  of  a  detachment  of  his  people,  and  penetrated  into  the  in- 
terior of  the  country,  where,  by  courtesy  and  liberality  to  the  tribes  whom 
he  found  well  disposed,  and  vigorous  retribution  of  the  hostility  of  such  as 
were  otherwise  minded,  he  succeeded  in  procuring  a  plentiful  stock  of 
provisions.^ 

In  the  midst  of  his  successes,  he  was  surprised  [1607]  during  an  expe- 
dition by  a  band  of  hostile  savages,  who,  having  made  him  prisoner,  after  a 
gallant  and  nearly  successful  defence,  prepared  to  inflict  on  him  the  usual 
fate  of  their  captives.     His  genius  and  presence  of  mind  did  not  desert  him 
in  this  trying  emergency.     He  desired  to  speak  with  the  sachem  or  chief 
of  the  tribe  to  which  he  was  a  prisoner  ;  and  presenting  him  with  a  mariner's 
compass,  expatiated  on  the  wonderful  discoveries  to  which  this  little  instru- 
ment had  contributed,  —  de&^anted  on  the  shape  of  the  earth,  the  extent  of 
its  lands  and  oceans,  the  course  of  the  sun,  the  varieties  of  nations,  and  the 
singularity  of  their  relative  terrestrial  positions,  which  made  some  of  them 
antipodes  to  the  others.   With  equal  prudence  and  magnanimity  he  refrained 
from  any  expression  of  solicitude  for  his  life,  which  would  infallibly  have 
weakened  or  counteracted  the  effect  which  he  studied  to  produce.     The 
savages  listened  to  him  with  amazement  and  admiration.    They  had  handled 
the  compass,  and  viewing  with  surprise  the  play  of  the  needle,  which  they 
plainly  saw,  but  found  it  impossible  to  touch,  from  the  intervention  of  the 
glass,  were  prepared  by  this  marvellous  object  for  the  reception  of  those 
sublime  and  interesting  communications  by  which  their  captive  endeavoured 
to  gain  ascendency  oyer  their  minds.     For  an  hour  after  he  had  finished  his 
discourse,  they  remained  undecided  ;  till,  their  accustomed  sentiments  re- 
viving, they  resumed  their  suspended  purpose,  and,  having  bound  him  to  a 
tree,  prepared  to  despatch  him  with  their  arrows.    But  a  deeper  impression 
had  been  made  on  their  chief ;  and  his  soul,  enlarged  for  a  season  by  the 
admission  of  knowledge,  or  subdued  by  the  influence  of  wonder,  revolted 
from  the  dominion  of  habitual  barbarity.     This  chief  bore  the  harsh  and 
uncouth  appellation  of  Opechancanough,  —  a  name  which  the  subsequent 
history  of  the  province  was  to  invest  with  no  small  terror  and  celebrity. 
Holding  up  the  compass  in  his  hand,  he  gave  the  signal  of  reprieve  ;  and 
Smith,  though  still  guarded  as  a  prisoner,  was  conducted  to  a  dwelling, 
where  he  was  kindly  tressed  and  plentifully  entertained.?     But  the  strongest 
impressions  pass  away,  >...iie  the  influence  of  habit  remains.     After  vanilv 
attempting  to  prevail  on  their  captive  to  betray  the  English  colony  into  their 
hands,  the  Indians  referred  his  fate  to  Powhatan,  the  emperor  or  princi])al 
sachem  of  the  country,  to  whose  presence  they  conducted  him  in  triumphal 
procession.     This  prince  received  him  with  much  ceremony,  ordered  a 


'  Sniiiii.    Stilli. 


«  ?hid 


CHAP.  I] 


SMITH'S  INFLUENCE  OVER  THE  INDIANS. 


51 


plentiful  repast  to  be  set  before  him,  and  then  adjudged  him  to  suffer  death 
by  having  his  head  laid  on  a  stone  and  beaten  to  pieces  with  clubs.  At 
the  place  appointed  for  his  execution,  Smith  was  again  rescued  from  im- 
pending destruction  by  the  interposition  of  Pocahontas,  the  favorite  daughter 
of  the  king,  who,  finding  her  first^entreaties,  in  deprecation  of  the  captive's 
intended  fate,  disregarded,  threw  her  arms  around  him,  and  passionately 
declared  her  determination  to  save  him  or  die  with  him.  Her  generous  hu- 
manity prevailed  over  the  cruelty  of  her  tribe  ;  and  the  king  not  only  gave 
Smith  his  life,  but  soon  after  sent  him  back  to  Jamestown,  where  the  benefi- 
cence of  Pocahontas  continued  to  follow  him  with  supplies  of  provisions, 
that  delivered  the  colonists  from  famine.^ 

After  an  absence  of  seven  weeks,  Smith  returned  to  Jamestown,  barely 
in  time  to  prevent  the  desertion  of  the  colony.  His  associates,  reduced  to 
the  number  of  thirty-eight,  impatient  of  farther  stay  in  a  country  where  they 
had  met  with  so  many  discouragements,  and  in  which  they  seemed  fated  to 
reenact  the  disasters  of  Roanoke,  were  preparing  to  abandon  the  settlement ; 
and  it  was  not  without  the  utmost  difficulty,  and  alternately  employing  per- 
suasion, remonstrance,  and  even  violent  interference,  that' Smith  prevailed 
on  them  to  relinquish  their  design.^  The  provisions  that  Pocahontas  sent 
to  him  relieved  their  present  wants  ;  his  account  of  the  plenty  he  had  wit- 
nessed among  the  Indians  revived  their  hopes ;  and  he  endeavoured,  by  a 
diligent  improvement  of  the  favorable  impressions  he  had  made  on  the 
savages,  and  by  a  judicious  regulation  of  the  intercourse  between  them  and 
the  colonists,  to  promote  a  coalition  of  interests  and  reciprocation  of  advan- 
tages between  the  two  races  of  people.  His  generous  efforts  were  suc- 
cessful ;  he  preserved  a  steady  and  sufficient  supply  of  food  to  the  English, 
and  extended  his  influence  and  consideration  with  the  Indians,  who  began  to 
respect  and  consult  their  former  captive  as  a  superior  being.  If  Smith  had 
sought  only  to  magnify  his  own  repute  and  establish  his  supremacy,  he  might 
easily  have  passed  with  the  savages  for  a  demi-god  ;  for  they  were  not  more 
averse  to  yield  the  allegiance  which  he  claimed  for  their  Creator,  than  for- 
ward to  tender  an  abject  homage  to  himself,  and  to  ratify  the  loftiest  pre- 
tensions he  might  advance  in  his  own  behalf.  But  no  alluring  prospect  of 
dominion  over  men  could  tempt  him  to  forget  that  he  was  the  servant  of 
God,  or  aspire  to  be  regarded  in  any  other  light  by  his  fellow-creatures. 
With  uncompromising  sincerity  he  labored  to  divert  the  savages  from  their 
idolatrous  superstition,  and  made  them  all  aware,  that  the  man,  whose  su- 
periority they  acknowledged,  despised  their  false  deities,  adored  the  true 
God,  and  obtained  from  his  gracious  communication  the  wisdom  which  they 
?o  highly  commended.  His  pious  exertions  were  obstructed  by  imperfect 
acquaintance  with  their  language,  and  very  ill  seconded  by  the  conduct  of 
his  associates,  which  contributed  to  persuade  the  Indians  that  his  religion 
was  something  peculiar  to  his  own  person.  Partly  from  the  difficulties  of 
his  situation,  partly  from  the  defectiveness  of  his  tuition,  and,  doubtless,  in 
no  small  degree,  from  the  stubborn  blindness  and  wilful  ignorance  of  the 
persons  whom  he  attempted  to  instruct.  Smith  succeeded  no  farther  than 
Heriot  had  formerly  done.  The  savages  extended  their  respect  for  the 
man  to  a  Being  whom  they  termed  "  the  God  of  Captain  Smith  "  ;  and 
some  of  them  acknowledged  that  this  Being  excelled  their  own  deities  in  the 
same  proportion  that  artillery  excelled  bows  and  arrows,  and  sent  deputies 


Smith. 


Ibid. 


52 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   A5IEUICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


to  Jamestown  to  entreat  thai  Smith  would  pray  for  rain,  when  their  idols 
seemed  indisposed  or  unable  to  afford  them  a  supply.'  They  were  willing 
enough  to  believe  in  gods  made  after  the  image  of  themselves,  and  in  the 
partial  control  exercised  by  those  superior  beings  over  the  affairs  of  men  ;, 
but  the  announcement  of  an  Jllmighty  Creator^  the  great  source  and  sup- 
port of  universal  existence,  presented  a  notion  which  their  understandings 
refused  to  admit,  and  required  a  homage  which  their  hearts  revolted  from 
yielding. 

While  the  affairs  of  the  colony  were  thus  prospering  under  the  direction 
of  Captain  Smith,  a  reinforcement  of  a  hundred  and  twenty  men,  with  an 
abundant  stock  of  provisions,  and  a  supply  of  vegetable  seeds  and  instru- 
ments of  husbandry,  arrived  in  two  vessels  from  England.  [1608.]  The 
colonists  were  not  a  little  gladdened  by  this  accession  to  their  comforts  and 
their  force.  But,  unhappily,  the  jealousies,  which  danger  had  restrained 
rather  than  extinguished,  again  budded  forth  in  this  gleam  of  prosperity  ; 
the  ascendency  which  Smith  exercised  over  the  Indians  excited  the  envy 
of  the  very  persons  whose  lives  it  had  preserved  ;  and  his  authority  now 
began  sensibly  to  decline.  Nor  was  it  long  before  the  cessation  of  his  influ- 
ence, together  with  the  defects  in  the  composition  of  tlie  new  body  of  emi- 
grants, gave  rise  to  the  most  serious  snischiefs  in  the  colony  The  restraints 
of  discipline  were  relaxed,  and  a  free  traffic  was  permitted  with  the  natives, 
who  speedily  began  to  complain  of  fraudulent  and  unequal  dealing,  and  to 
exhibit  their  former  animosity.  In  an  infant  settlement,  where  the  views 
and  pursuits  of  men  are  unfixed,  and  habitual  submission  to  authority  has 
yet  to  be  formed,  the  welfare,  and  indeed  the  existence,  of  society  are 
much  more  dependent  on  the  manners  and  moral  character  of  individuals, 
than  on  the  influence  of  laws.  But  in  recruiting  the  population  of  this 
colony,  too  little  consideration  was  shown  for  those  habits  and  occupations 
which  must  everywhere  form  the  basis  of  national  prosperity.  This  arose 
as  well  from  the  peculiar  views  of  the  proprietors,  as  from  the  circumstances 
of  the  English  people,  whose  working  classes  were  by  no  means  over- 
crowded, and  among  whom,  consequently,  the  persons,  whose  industry  and 
moderation  best  qualified  them  to  form  a  new  settlement,  were  the  least  dis- 
posed to  abandon  their  native  country.  Of  the  recruits  newly  arrived  in  the 
colony,  a  large  proportion  were  gentlemen,  a  few  were  laborers,  and  several 
were  jewellers  and  refiners  of  gold.^  Unfortunately,  some  of  this  latter 
description  of  artists  soon  found  an  opportunity  of  exercising  their  pecu- 
liar departments  of  industry,  and  of  demonstrating  (though  too  late)  their 
complete  deficiency  even  of  the  worthless  qualifications  which  they  pro- 
fessed. 

A  small  stream  of  water,  issuing  from  a  bank  of  sand  near  Jamestown, 
was  found  to  deposit  in  its  channel  a  glittering  sediment  which  resembled 
golden  ore,  and  was  fondly  mistaken  for  this  precious  material  by  the  col- 
onists. Only  this  discovery  was  wanting  to  reawaken  the  passions  which 
America  had  so  fatally  kindled  in  the  bosoms  of  her  first  European  invaders 
The  depositation  of  the  ore  was  supposed  to  indicate  the  neighbonrhood 
of  a  mine  ;  every  hand  was  eager  to  exjilorc  ;  and  considerable  qu^n*  tirs 
of  the  dust  were  amassed,  and  subjected  lo  the  scrutiny  of  ignoranr >  pre- 
possessed by  the  strongest  and  most  deceptive  of  human  passions,  and  inis- 
led  by  the  blundering  guidance  of  superficial  pretenders  to  superior  skiif. 


Smith. 


tbid. 


■J 


CHAP.  I.] 


EXPLORATION  OF  CHESAPEAKE   BAY. 


58 


s,  and  in  the 


Smith  exerted  himself  to  disabuse  his  countrymen,  and  vainly  strove  to  stem 

the  torrent  that  threatened  to  devastate  all  their  prospects  ;  assuring  them 

with  prophetic  wisdom,  that  to  addict  themselves  to  mining  in  preference 

to  agriculture  would  be  to  squander  and  misdirect,  in  pursuit  of  a  phantom, 

the  exertions  on  which  their  subsistence  depended.     The  deceptive  dust 

having  undergone  an  unskilful  assay  of  the  refiners  who  had  recently  been 

united  to  the  colony,  was  pronounced  to  be  ore  of  a  very  rich  quality  •  and 

horn  that  moment  the  tliirst  of  gold  was  inflamed  into  a  rage  that  reproduced 

those  extravagant  excesses,  but,  happily,  without  conducting  to  the  same 

profligate  enormities,  for  which  the  followers  of  Cortes  and  Pizarro  were 

distinguished.     All  productive  industry  was  suspended,  and  the  operations 

of  mining  occupied  the  whole  conversation,  engrossed  every  thought   and 

absorbed  every  effort  of  the  colonists.     The  two  vessels  that  had  brought 

their  late  supplies,  returning  to  England,  the  one  laden  with  this  valueless 

dross,  and  the  other  with  cedar  wood,  carried  the  first  remittance  that  an 

English  colony  ever  made  from  America.    [June,  1608.]    They  conveyed 

back  with  them,  also,  some  persons  who  had  been  invested  and  despatched 

to  the  colony  with  the  absurdly  inappropriate  appointments  of  Admirals, 

Kecorders,  Chronologers,  and  Justices  of  the  Peace,  — a  supply  as  useless 

to  America  as  the  remittance  of  dust  was  to  Europe. * 

Foreseeing  the  disastrous  issue  to  which  the  delusion  of  his  associates 
inevitably  tended.  Captain  Smith,  with  the  hope  of  preventing  some  of  its 
most  fatal  consequences,  conceived  the  project  of  extending  his  researches 
far  beyond  the  range  they  had  hitherto  attained,  and  of  exploring  the  whole 
of  the  great  Bay  of  Chesapeake,  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  quali- 
ties and  resources  of  its  territories,  and  promoting  a  beneficial  intercourse 
with  the  remoter  tribes  of  its  inhabitants.     This  arduous  design  he  executed 
with  determined  resolution  and  proportional  success  ;  and  while  his  fellow- 
colonists  were  actively  engaged  in  disappointing  the  hopes  of  England,  and 
rivalling  tlie  sordid  excesses  that  had  characterized  the  adventurers  of 
fepain,  he  singly  sustained  the  honor  of  his  country,  and,  \a  armed  with  a 
nobler  emulation,  achieved  an  enterprise  that  equals  in  dignity,  and  surpasses 
m  value,  the  most  celebrated  exploits  of  the  Spanish  discoverers.     When 
we  compare  the  slenderness  of  the  auxiliary  means  which  he  possessed,  with 
the  magnitude  of  the  results  which  he  accomplished,  with  the  hardships  he 
endured,  and  the  difficuhies  he  overcame,  we  recognize  in  this  achievement 
a  monument  of  human  power  no  less  eminent  than  honorable,  and  willingly 
transmit  a  model  so  well  calculated  to  warm  the  genius,  to  animate  the  forti- 
tude, and  sustam  the  patience  of  mankind.     With  his  friend.  Dr.  Russell, 
and  a  sniall  company  of  followers,  whose  fortitude  and  perseverance  he  was 
frequently  obliged  to  resuscitate,  and  over  whom  he  possessed  no  other  au- 
thority than  the  ascendant  of  a  vigorous  character  and  superior  intelligence, 
he  performed,  in  an  open  boat,  two  voyages  of  discovery,  that  occupied 
more  than  four  months,  and  embraced  a  navigation  of  above  three  thousand 
miles.     With  prodigious  labor  and  extreme  peril,  he  visited  every  inlet  and 
bay  on  both  sides  of  the  Chesapeake,  from  Cape  Charles  to  the  River 
husquehannah  ;  he  sailed  up  many  of  the  great  rivers  to  their  falls,  and 
(hhgently  examined  the  successive  territories  into  which  he  penetrated,  and 
the  various  tribes  that  possessed  them.     He  brought  back  with  him  an  ac- 
count  so  ample,  and  a  plan  so  accurate,  of  that  great  portion  of  the  Ameri 

'  Suiith.    Stithi     ~~~  ~~ 


54 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


can  continent  now  comprehended  in  the  States  of  Virginia  and  Maryland, 
that  all  the  subsequent  researches  which  it  has  undergone  have  only  ex- 
panded and  illustrated  his  original  view  ;  and  his  map  has  been  made  the 
groundwork  of  all  posterior  delineations,  with  no  other  diversity  than  what 
has  inevitably  arisen  from  the  varieties  of  appropriation  and  the  progress  of 
settlements.  But  to  come  and  to  see  were  not  his  only  objects ;  to  win  was 
also  the  purpose  of  his  enterprise,  and  the  effect  of  his  exertions.  In  his 
intercourse  with  the  various  tribes  which  he  visited,  he  displayed  the  genius 
of  a  commander,  in  a  happy  exercise  of  all  those  talents  that  overcome  the 
antipathies  of  a  rude  |)eople,  and  gain  at  once  the  respect  and  good-will  of 
jnankind.  By  the  wisdom  and  hberality  with  which  he  negotiated  and 
traded  with  the  friendly,  and  by  the  courage  and  vigor  with  which  he  re- 
pelled and  overcame  the  hostile,  he  succeeded  in  inspiring  the  savages  with 
the  most  exalted  opinion  of  himself  and  his  nation,  and  paved  the  way  to  an 
intercourse  that  promised  important  advantage  to  the  Virginian  colony. ' 
This  was,  indeed,  the  heroic  age  of  North  America  ;  and  such  were  the 
men,  and  such  the  labors,  by  which  the  first  foundations  of  her  greatness 
.ind  prosperity  were  laid. 

While  this  expedition  was  in  progress,  the  golden  dreams  of  the  colo- 
nists were  finally  dispelled  ;  and  they  had  awaked  to  all  the  miseries  of 
sickness,  scarcity,  disappointment,  and  discontent,  when  Smith  once  more 
returned  to  reanimate  their  drooping  spirits  with  his  success,  and  reheve 
their  wants  by  the  resources  he  had  created.  Shortly  after  his  return,  he 
was  chosen  President  by  the  council  [10th  Sept.  1608]  ;  and  accepting  the 
office,  he  employed  his  influence  so  efficiently  with  the  savages,  that  imme- 
diate scarcity  was  banished,  and  exerted  his  authority  so  vigorously  and  ju- 
diciously in  the  colony,  that  orderly  dispositions  and  industrious  habits 
began  generally  to  prevail,  and  gave  promise  of  lasting  plenty  and  steady 
improvement.'*  If  we  compare  the  actions  of  Smith,  during  the  period  of 
his  presidency,  with  the  enterprise  that  immediately  preceded  his  election, 
it  may  appear,  at  first  view,  that  the  sphere  of  his  exertions  was  contracted 
and  degraded  by  his  official  elevation  ;  and  we  might  almost  be  tempted  to 
regret  the  returning  reasonableness  of  the  colonists,  which,  by  confining  this 
active  spirit  to  the  petty  details  of  their  government,  withdrew  it  from  a 
range  more  congenial  to  its  excursive  vigor,  and  more  fraught  with  general 
advantage  to  mankind.  Yet,  deeper  and  wiser  reflection  suggests,  that  a 
truly  great  mind,  especially  when  united  with  an  ardent  temper,  will  never 
be  contracted  by  the  seeming  restriction  of  its  sphere,  but  will  always  be 
nobly  as  well  as  usefully  employed,  and  not  the  less  nobly  when  it  dignifies 
what  is  ordinary,  and  improves  those  models  that  invite  the  widest  imitation 
and  are  most  level  with  common  opportunities. 

Accordingly,  when  we  examine  the  history  of  that  year  over  which  the 
official  supremacy  of  Captain  Smith  was  extended,  and  consider  the  results 
of  the  multifarious  details  which  it  embraces,^  we  discern  a  dignity  as  real, 
though  not  so  glaring,  as  that  which  invests  his  celebrated  voyage  of  dis- 
covery ;  and  are  sensible  of  consequences  even  more  interesting  to  human 
nature  than  any  which  this  expedition  produced.  In  a  small  society,  where 
no  great  actual  inequality  of  accommodation  could  exist,  where  power  de- 
rived no  aid  from  pomp,  circumstance,  or  mystery,  and  where  he  owed  his 
office  to  the  appointment  of  his  associates,  and  held  it  by  the  tenure  of  their 

'  RusBell.apiid  Smith.     Bngnu!^  tod.  loc.  «  Stilh.  ^"Smith! 


CHAP.  I.] 


SMITH'S  ADMINISTRATION. 


65 


mtiated  and 


ler  greatness 


I 


good-will,'  he  preserved  order  and  enforced  morality  among  a  crew  of  dis- 
solute and  disappointed  men  ;  and  so  successfully  opposed  his  authority  to 
the  allurements  of  indolence,  strengthened  by  their  previous  habits  and  pro- 
moted by  the  community  of  gains  that  then  prevailed,  as  to  introduce  and 
maintain  a  respectable  degree  of  laborious  and  even  contented  industry. 
What  one  governor  afterwards  achieved,  in  this  respect,  by  the  influence 
of  an  imposing  rank,  and  others  by  the  strong  engine  of  martial  law,  iSmitli, 
without  such  aid,  and  with  greater  success,  accomplished  by  the  continual 
aj)i)lication  of  his  own  superior  sense  and  his  preeminent  vigor,  fortitude, 
and  activity.  Some  plots  were  formed  against  him  ;  but  these  he  detected 
and  defeated  without  either  straining  or  compromising  his  authority.  The 
caprice  and  suspicion  of  the  Indians  involved  him  in  numberless  trials  of 
his  temper  and  capacity.  Even  Powliatan,  notwithstanding  the  friendly  ties 
that  united  him  to  his  ancient  guest,  was  induced,  by  the  treacherous  arti- 
fices of  certain  Dutchmen  who  deserted  to  him  from  Jamestown,  first  to 
form  a  secret  conspiracy,  and  then  to  excite  and  prepare  open  hostility  against 
the  colonists.  [1609.]  Some  of  the  fraudful  designs  of  the  royal  savage 
were  revealed  by  the  unabated  kindness  of  Pocahontas  ;  others  were  de- 
tected by  Captain  Smith  ;  and  from  them  all  he  contrived  to  .xtricate  the 
colony  with  honor  and  success,  and  yet  with  little  and  only  defensive  blood- 
shed ;  displaying  to  the  Indians  a  vigor  and  sagacity  they  could  neither  over- 
come nor  overreach,  a  courage  that  excited  their  admiration,  and  a  gen- 
erosity that  carried  his  victory  into  their  minds,  and  reconciled  submission 
with  their  pride.  He  was  ever  superior  to  that  political  timidity,  which, 
in  circumstances  of  danger,  suggests  not  the  proportionate,  but  always  the 
strongest  and  most  violent,  remedy  and  counteraction  ;  and  admirably  illus- 
trated the  chief  political  uses  of  talent  and  virtue,  in  accomplishing  the  ob- 
jects of  government  by  gentler  efforts  and  milder  means  than  stupidity  and 
ferocity  would  have  ventured  to  employ.  In  demonstrating  (to  use  his  own 
words)  "  what  small  cause  there  is  that  men  should  starve  or  be  murdered 
by  the  savages,  tliat  have  discretion  to  manage  them  with  courage  and 'in- 
dustry," ^  he  bequeathed  a  valuable  lesson  to  his  successors  in  the  Ameri- 
can colonies,  and  to  all  succeeding  settlers  in  the  vicinity  of  savage  tribes  ; 
and  in  exemplifying  (though,  it  must  be  confessed,  only  for  a  brief  period 
and  on  a  sniall  scale)  the  power  of  a  civilized  people  to  anticipate  the  cruel 
and  vulgar  issue  of  battle,  and  to  prevail  over  an  inferior  race  without  either 
extirpating  or  enslaving  them,  he  obtained  a  victory,  which  Casar,  with  all 
his  boasted  superiority  to  the  rest  of  mankind,  was  too  ungenerous  to  ap- 
preciate, or  was  incompetent  to  achieve. 

There  was  one  point,  indeed,  in  which  it  must  be  confessed  that  his  con- 
duct to  the  Indians  was  chargeable  with  defect  of  justice  and  good  policy  ; 
though  the  blame  of  this  error  must  be  divided  between  himself  and  the  royal 
patentees  whom  he  served,  and,  in  addition  to  other  palliating   circuni- 

'  It  was  the  testimony  of  his  soldiers  and  lellow-adventurers,  says  Stith,  "that  he  was  ever 
Iruitful  in  expedients  to  provide  for  the  people  under  his  command,  whom  ho  would  never 
sutler  to  want  any  thing  he  either  had  or  could  procure  ;  that  he  rather  chose  to  lead  than 
send  his  soldiers  into  danger  ;  "  tiiat,  in  all  their  expeditions,  ho  partook  the  common  fare, 
and  never  gave  a  commnnd  that  he  was  not  ready  to  execute  ;  "  that  he  would  suffer  want 
rather  than  borrow,  and  starve  sooner  than  not  nay ;  that  he  had  nothing  in  him  counterfeit  or 
shy,  but  was  open,  honest,  and  sincere."  Stitli  adds,  respecting  this  founder  of  civilized  so- 
ciety in  North  America,  what  the  son  of  Columbus  has,  with  a  noble  elation,  recorded  of  hia 
father,  that,  though  habituated  to  naval  manners,  and  to  the  command  of  factious  and  licen- 
tious men,  he  never  was  cuiltv  of  profane  swearine. 

«  Smith.  -      -       - 


I 


56 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


Stances,  was  disguised  by  its  conformity  with  the  universal  and  unreproved 
practice  of  European  settlers  in  barbarous  lands.     No  j)art  of  the  territory 
which  the  first  colonists  occupied  was  purchased  from  the  rude  tribes  who 
considered  themselves  its  owners,  and  who  probably  at  first  regarded  with 
little  apprehension  the  settlement  of  a  handful  of  ttrangers   in  a  valueless 
corner  of  their  wide  domains.     The  col<  ..stv,  iiMliircrent  to  the  opinion  of 
tile  Indians,  seem  not  to  have  conceiv.-tl  Uiat  Uu   i.nportant  right  of  prop- 
erty in  land  could  be  derived  from  orca'^ional  visitations  of  savage  hunters, 
and  readily  took,  as  from  the  hands  of  nature,  the  territory  which  appeared 
to  them  to  have  been  never  reclaimed  from  its  natural  wildness  and  vacancy 
i)y  deliberate  occupation  or  industrial  use.     If  they  had  reasoned  upon  the 
matter,  they  would  probably  have  denied  the  right  of  the  Indian-  'o  defeat 
the  chief  end  of  so  large  a  portion  of  the  earth,  and  n  ,trici  lo  an  ignoble 
ministration  to  the  idle  subsistence  of  a  few  barbarians  the  soil  which  indus- 
try and  virtue  might  render  subservient  to  the  diffusion  of  civility  and  the 
extension  of  life.    But  if  their  views  had  been  regulated  by  the  same  equity 
and  moderation  which  distinguished  the  later  colonists  of  North  America, 
they  might  have  ascertained  that  their  interests  would  be  at  once  more 
cheaply  and  more  humanely  promoted  by  recognizing  than  by  disputing  the 
jiretensions  of  the  Indians ;  who,  if  they  claimed  land  by  a  title  which  Euro- 
peans accounted  unworthy  of  respect,  were  generally  willing  to  part  with  it 
or  a  price  which  Europeans  found  it  very  easy  to  pay.     It  was  reserved 
tor  the  1  uritan  fathers  of  New  England  to  set  the  first  example  of  more  lib- 
eral  justice,  and  more  impartial  consideration  of  the  rights  of  mankind  ;  and, 
by  a  transaction  in  which  sound  pohcy  and  refined  morality  were  happily 
blended,  to  mediate  an  amicable  agreement  between  their  own  wants  and 
the  claim  which  the  Indians  asserted  on  the  territorial  resources  of  the 
country. 

Captain  Smith  was  not  permitted  to  complete  the  work  which  he  so  well 
began.     His  admmistration  was  unacceptable  to  the  company  in  England, 
lorthe  same  reasons  that  rendered  it  beneficial  to  the  settlers  in  America 
ihe  patentees,  very  little  concerned  about  the  establishment  of  a  happy  and 
respectable  community,  had  fondly  counted  on  the  accumulation  of  smiden 
wealth  by  the  discovery  of  a  shorter  passage  than  was  yet  ascertained  to  the 
feouth  feea,  or  the  acqmsition  of  territory  replete  with  mines  of  the  precious 
metals.     In  these  hopes  they  were  hitherto  disappointed  ;  and  the  state  of 
attairs  m  the  colony  was  far  from  betokening  even  the  retribution  of  the  ex- 
penditure which  they  had  already  incurred.     The  prospect  of  a  settled  and 
improving  state  of  society  at  Jamestown,  so  far  from  meeting  thfeir  wishes 
threatened  to  promote  the  growth  of  habits  and  interests  perfectly  incom- 
patible with  them.    Still  hoping,  therefore,  to  realize  their  avarl*  ions  dreams, 
they  conceived  it  necessary  for  this  purpose  to  resume  all  authority  into  their 
o\yn   hands,  and  to  abolish  every  semblance  or  substance  of  jurisdiction 
originating  m  America.       In  order  to  fortify  their  pretensions,  as  well  as  to 
increase   their  funds,  they  now  courted  the  acquisition  of  additional  asso- 
ciates ;  and,  having  strengthened  their  interests  by  the  accession  of  some 
persons  of  the  highest  rank  and  influence  in  the  realm,  they  applied  for  and 
obtauied  a  new  charter.  ^  '■ 

If  the  arbitrary  introduction  of  a  new  charter  {23d  May,  1G091  proclaimed 
an  entire  nisregard  of  the  rights  of  ^he^olonists  who  had  emigraiedon  the 

sTuiih."  ■      ~~  — ■ 


CHAP.  I] 


LORD  DELAWARE  APPOINTED  GOVERNOR. 


67 


i 


faith  of  the  original  one,  the  provisions  peculiar  to  the  new  charter  demon- 
strated no  less  plainly  the  iiit<3ntion  of  restricting  the  civil  liberty  of  those 
emigrants,  and  ii  reasing  their  dependence  on  the  English  patentees.  The 
new  charter  was  granted  to  twenty-one  peers,  ninety-eight  knights,  and  a 
great  multitude  of  doitors,  esquires,  gentlemen,  merchants,  and  citizens,  and 
sundry  of  the  corporations  of  London,  in  addition  to  the  former  adventurers  ; 
and  the  whole  body  was  incorporated  by  the  title  of  "  The  Treasurer  and 
( 'ompany  of  Adventurers  of  the  City  of  London  for  the  first  Colony  in 
\'irginia."  The  boundaries  of  the  colonial  territory  and  the  power  of  the 
corporation  were  enlarged  ;  die  offices  of  president  and  council  in  Virginia 
were  abolished  ;  a  new  council  was  established  in  England,  and  the  com- 
pany empowered  to  fill  all  future  vacancies  in  it  by  election  ;  and  to  this 
council  was  cornmitted  the  power  of  new-rnodelling  the  magistracy  of  the 

olony,  of  enacting  all  the  laws  that  were  to  have  place  in  it,  and  nominating 
all  the  officers  by  whom  these  laws  were  to  be  carried  into  execution. 
Nevertheless,  was  it  still  formally  stipulated  that  the  colonists  and  their  pos- 
terity should  retain  all  the  rights  of  Englishmen.  To  prevent  the  doctrines 
of  the  church  of  Rome  from  gaining  admission  into  the  plantation,  it  was 
announced  that  no  persons  would  be  allowed  to  setde  in  Virginia  without 
having  previously  taken  the  oath  of  supremacy.* 

The  new  council  appointed  Lord  Delaware  governor  and  captain-general 
of  the  colony  ;  and  the  hopes,  .inspired  by  the  distinguished  rank  and  re- 
spectable character  of  this  nobleman,  contributed  to  strengthen  the  company 
by  a  considerable  accession  of  funds  and  associates.  Availing  themselves 
of  the  favorable  disposition  of  the  public,  they  equipped  without  loss  of  time 
a  squadron  of  nine  ships,  and  despatched  them  with  five  hundred  emigrants, 
under  the  command  of  Captain  Newport,  who  was  authorized  to  supers-^de 
the  existing  administration,  and  to  govern  the  colony  till  the  arrival  of  Lord 
Delaware  WMth  the  remainder  of  the  recruits  and  supplies.  But  by  an  un- 
lucky combination  of  caution  and  indiscretion,  the  same  powers  were  sev- 
erally intrusted  to  Sir  Thomas  Gates  and  Sir  George  Somers,  without  any 
adjustment  of  precedence  between  the  three  functionaries  ;  and  they,  finding 
tlieniselves  unable  to  settle  this  point  among  themselves,  agreed  to  embark 
on  board  the  same  vessel,  and  to  be  companions  during  tlie  voyage,  —  thus 
deliberately  provoking  and  eventually  producing  the  disappointment  of  the 
main  object  which  their  association  in  authority  was  intended  to  secure. 
The  vessel  that  contained  the  triumvirate  was  separated  from  the  fleet  by  a 
storm,  and  stranded  on  the  coast  of  Bermudas.^  The  residue  of  the  squad- 
ron arrived  safely  at  Jamestown  ;  but  so  little  were  they  expected,  that, 
when  they  were  first  descried  at  sea,  hey  were  mistaken  for  enemies  ;  and 
this  rumor  gave  occasion  to  a  very  satisfactory  proof  of  the  friendly  dispo- 

'  Stith.    Hazard.  ~  ~~ 

*  It  wns  probably  this  disaster  which  produced  the  only  mention  of  the  American  regions 
wiiich  wo  find  in  the  works  of  Shakspcare.  In  The  Tempest,  which  was  composed  about 
three  years  after  this  period,  Ariel  celebrates  the  stormy  const  of  "the  still  vexed  Bermudas." 
An  allusion  to  the  British  settlements  in  America  is  couciied  in  the  prophecy  which  Shak- 
pponrc,  in  the  last  scene  of  King  Henry  the  Eighth,  imputes  to  Cranmer  respecting  King  James, 

"Wherever  the  bright  sun  ofhenven  shall  shine, 
Hie  honor  and  the  greatness  of  his  name 
Shall  be,  and  ninlic  new  nntioris." 

Milton,  I  believe,  has  never  mentioned  America,  except  in  his  casual  allusion  (Paradise 
Lost,  11.  IX.)  to  the  condition  of  the  Indiiiiis  \\  lieu  thoy  wiTe  first  visited  by  Columbus. 

VOL,    I.  8 


58 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


sition  of  the  Indians,  who  came  forward  with  the  utmost  alacrity,  and  ofiered 
to  tight  in  defence  of  the  colony.' 

These  apprehensions,  which  were  dissipated  by  the  nearer  approach  of 
the  fleet,  gave  place  to  more  substantial  and  more  formidable  evils,  arising 
from  the  composition  of  the  reinforcement  which  it  brought  to  the  colonial 
community.  A  great  proportion  of  the  new  emigrants  consisted  of  profli- 
*  gate  and  licentious  youths,  sent  from  England  by  their  friends  with  the  hope 
of  changing  their  destinies,  or  for  the  purpose  of  screening  them  from  the 
justice  or  contempt  of  their  country  ;  of  indigent  gentlemen,  too  proud  to 
beg,  and  too  lazy  to  work  ;  tradesmen  of  broken  fortunes  and  broken  spirit ; 
idle  retainers,  of  whom  the  great  were  eager  to  rid  themselves  ;  and  de- 
pendents too  infamous  to  be'Kieccntly  protected  at  home  ;  with  others,  like 
these,  more  likely  to  corrupt  and  prey  upon  an  infant  commonwealth  than 
to  improve  or  sustain  it.^  The  leaders  of  this  pernicious  crew,  though  de- 
void of  legal  documents  entithng  them  to  supersede  the  existing  authority, 
proclaimed  the  changes  which  the  constitution  of  the  colony  had  undergone, 
and  hastened  to  execute  that  part  of  the  innovation  which  consisted  in  the 
overthrow  of  the  provincial  presidency  and  council.  Their  conduct  soon 
demonstrated  that  their  title  to  assume  authority  was  not  more  defective  than 
their  capacity  to  exercise  it.  Assuming  supreme  jurisdiction,  they  were 
unable  to  devise  any  frame  of  government,  or  establish  even  among  them- 
selves any  fixed  subordination  ;  sometimes  the  old  commission  was  resorted 
to  ;  sometimes  a  new  model  attempted  ;  and  the  chief  direction  of  affairs 
passed  from  hand  to  hand  in  one  uninterrupted  succession  of  folly  and  pre- 
sumption. The  whole  colony  was  thrown  into  confusion  by  the  revolutionary 
state  of  its  government ;  and  the  Indian  tribes  were  alienated  and  exas- 
perated by  the  turbulence,  injustice,  and  insolence  of  the  new  settlers. 

This  emergency  summoned  the  man,  who  had  already  more  than  once 
rescued  the  settlement  from  ruin,  again  to  attempt  its  deliverance.  The 
call  was  seconded  by  the  wishes  of  the  best  and  wisest  of  the  colonists  ; 
and,  aided  as  much  by  the  vigor  of  his  own  character  as  by  the  cooperation 
of  these  individuals,  Smith  reassumed  his  natural  ascendant  and  official  su- 
premacy, and  declared  his  intention  of  retaining  the  authority  created  by  the 
old  commission,  till  a  legal  revocation  of  it  and  legitimate  successors  to  him- 
self should  arrive.  With  a  determined  vigor  of  purpose,  to  which  instant 
acquiescence  was  yielded,  he  imprisoned  the  chief  promoters  of  tumult ; 
and,  having  restored  order  and  obedience,  endeavoured  to  prevent  a  recur- 
rence of  the  former  mischiefs  by  detaching  from  Jamestown  a  portion  of  the 
new  colonists  to  form  a  subordinate  settlement  at  some  distance  from  this 
place.  This  was  an  unfortunate  step  ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  the  only 
signal  faihng  in  the  policy  of  this  eminent  commander  was  evinced  in  the 
only  instance  in  which  he  seemed  to  distrust  his  own  vigor  and  capacity. 
The  detachments  which  he  removed  from  Jamestown  conducted  themselves 
so  imprudently  as  to  convert  all  the  neighbouring  Indians  into  enemies,  and 
to  involve  themselves  in  continual  difficulty  and  danger.  The  Indians  as- 
sailed him  with  complaints  ;  the  detached  settlers  with  requisitions  of  coun- 
sel and  assistance  ;  and  Smith,  who  never  spent  in  lamenting  misfortunes 
the  lime  that  might  be  employed  in  repairing  them,  was  exerting  himself  with 
nis  usual  activity  and  good  sense  in  redressing  these  disorders,  when  be  re- 
ceived a  dangerous  wound  from  the  accidental  explosion  of  a  mass  of  gun- 
'~Srnhh7~Stilh.  ^'"StTth^ 


CHAP.  II  ] 


ANARCHY   AND   FAMINE  AT  JAMESTOWN. 


69 


powder.  Completely  disabled  by  this  misfortune,  and  destitute  of  surgical 
aid  in  the  colony,  he  was  compelled  to  resign  his  command,  and  take  his 
departure  for  England.*  [Oct.  1G09.]  He  never  returned  to  Virginia  again. 
It  v\as  natural  that  he  should  abandon  with  regret  the  society  which  he  had 
exerted  so  much  admirable  vigor  to  preserve,  —  the  settlement  which  he 
had  conducted  through  difliculties  as  iormidabln  as  those  which  obstructed 
the  infant  progress  of  Carthage  or  Rome,  —  and  the  scenes  which  he  had 
dignified  by  so  much  wisdom  and  virtue.  But  our  sympathy  with  his  regret 
is  abated  by  the  reflection,  that  a  longer  residence  in  the  colony  would 
speedily  have  consigned  him  to  very  subordinate  office,^  and  might  have  de- 
piived  the  world  of  that  stock  of  valuable  knowledge,  and  his  own  character 
ol"  diat  accession  of  fame,'  which  the  publication  of  his  travels  has  secured 
and  perpetuated. 


CHAPTER    II. 


Indian  Cliief's  Daughter  seized  by  Argal  —  married 

yolon 
irginia.  — -iNew  Constitution  of  the  Colony 


1.  —  jriaruai  i^aw  estaoiisiied.  —  Indian  Uliie!  s  daughter  seized  by 

Ife.  —  Right  ofprivate  Property  in  Land  introduced  into  the  Colony 

against  Port  Royal  and  New  York.  —  Tobacco  cultivated  by  the  i 

ibly  of  Representatives  convened  in  Virginia.  —  New  Constitution 


xpedition  of 
Colonists.  —  First 


The  Colony  a  Prey  to  Anarchy —  and  Famine.  — Gates  and  Somcrs  arrive  from  Bermudas.— 
Abandonment  of  the  Colony  determined  upon — prevented  by  the  Arrival  of  Lord  Dela- 
ware. —  His  wise  Administration  —  his  Return  to  England.  —  Sir  Thomas  Dale's  Adminis- 
tration.—  Martial  Law  established.  —  i^-i:"..  r-i. :-.»•'»  i» u. :_..i  u..  a — i       •    ■ 

to  Uolfe 
Argal 

Assemb  ^  .^ 

Introduction  of  Kegro  Slavery.  — Migration  of^oung  Women  from  England  to  Virginia.— 
Dispute  between  the  King  and  the  Colony.  —  Cfonspiracy  of  the  Indians. —  Massacre  of  the 
Colonists.  — Dissensions  of  the  London  Company.  —  The  Company  dissolved. —  The  King 
assumes  the  Government  of  the  Colony  —  his  Death.  —  Charles  the  First  pursues  his  Father's 
arbitrary  Policy.  —  Tyrannical  Government  of  Sir  John  Harvey.  —  Sir  William  Berkeley 
Bjipointed  Governor.  —  The  provincial  Liberties  restored.  —  Virginia  espouses  the  royal 
Cause  —  subdued  by  the  Long  Parliament.  —  Restraints  imposed  on  the  Trade  of  the  Col- 
ony. —  Re  volt  of  the  Colony.  —  Sir  William  Berkeley  resumes  the  Government.  —  Restora- 
tion of  Charles  the  Second. 

At  the  period  of  Smith's  departure,  the  infant  commonwealth  was  com- 
posed of  five  hundred  persons,  and  amply  provided  with  all  necessary  stores 
of  arm-!,  provisions,  cattle,  and  implements  of  agriculture  ;"*  but  the  sense 
to  improve  its  opportunities  was  wanting  ;  and  fortune  forsook  it  along  with 
its  preserver.  For  a  short  time,  the  government  was  administered  by 
George  Percy,  a  man  of  sense  and  probity,  but  devoid  of  tlie  vigor  that 
gives  efficacy  to  virtue  ;  and  the  direction  of  affairs  soon  relapsed  into  the 
same  mischievous  channel  from  which  Smith  had  recalled  it.  The  colony 
was  delivered  up  to  the  wantonness  of  a  giddy  and  distracted  rabble,  and 
presented  a  scene  of  riot,  folly,  and  profligacy,  strongly  invoking  vindictive 
retribution,  and  speedily  overtaken  by  it.  The  magazines  of  food  were  ex- 
hausted with  reckless  improvidence  ;  and  the  Indians,  incensed  by  repeated 
injuries,  and  aware  that  the  man  whom  they  so  much  respected  had  ceased 
to  govern  the  colonists,  not  only  refused  them  all  assistance,  but  harassed 
them  with  continual  hostilities.  Famine  ensued,  and  completed  their 
wretchedness  and  degradation  by  transforming  them  into  cannibals,  and 
compelling  them  to  support  their  lives  by  feeding  on  the  bodies  of  the  In 

'Smith.    Stith. 

*  See  Note  II.,  at  the  end  of  this  volume. 

'  He  became  so  famous  in  England  b('fi)re  his  death,  that  his  adventures  were  dramatized 
and  represented  on  the  stage,  to  nis  own  great  annoyance.     Stith. 

*  Stith 


60 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


<A  i 


dians  whom  they  slew,  and  of  their  own  companions  who  perished  of  hun- 
ger or  disease.  Six  months  after  the  departure  of  Smith,  there  remained 
no  more  than  sixty  persons  alive  at  Jamestown,  still  prolonging  their  mis- 
ery by  a  vile  and  precarious  diet,  but  daily  expecting  its  final  and  fatal 
close. ^ 

In  this  wretched  predicament  was  the  colony  found  by  Gates,  Somers, 
and  Newport,  who  at  length  arrived  from  Bermudas  [May,  1610],  where 
tiie  sliipwreck  they  encountered  had  detained  them  and  their  crew  for  ten 
months.^  The  bounty  of  nature  in  that  happy  region  maintained  them  in 
comfort  while  they  constructed  the  vessels  that  were  to  transport  them  to 
.Jamestown,  and  might  have  supplied  them  with  ample  stores  for  the  use  of 
the  colony  ;  but  they  neglected  these  resources,  and  arrived  almost  empty- 
Jiandcd,  in  the  confident  assurance  of  receiving  from  the  magazines  of  a 
thriving  settlement  the  relief  that  was  new  vainly  implored  from  diemselves 
Ijy  the  Annishing  remnant  of  their  co\intrymen.  Their  disapi)ointment  was 
ecjualled  only  by  the  difficulty  of  ascertaining,  amidst  the  mutual  and  contra- 
dictory accusations  of  the  surviving  colonists,  how  or  by  whose  fault  a  ca- 
lamity so  unexpected  had  actually  come  to  ])ass.  But  there  was  no  time 
for  deliberate  inquiry,  or  adjustment  of  complaints.  It  was  determined  to 
abandon  the  settlement  ;  and  with  this  view  all  the  people  embarked  in  the 
vessels  that  had  arrived  from  Bermudas,  and  set  sail  for  England.  Their 
stores  were  insufficient  for  so  long  a  voyage ;  but  they  hoped  to  obtain  an 
additional  supply  at  the  English  fishing  station  on  the  coast  of  Newi'bund- 
land.  Such  abhorrence  of  the  scene  of  their  misery  was  entertained  by 
some  of  the  colonists,  that  they  importuned  die  commanders  to  burn  the  fort 
and  houses  at  Jamestown.  But  Gates  could  not  discern  in  their  or  his  own 
distresses  any  reason  for  demolishing  the  buildings,  that  might  afford  shelter 
to  future  setders  ;  and  happily,  by  his  interposition,  die  edifices  were  jire- 
served  from  destruction,  and  the  colonists  prevented  from  wreaking  addi- 
tional vengeance  on  tliomselves.^ 

For  it  was  not  the  will  of  Providence  that  diis  litde  commonwealth  should 
perish  ;  the  calamities  with  which  it  had  been  visited  were  appointed  to  pun- 
ish merely,  but  not  entirely  to  destroy  ;  and  the  most  vicious  members  being 
now  cut  off,  and  a  memorable  lesson  afforded  both  to  the  patrons  who  col- 
lect^ and  the  persons  who  compose  such  communities,  a  deliverance  no 
less  signal  was  vouchsafed  by  die  Disposer  of  all  events,  just  when  hope 
was  over,  and  the  colony  advanced  to  the  very  brink  of  annihilation.  Before 
the  fugitives  had  reached  die  mouth  of  James  River,  Uiey  were  met  by 
Lord  Delaware,  who  arrived  with  diree  ships,  contahiing  a  large  supply  of 
provisions,  a  considerable  number  of  new  setders,  and  an  ample  stock  of 
every  implement  and  commodity  requisite  for  defence  or  cultivation.^ 

Lord  Delaware,  who  now  jiresented  himself  as  captain-general  of  the 
colony,  was  singularly  well  fitted  for  the  exigency  of  the  predicament  in 
which  he  was  thus  unexpectedly  placed.     To  an  ancient  lineage  and  a  title 
'  siitii.  '_  » SiiiTtliL  3's„7i,|,;    ^^^^[^ 

*  Tlie  fiito  of  thiH  seUlnrnont  prohiiblv  Niipgrst.vl  to  Lord  niiroii  tlic  flillowiiii^  |);isi^iij{i>  in  lii:^ 
F..1SIIIJ  mi  Plantations.  "It  is  ii  filiiiriicful  niiJ  iiriblcFscd  thing  to  tiikc  tlu'  scimi  of  the  pi'oplc, 
uikI  wicked,  cotid(!inii('d  nicn,  to  lie  tlic  pconlc  witli  wliorii  \vi'  jilfint  ;  iiiid  not  only  so,  hut  it 
H[)oili'!li  tliu  plantation  ;  fiir  they  will  ever  live  like  roi;iiis  iiiid  not  lidl  lo  work,  hut  he  lii/y 
and  do  niiseliief  iin<l  sfiend  victiiid^."  Hriliiin  hoastH  the  honor  ol'  produein^  two  *\\t\\  |iliilo- 
gophers  and  teneliers  ot'  eoloniiil  poli,  y  ih  Lord  lacon  and  Adam  t^milh,  hnl  cuiltiot  claim  the 
liijjher  honor  of  havinir  apjircciated  and  follow  ed  their  counsels. 

••  t^mith.     Stitli. 


v.f 


[BOOK  1. 

3d  of  hiin- 

!  remained 

their  mis- 

and  fatal 

;,  Somers, 
0],  where 
ew  for  ten 
d  them  in 
't  them  to 
the  use  of 
ast  empty- 
izines  of  a 
;hemselves 
itment  was 
nd  contra- 
fault  a  ca- 
is  no  time 
irmined  to 
ked  in  the 
d.  Tlieir 
obtain  an 
Vewfound- 
I'tained  by 
rn  the  fort 
or  l)is  own 
)rd  sheher 
were  })re- 
king  addi- 

dth  should 
ed  to  piin- 
burs  being 
>  who  col- 
erance  no 
lien  hope 
n.  Before 
e  met  by 
Hujjply  of 
;  stock  of 
)n.^ 

ral  of  the 
:'ai*icnt  in 
md  a  title 

iiith. 

issiij{«  in  Ilia 

iIk!  iii'oplc, 
ly  SI),  but  it 
liiif  Ik-  1,'i/v 

Sllrll  jiliilii- 

ot  claim  tlio 


CHAP,  ii] 


ADMINISTRATION  OF  LORD  DELAWARE. 


61 


of  nobility,  in  an  age  when  such  distinctions  were  regarded  with  much  ven- 
eration, he  joined  a  dignified  demeanour,  a  disinterested  character,  respec- 
table sense,  and  a  firm  and  resolute  temper.  The  hope  of  rendering  an 
important  service  to  his  country,  and  the  generous  pleasure  of  cooperating 
in  a  great  design,  had  induced  him  to  exchange  ease  and  splendor  at  home 
for  a  situation  of  the  general  difficulties  of  v>hich  he  was  perfectly  aware  ; 
and  the  same  firmness  and  elevation  of  purpose  preserved  him  undaunted 
and  unperplexed  by  the  astounding  scene  of  calamity  w^hich  he  encountered 
on  his  arrival  in  Virginia.  Stemming  the  torrent  of  evil  fortune,  he  carried 
back  the  fugitives  to  Jamestown,  and  commenced  his  administration  by  at- 
tendance on  divine  worship.  After  some  consultation  respecting  the  affairs 
of  the  settlement,  he  summoned  all  the  colonists  together,  and  addressed 
them  in  a  short,  but  judicious  and  impressive  harangue.  [1611.]  He  re- 
buked the  folly,  sloth,  and  immorality  that  had  produced  such  disasters,  and 
reconnnended  a  return  to  the  virtues  most  likely  to  repair  them  ;  he  declared 
his  determination  not  to  hold  the  sword  of  justice  in  vain,  but  to  punish  the 
first  recurrence  of  disorder  by  shedding  the  blood  of  the  delinquents,  — 
though  he  would  infinitely  rather  (he  protested)  shed  his  own  to  protect  the 
colony  fi-om  injury.  He  nominated  proper  oflicers  for  every  department  of 
the  public  service,  and  allotted  to  every  man  his  particular  station  and  busi- 
ness. This  address  was  received  with  general  applause  and  satisfaction  ; 
and  the  factious  humors  of  the  people  seemed  readily  and  entirely  to  subside 
beneath  the  dignity  and  the  prudent  and  resolute  policy  of  Lord  Delaware's 
administration.  The  deference  which  had  been  reluctantly  extorted  by  the 
superior  talent  and  genius  of  Smith  was  more  willingly  yielded  to  claims  of 
suj)erior  birth  and  hereditary  elevation,  more  palpable' to  the  apprehension, 
and  less  offensive  to  the  self-complacency,  of  the  mass  of  mankind.  By  an 
assiduous  attention  to  his  duty,  and  a  happy  union  of  qualities  fitted  equally 
10  inspire  esteem  and  command  submission.  Lord  Delaware  succeeded  in 
maintaining  peace  and  good  order  within  tlie  settlement,  in  awakening  u 
spirit  of  hidustry  and  alacrity  among  the  colonists,  and  in  again  impressing 
the  dread  and  reverence  of  the  English  name  on  the  minds  of  the  Indians. 
This  promising  beginning  was  all  that  he  was  permitted  to  accomplish. 
Ojipressed  by  disease  occasioned  by  the  climate,  he  was  comi)elled  to  quit 
the  country  ;  having  first  connnitted  the  administration  of  his  authority  to 
(icorge  Percy. 1 

The  restoration  of  Percy  [March,  1611]  to  the  official  dignity  which  ho 
had  once  before  enjoyed  was  attended  with  the  same  relaxation  of  discipline, 
and  would  probably  have  issued  in  a  rciiotition  of  the  same  disorders  that  so 
fatally  distinguished  his  former  presidency,  liut,  happily  for  the  colony,  a 
squadron  that  had  been  despatched  from  England,  before  Lord  ])elaware's 
return,  with  a  supply  of  men  and  provisions,  brought  also  with  it  Sir  Thomas 
Dale,  whose  commission  authorized  him,  in  the  absence  of  that  nobleman,  to 
assume  the  chief  command.  [May,  161  J.]  This  new  governor  found  the 
colonists  ffist  relapsing  into  idleness  and  penury  ;  and  though  iie  exerted 
himself  strenuously,  and  not  unsuccessfully,  to  restore  better  habits,  yet  the 
loss  of  Lord  Delaware's  imposing  rank  and  authoritative  character  was  sen- 
sibly felt.  What  Dale  could  not  accomplish  by  milder  means,  he  was  soon 
ciiahled  to  jiroduce  by  a  system  of  notable  rigor  and  severity.  A  cede  of 
rules  had  been  conipilcd  by  r^ir  Tiiomas  Siiiilli,  ilu;  Hcasurcr  of  ilic  com* 


'  Stitli.     Lord  l)c\a\viiro'a  DiscouTaCf  apud  iSinitii. 


62 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


rt;i 


UJl 


pany  of  patentees,  from  the  martial  law  of  the  Low  Countries,  the  most 
severe  and  arbitrary  frame  of  discipline  then  subsisting  in  the  world  ;  and 
having  been  printed  by  the  compiler  for  the  use  of  the  colony,  but  without 
the  sanction  or  authority  of  the  council,  was  transmitted  by  him  to  the  gov- 
ernor.' This  code  did  not  long  remain  inoperative.  Dale  caused  it  to  be 
proclaimed  as  the  estabHshed  law  of  the  colony ;  and  some  conspiracies 
having  broken  out,  he  administered  its  provisions  with  great  rigor,  but  not 
greater  than  was  judged  by  all  who  witnessed  it  to  have  been  requisite  for 
the  general  safety.  The  wisdom  and  honor  of  the  governor,  who  thus  be- 
came the  first  depositary  of  those  formidable  powers,  and  the  salutary  conse- 
quences that  resulted  from  the  first  exercise  of  them,  prevented  the  alarm 
which  the  introduction  of  a  system  so  arbitrary  and  despotic  was  calculated 
to  provoke.  Dale  was  succeeded  in  the  supreme  command  by  Sir  Thomas 
Gates  [August,  1611],  who  arrived  with  six  vessels,  containing  a  powerful 
veinforcement  to  the  numbers  and  resources  of  the  colonists.  The  late  and 
the  present  governor  were  united  6y  mutual  friendship  and  similarity  of  char- 
acter. Gates  approved  and  pursued  the  system  of  strict  discipline,  and 
steady,  but  moderate,  execution  of  the  martial  code  introduced  by  Dale  ; 
and  under  the  directions  of  Dale,  who  remained  in  the  country  and  cheer- 
fully occupied  a  subordinate  station,  various  detached  parties  of  the  colonists 
began  to  form  additional  settlements  on  the  banks  of  James  River,  and  al 
some  distance  from  Jamcsiown.^ 

An  application  was  now  made  by  the  company  of  patentees  to  the  king, 
for  an  enlargement  oC  their  territory  and  jurisdiction.  The  accounts  they 
received  from  the  periions  who  were  shipwrecked  on  Bermudas,  of  the  fer- 
tility and  convenience  of  this  region,  impressed  them  with  the  desire  of  ob- 
taining possecsior  of  its.  v  sources  for  the  benefit  of  Virginia."  Their  request 
was  granted  without  Jiliiculty ;  and  a  new  charter  was  issued  [March,  1612], 
investing  them  with  all  the  islands  situated  within  three  hundred  leagues  of 
the  Virginian  coast.  Some  innovations  were  made,  at  the  same  time,  in  the 
structure  and  forms  of  the  corporation  ;  the  term  of  exemption  from  customs 
was  prolonged  ;  the  company  was  empowered  to  apprehend  and  remand 
persons  deserting  the  settlement,  in  violation  of  their  engagements  ;  and  in 
order  to  promote  the  advancement  of  the  colony  and  the  reimbursement  of 
the  large  sums  that  had  been  expended  on  it,  license  was  granted  to  open 
lotteries  in  any  part  of  Engla  1.  The  lottery  which  was  established  in  vir- 
tue of  this  license  was  the  first  institution  of  the  kind  that  ever  received 
puWic  countenance  in  England  ;  it  brought  twenty-nine  thousand  pounds  into 
the  treasury  of  the  company,  but  loaded  this  body  with  the  reproarh  of 
defrauding  the  English  people  and  corrupting  their  manners.  The  House 
of  Commons  remonstrated  against  the  permission  of  the  lottery,  as  a  meas- 
ure equally  unconstitutional  and  impolitic  ;  and  the  license  was  shortly  after 
recalled.  Happy  if  their  example  had  been  sooner  copied  by  after  ages, 
and  the  rulers  of  mankind  restrained  from  polluting  their  financial  adminis- 
tration by  a  system  of  chicane,  promoting    n  their  subjects  those  gambling; 

'  Stifh.  Nothing  can  be  rr.orc  funcifu!  or  crronrotis  tlian  Dr.  Robertson'B  account  of  tlio 
introduction  of  this  gysteii),  which,  without  the  slightest  authority,  he  BBcribcs  to  the  ndvieo 
of  Lord  Bacon,  and,  in  ouooHition  to  all  evidence,  represents  as  the  act  of  the  compiiiiy. 
See  Note  III.,  at  x    s  end  of  the  volume. 

*  Smith.    Stith.  .... 

-  Siith.  Abxjut  iais  iinic,  the  patentees  profnotcd  a  subse-fiptior:  amon^  tievO^it  pr-^'^-ni  ••" 
London  for  building  churches  in  the  colony;  but  the  money  was  diycrtca  to  other  purposes; 
and  ■♦.  was  not  till  some  years  aAcr,  that  chiirches  were  built  in  Virginia.      Oldmixon. 


CHAP.  II.] 


MARRIAGE  OF  POCAHONTAS. 


63 


tastes  and  habits  which  dissolve  industry  and  virtue  and  frequently  beget 
even  the  most  atrocious  crimes  !  Notwithstanding  the  eagerness  of  the  com- 
pany to  acquire  the  Bermuda  Islands,  they  did  not  long  retain  this  territory, 
but  sold  it  to  a  junto  of  their  own  associates,  who  were  united  by  royal 
charter  into  a  separate  corporation,  named  the  Somer  Islands  Company.' 

The  colony  of  Virginia  had  once  been  saved,  in  the  person  of  its  own 
deliverer,  Captain  Smith,  by  Pocahontas,  the  daughter  of  the  Indian  king, 
Powhatan.  This  princess  maintained  ever  since  a  friendly  intercourse  with 
the  English,  and  was  destined  now  again  to  render  them  a  service  of  the 
highest  importance.  A  scarcity  prevailing  at  Jamestown,  and  supplies  being 
obtained  but  scantily  and  irregularly  from  the  neighbouring  Indians,  with 
whom  the  colonists  were  often  embroiled.  Captain  Argal  was  despatched 
to  the  shores  of  the  river  Potomac  in  quest  of  a  cargo  of  corn.  Here  he 
learned  that  Pocahontas  was  living  in  retirement  at  no  great  distance  from 
him  ;  and  hoping,  by  possession  of  her  person,  to  obtain  such  an  ascendant 
over  Powhatan  as  would  insure  an  ample  contribution  of  provisions,  he  pre- 
vailed on  her,  by  some  artifice,  to  come  on  board  his  vessel,  and  then  set 
sail  with  her  to  Jamesto\Vn,  where  she  was  detained  in  captivity,  though 
treated  with  ceremonious  respect.  But  Powhatan,  (who,  like  many  Indian 
chiefs,  though  devoid  of  steady,  generous  wisdom,  yet  possessed  a  wild, 
uncultivated  virtue,)  more  indignant  at  such  treachery  than  subdued  by  his 
misfortune,  rejected  with  scorn  the  demand  of  a  ransom  ;  he  even  refused  to 
hold  any  communication  with  the  pirates  who  still  kept  his  daughter  a  pris- 
oner ;  ^  declaring,  nevertheless,  that,  if  she  were  re'stored  to  him,  he  would 
forget  the  injury,  and,  feeling  himself  at  liberty  to  regard  the  authors  of  it  as 
friends,  would  gratify  all  their  wishes.  The  colonists,  however,  were  too 
conscious  of  not  deserving  the  performance  of  such  promises,  to  be  able  to 
give  credit  to  them  ;  and  the  most  injurious  consequences  seemed  likely  to 
arise  from  an  unjust  detention,  which  they  could  no  longer  continue  with 
advantage,  nor  relinquish  with  safety,  —  when,  behold  !  all  at  once  the 
aspect  of  affairs  underwent  a  happy  and  surprising  change.  During  her 
residence  in  the  colony,  Pocahontas,  whose  pleasing  manners  and  other  per- 
sonal attraction^  have  been  celebrated  with  warm  commendation,  gained  the 
affectionK  of  a  young  man  named  Rolfc,  a  person  of  rank  and  estimation 
among  the  planters,  who  offered  her  his  hand,  and,  with  her  approbation 
and  the  cordial  encouragement  of  the  governor,  solicited  the  consent  of  Pow- 
hatan to  their  marriage.  This  the  old  prince  readily  bestowed,  and  de- 
spatched certain  of  his  relatives  to  attend  the  ceremonial,  which  was  per- 
formed with  extraordinary  pomp  [April,  1613],  and  laid  the  foundation  of 
a  firm  and  sincere  friendship  between  his  tribe  and  the  English.  This  for- 
tunate event  also  enabled  the  provincial  government  to  conclude  a  treaty 
with  the  Chickahominies,  a  horde  distinguished  by  their  bravery  and  their 
military  experience,  who  consented  to  acknowledge  themselves  subjects  of 
the  British  monarch,  and  to  style  themselves  henceforward  Englishmen,  — 
to  assist  the  colonists  with  their  arms  in  war,  and  to  pay  an  annual  tribute  of 
Indian  corn. 

But  a  material  change,  which  now  took  place  in  the  social  structure  of 

'  Stiih.    Cfmlmer'a  Annals.  ' 

'  Ho  would  not  deem 

Wipfid  off  in  honorable  keeping  her." 

ShakBpeare. 


^-1 


64 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


the  colony,  contributed  to  fix  its  prosperity  on  foundations  more  solid  and 
respectable  than  the  alliance  or  dependence  of  the  Indian  tribes.  The  in- 
dustry* which  had  been  barely  kept  alive  by  the  severe  discipline  of  martial 
law,  languished  under  the  discouraging  influence  of  that  community  of  prop- 
erty and  acquisition  which  was  introduced,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  provis- 
ions of  the  original  charter.  As  a  temporary  expedient,  this  system  could 
not  have  been  easily  avoided  ;  and  the  censure  which  historians  have  so 
readily  bestowed  on  its  introduction  seems  to  be  far  from  reasonable.  The 
real  impolicy  consisted  in  prolonging  its  duration  beyond  the  time  when  thf 
colony  acquired  stability,  when  modes  and  habits  of  life  were  fixed,  and 
when,  the  resources  of  the  territory  and  the  productive  powers  of  labor 
being  fully  understood,  the  government  might  safely  and  beneficially  have 
remitted  every  individual  to  the  stimulus  of  his  own  interest  and  dependence 
on  his  own  exertions.  But  in  the  outset,  it  was  necessary,  or  at  least  highly 
expedient,  that  the  government  should  charge  itself  with  the  support  of  its 
subjects  and  the  regulation  of  their  industry  ;  and  that  their  first  experimental 
exertions  should  be  referred  and  adapted  to  the  principle  and  governance  of 
a  system  of  partnership.  How  long  such  a  system  may  endure,  when  orig- 
inated and  maintained  by  a  strong  and  general  impulse  of  that  Christian 
spirit  which  directs  every  man  to  regard  his  office  on  earth  as  a  trust,  his 
life  as  a  stewardship,  and  the  superiority  of  his  faculties  and  advantages  at 
designating,  not  the  enlargement  of  his  privileges,  but  the  extent  of  liif^. 
responsibility,  is  a  problem  to  be  solved  by  the  future  history  of  mankind. 
But  as  a  permanent  arrangement,  supported  only  by  municipal  law,  it  at- 
tempts an  impossibility,  and  commits  its  practical  administration  to  an  influ- 
ence destructive  of  its  own  principles.  As  soon  as  the  sense  of  individual 
interest  and  security  begins  to  dissolve  tlie  bond  of  common  hazard,  dan- 
ger, and  difficulty,  the  law  is  felt  to  be  an  irksome  and  injurious  restriction  ; 
but  as  in  theory  it  retains  a  generous  aspect,  and  the  first  symptoms  of  its 
practical  inconvenience  are  the  idleness  and  immorahty  promoted  by  its  se- 
cret suggestions,  it  is  not  surprising  that  rulers  should  seek  to  remove  the 
effect,  while  they  preserve  the  cause,  and  even  by  additional  severities  of 
regulation  extinguish  every  remains  of  the  virtue  which  they  vainly  attempt 

to  rekindle.  .       .        r    /r  • 

Sir  Thomas  Dale,  by  his  descent  from  the  supreme  direction  of  afiairs 
to  a  more  active  participation  in  the  conduct  of  them,  was  enabled  to  dis- 
cern with  accurate  and  unprejudiced  observation  the  influence  of  the  pro- 
vincial laws  on  the  dispositions  of  the  colonists  ;  and  soon  discovered  tho 
violent  repugnance  between  a  system  which  enforced  community  of  prop- 
erty, and  all  the  ordinary  motives  by  which  human  industry  is  sustained. 
He  saw  that  every  one  was  eager  to  evade  or  abridge  his  own  share  of 
labor  ;  that  the  universal  reliance  on  the  common  stock  impaired,  univer- 
sally, tlie  diligence  and  activity  on  which  the  accumulation  of  that  stock  de- 
pended ;  that  the  slothful  trusted  to  the  exertions  of  the  industrious,  while 
the  industrious  were  deprived  of  alacrity  by  impatience  of  supporting  and 
ronfirming  the  slothful  in  their  idleness  ;  and  that  the  most  conscientious; 
citizen  would  hardly  perform  as  much  labor  for  the  community  in  a  week  as 
he  would  for  himself  in  a  day.  Under  Dale's  direction,  the  evil  was  re- 
dressed by  a  radical  and  eflectual  remedy  :  a  sufficient  portion  of  land  \\a> 
divided  into  lots,  and  one  of  them  was  appropriated  to  every  settler.  From 
that  moment,  industry,  freed  from  the  obstruction  that  had  relaxed  its  incite- 


CHAP.  II.]   EXPEDITIONS  AGAINST  POUT  ROYAL  AND  NEW  YORK. 


65 


nients  and  intercepted  its  recompense,  took  vigorous  root  in  Virginia,  and 
the  prosperity  of  the  colony  experienced  a  steady  and  rapid  advancement.' 
(Jates  returning  to  England  [1G14],  the  supreme  direction  again  devolved 
on  Sir  Thomas  Dale,  whose  virtue  seems  never  to  have  enlarged  with  the 
extension  of  his  authority.  He  retained  for  two  years  longer  the  gover- 
nance of  the  colony,  and  in  his  domestic  administration  continued  to  prc- 
niote  its  real  welfare  ;  but  he  launched  into  foreign  operations  little  produr- 
tive  of  advantage,  and  still  less  of  honor.  In  Captain  Argal,  the  author  of 
the  flagitious  but  fortunate  abduction  of  Pocahontas,  he  found  a  fit  instru- 
ment, and  perhaps  a  counsellor,  of  designs  of  a  similar  character. 

The  French  settlers  in  Acadia  had,  in  the  year  1G05,  built  Port  IJoyal, 
in  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  and  ever  since  retained  quiet  possession  of  the  adja- 
cent country,  and  successfully  cultivated  a  friendly  intercourse  wiili  tic 
neighbouring  Indians.  Under  the  pretext,  that  the  French,  by  settling  in 
Acadia,  invaded  the  rights  which  the  English  derived  from  prior  di.scovcrv 
of  the  continent,  was  Argal  despatched,  in  a  season  of  prolbund  pence,  to 
make  a  hostile  attack  on  Port  Royal.  Nothing  could  be  n)ore  unjust  or  mi- 
warranted  than  this  enterprise.  The  Virginian  charters,  with  the  protection 
of  which  alone  Sir  Thomas  Dale  was  intrusted,  did  not  embrace  the  ten  i- 
tory  which  ho  now  presumed  to  invade,  and  which  the  French  had  peaceably 
jiossessed  for  nearly  ten  years  in  virtue  of  .charters  from  their  sovereign', 
Henry  the  Fourth.  Argal  easily  succeeded  in  surprising  and  plundering  a 
community  totally  unsuspicious  of  hostility  and  unprepared  for  defence  ;  but 
as  he  estabhshed  no  garrison  in  the  place,  the  French  soon  resumed  tlieir 
station  ;^  and  the  expedition  produced  no  other  permanent  effect  than  ij.e 
indignant  recollections  it  left  in  the  minds  of  the  French,  and  the  unfavor- 
able impression  it  produced  on  the  Indians.  Returning  from  this  expedition, 
Argal  undertook  and  achieved  a  similar  enterprise  against  New  York,  which 
was  then  in  possession  of  the  Dutch,  whose  claim  was  derived  from  Captain 
Hudson's  visit  to  the  territory  in  1C09,  when  he  commanded  one  of  their 
vessels,  and  was  employed  in  their  service.  Argal,  however,  maintained, 
that,  as  Hudson  was  an  Englishman  by  birth,  the  benefit  of  his  discovery 
accrued  by  indefeasible  right  to  his  native  country  ;  and  the  Dutch  gov- 
ernor, being  unprepared  "for  resistance,  was  compelled  to  submit,  and  dc- 
clare  the  colony  a  dependency  of  l^ngland,  and  tributary  to  Virginia.  But 
another  governor  arriving  shortly  after,  with  better  means  of  asserting  the 
tide  of  his  countrymen,  the  concession  was  retracted,  and  the  English  claim 
successfully  defied.' 

One  of  the  first  objects  which  engaged  the  increasing  industry  of  the  col- 
onists was  the  cidtivation  of  tobacco,  a  confimodity  now  for  the  first  time 
introduced  into  the  commerce  of  Virginia.  [1G15.]  King  .L  >'  s  had  con- 
ceived a  strong  antipathy  to  the  use  of  this  herb,  and  in  his  celebrated  trea- 
tise, entitled  Covnterblasl  against  Tuhuceo,  sj.udeavoured  to  prevail  over 
one  of  the  strongest  appetites  of  human  nature  by  the  'cft-ce  of  pedantic 
fustian,  and  reasoning  as  ridiculous  as  the  lille  of  his  performance.  'J'lu 
issue  of  the  contest  cornjsponded  better  with  his  interests  than  with  his 
wishes  ;  his  testimony,  though  pressed  vi  ith  all  the  vehemence  of  exahed 

'  fimith.'  Stitli.~  "        ~  ""         — — -        _     - 

'  Stith.   F.»r,arhoi'»  Ilistoru  of  A'etc  Fiancr.   I'urchn.s.    Argal's  piratical  attack  on  Porl  Royal 

was  revenged  by  tlic  French  on  Captain  Smith  in  the  following  year     

I  post. 
■'  Stifii.    See  the  tliitury  of  J^ew  Y'ink,  in  Bo,  i   '',  pott. 
VOL.    I.  9  |.« 


See  Book  II.  Chap 


66 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


folly,  could  not  prevail  with  his  subjects  over  the  solicitation  and  evidence 
of  their  own  senses ;  and  thougli  he  summoned  his  prerogative  to  the  aid  of 
his  logic,  and  guarded  the  soil  of  England  from  pollution  by  forbidding  the 
domestic  culture  of  tobacco,  he  found  it  impossible  to  withstand  its  impor- 
tation from  abroad  ;  the  demand  for  it  continually  extended,  and  its  value 
and  consumption  daily  increased  in  England.  Incited  by  the  hopes  of  shar- 
ing a  trade  so  profitable,  the  colonists  of  Virginia  devoted  their  fields  and 
labor  almost  exclusively  to  the  production  of  this  commodity.  Sir  Thomas 
Dale,  observing  their  inconsiderate  ardor,  and  sensible  of  the  danger  of 
neglecting  the  cultivation  of  the  humbler  but  more  necessary  productions  on 
which  the  subsistence  of  the  colony  depended,  interposed  his  authority  to 
check  the  excesses  of  the  planters ;  and  adjusted  by  law  ♦tie  proportion  be- 
tween the  corn  crop  and  the  tobacco  crop  of  every  proprietor  of  land.  But 
after  his  departure  [1616],  his  wise  policy  was  forgotten,  and  his  regulations 
disregarded  ;  and  the  culture  of  tobacco  so  exclusively  occupied  the  atten- 
tion of  the  settlers,  that  even  the  streets  of  Jamestown  were  planted  with 
it,  and  a  scarcity  of  provisions  very  soon  resulted.  The  colonists,  unable 
to  devise  any  better  remedy  for  this  evil  than  the  renewal  of  exactions  from 
the  Indians,  involved  themselves  in  disputes  and  hostilities  which  gradually 
alienated  the  regards  of  these  savages,  and  paved  the  way  to  one  of  those 
schemes  of  vengeance  which  they  are  noted  for  forming  with  impenetrable 
secrecy,  maturing  with  consummate  artifice  and  executing  with  unrelenting; 
ferocity.'  This  fatal  effect  was  not  experienced  till  after  the  lapse  of  one 
of  those  intervals  which  to  careless  eyes  seem  to  disconnect  the  misconduct 
from  the  sufferings  of  nations,  but  impress  reflective  minds  with  an  awful 
conception  of  that  strong,  unbroken  chain,  which,  subsisting  unimpaired  by 
time  or  distance,  preserves  and  extends  the  moral  consequences  of  human 
actions. 

But  a  nobler  produce  than  any  that  her  physical  soil  could  supply  was  to 
grace  the  dawn  of  civilization  in  Virginia  ;  and  we  are  now  to  contemplate 
tb.e  first  indication  of  that  active  principle  of  liberty  which  was  destined  to 
obtain  the  most  signal  development  from  the  progress  of  American  society. 
When  Sir  Thomas  Dale  returned  to  England,  he  committed  the  government 
of  the  province  to  George  Yeardley,  whose  lax  administration,  if  it  removed 
a  useful  restraint  on  the  improvident  cupidity  of  the  planters,  enabled  them 
to  taste,  and  prepared  them  to  value,  the  dignity  of  independence  and  the 
advantages  of  freedom.  He  was  succeeded  [1617^]  by  Captain  Argal,  a 
man  of  considerable  talent  and  activity,  but  sordid,  haughty,  and  tyrannical. 
Argal  provided  with  ability  for  the  wants  of  the  colony,  and  introduced  some 
politic  regulations  of  the  traffic  and  intercourse  with  the  Indians  ;  but  he 

'  Smith.  Stith.  Purchas.  In  the  year  1615,  was  published  at  London  A  true  Discourse  nf 
the  present  State  of  Virginia,  by  Ralph  Hanior,  Secretary  to  the  (Colony;  a  tract  which  has  lo 
Other  merit  but  its  rarity. 

*  In  the  nre.sent  year  died  Pocahontas.  She  had  nrcompanicd  her  husband  on  a  visit  to 
England,  where  her  history  excited  nmch  interest,  and  the  craee  and  dignity  of  her  manners 
no  less  respect  and  admiration.  Captain  Sniith  introduced  h(;r  to  the  queen,  and  her  society 
was  courted  by  the  most  eminent  of  the  nobility.  But  the  mean  soul  of  the  kin^  regarded  hi  r 
with  jealousy ;  and  ho  expressed  alternate  murnuirs  at  Rolfes  presumption  in  marrying  ii 
princess,  and  alarm  at  the  title  that  this  planter's  posterity  might  acquiie  to  the  sovereigntv  of 
Virginia.  Pocahontas  (iie<l  In  the  lliith,  and  witli  the  sentiments  an<i  demeanour,  of  a  Chris- 
tian, ''mith.  ."^tith.  She  left  a  son  by  Rolt'e,  whose  posteritv,  says  a  modern  historian  of 
Vireinia,  "  are  not  unworthy  of  their  royal  ancestry."  Campbtll.  An  American  writer,  in 
17H7,  remarks,  that  the  des*cndants  of  Rolfe  and  Pocahonihs  had  then  lost  all  the  exterior 
characterigticK  4>f  their  In-lian  origin.  Dr.  Smith's  Essay  on  iht  Causes  of  the  Varir.h)  vf  Covi- 
plexmn  atui  I'tgme  tn  ihe  Human  SpecieM. 


CHAP.  II.] 


FIRST  REPRESENTATIVE  LEGISLATURE. 


nd  evidence 

0  the  aid  of 
rbidding  the 
d  its  iinpor- 
nd  its  value 
pes  of  shai- 
sir  fields  and 
Sir  Thomas 
e  danger  of 
iductions  on 
authority  to 
aportion  be- 

land.  But 
i  regulations 
d  the  atten- 
ilanted  vvitli 
lists,  unable 
lotions  from 
;h  gradually 
me  of  those 
inpenetrable 

unrelenting; 
apse  of  one 

misconduct 
th  an  awful 
mpaired  by 
!s  of  huma)i 

pply  was  to 
contemplate 
destined  to 
;an  society, 
government 
"  it  removed 
labled  them 
ice  and  the 
lin  Argal,  a 
tyrannical, 
duced  some 
ns  ;  but  he 

e  Discourse  •>/ 
which  luis  1 1> 

J  on  a  visit  to 
f  her  niiinnpr!^ 
nd  her  soriety 
i,  regarded  her 
n  marry  ill!;  a 
sovereigntv  of 
it,  of"  a  Chris- 
n  liiHtorian  of 
lean  writer,  in 

1  the  exterior 
xrif.tii  of  Com- 


67 


cramped  the  liberty  of  the  people  by  minute  and  vexatious  restrictions,  and 
enforced  a  practical  conformity  to  them  by  harsh  and  constant  exercise  of 
martial  law.  While  he  affected  to  promote  piety  in  others  by  punishing  ab- 
sence from  ecclesiastical  ordinances  with  a  temporary  servitude,  he  post- 
poned, in  his  own  personal  practice,  every  other  consideration  to  the 
acquisition  of  wealth,  which  he  greedily  pursued  by  a  profligate  abuse  of  the 
opportunities  of  his  office,  and  defended  by  the  terrors  of  despotic  authority. 
Universal  discontent  was  excited  by  his  administration  ;  and  the  complaints 
of  the  colonists  at  length  reached  the  ears  of  the  company  in  England. 
Lord  Delaware,  who  had  always  been  the  zealous  friend  and  advocate  of  the 
colonists,  now  consented,  for  their  deliverance,  to  resume  his  former  office, 
and  again  to  undertake  the  direction  of  their  affairs.  He  embarked  for  Vir- 
ginia [1618]  with  a  splendid  train,  but  died  on  the  voyage.  His  loss  was 
deeply  lamented  by  the  colonists.  Yet  it  was,  perhaps,  an  advantageous  cir- 
cumstance for  them,  that  an  administration  invested  with  so  much  pomp  and 
dignity  was  thus  seasonably  intercepted,  and  the  improvement  of  their  affairs 
committed  to  men  whose  rank  and  manners  were  nearer  the  level  of  their 
own  condition  ;  and  it  was  no  less  advantageous  to  the  memory  of  Lord 
Delaware,  that  he  died  in  the  demonstration  of  a  generous  willingness  to  at- 
tetnpt  what  he  would  most  probably  have  been  unable  to  accomplish.  The 
tidings  of  his  death  were  followed  to  England  by  increasing  complaints  of 
the  odious  and  tyrannical  proceedings  of  Argal  ;  and  the  company  having 
conferred  the  office  of  Captain-General  on  Yeardley  [April,  1619] ,  this  nevv 
governor  received  the  honor  of  knighthood,  and  repaired  to  the  scene  of  his 
administration.* 

Sir  George  Yeardley,  on  his  arrival  in  Virginia,  perceived  at  a  single 
glance  that  it  was  impossible  to  compose  the  prevalent  jealousy  of  arbitrary 
power  and  impatience  for  liberty,  or  to  conduct  his  own  administration  in  a 
satisfactory  manner,  without  reinstating  the  colonists  in  full  possession  of 
the  rights  of  Englishmen  ;  and  accordingly,  to  their  inexpressible  joy,  he 
promptly  signified  his  intention  of  convoking  a  provincial  assembly,  framed 
with  all  possible  analogy  to  the  parliament  of  the  parent  state.  This  first 
representative  legislature  that  America  ever  beheld  consisted  of  the  gov- 
ernor, the  council,  and  a  number  of  burgesses,  elected  by  the  seven  existmg 
boroughs,  who,  assembling  at  Jamestown,  in  one  chamber,  discussed  all 
matters  that  concerned  the  general  welfare,  and  conducted  their  delibera- 
tions with  good  sense,  moderation,  and  harmony.  The  laws  which  they 
enacted  were  transmitted  to  England  for  the  approbation  of  the  treasurer  and 
cx)mpany,  and  are  no  longer  extant ;  but  it  is  asserted  by  competent  judges, 
that  they  were,  in  the  main,  wisely  and  judiciously  framed,  though  (as  might 
reasonably  be  expected)  somewhat  intricate  and  unsystematical.^  The  com- 
pany soon  after  passed  an  ordinance  by  which  they  substantially  approved 
and  ratified  the  platform  of  the  Virginian  legislature.  They  reserved,  how- 
ever, to  themselves  the  nomination  of  a  council  of  state,  which  should  assist 
the  governor  with  advice  in  the  executive  administration,  and  should  also 
form  a  part  of  the  legislative  assembly  ;  and  they  provided,  on  the  one  hand, 
'  Smith.    slitiT  ~~ ~ 

»  Rolfc  opurf  Smith  Stith.  The  assembly,  when  they  transmitted  their  own  ordinances 
to  England,  requcgted  the  general  court  to  prepare  a  digest  for  Virginia  of  the  laws  of  Encland. 
and  to  procure  for  it  the  sanction  of  the  kmg^s  approbation,  adding, «» that  it  was  not  fit  that 
jiis  subjecjts  should  be  governed  by  any  other  rules  than  such  aa  received  their  influence  from 
jiiiii.        cnaimers. 


M 


i^' 


=?M 


,  i  '*-! 


■'*.■ .' 


68 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


that  the  decrees  of  the  assembly  should  not  have  the  force  of  law  till  sanc- 
tioned by  the  court  of  proprietors  in  England  ;  and  conceded,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  orders  of  this  court  should  have  no  force  in  Virginia  till  rati- 
fied by  the  provincial  assembly.*  Thus  early  was  planted  in  America  that 
representative  system  which  forms  the  soundest  political  frame  wherem  the 
spirit  of  liberty  was  ever  embodied,  and  at  once  the  safest  and  most  efficient 
organ  by  which  its  energies  are  exercised  and  developed.  So  strongly  im- 
bued were  the  minds  of  Englishmen  in  this  age  with  those  generous  principles 
which  were  rapidly  advancing  to  a  first  manhood  in  their  native  country,  that, 
wherever  they  settled  themselves,  the  institutions  of  freedom  took  root  and 
grew  up  along  with  them.  .      -r  i      • 

It  had  been  happy  for  the  morals  and  the  welfare  of  Virginia,  if  her  in- 
habitants, like  their  countrymen  in  Massachusetts,  had  oftener  elevated  their 
eye  from  subordinate  agency  to  the  great  First  Cause,  and  had  referred, 
ill  p-rticular,  the  signal  blessing  that  was  now  bestowed  on  them  to  the  will 
and  bounty  of  God.  Liberty,  so  derived,  acquires  at  once  its  firmest  and 
noblest  basis  ;  it  becomes  respected  as  well  as  beloved  ;  the  dignity  of  the 
origin  to  which  it  is  referred  influences  the  ends  to  which  it  is  rendered 
instrumental ;  and  all  men  are  taught  to  feel  that  it  can  neither  be  violated 
nor  abused  without  provoking  the  divine  displeasure.  It  is  this  preservative 
principle  alone,  which,  recognizing  in  the  abundance  of  divii.e  goodness  the 
extent  of  the  divine  claims,  prevents  the  choicest  blessings  and  most  ad- 
mirable talents  from  cherishing  in  human  hearts  an  ungrateful  and  counter- 
acting spirit  of  insolence  and  pride,  —  a  spirit  which  led  the  Virginians  too 
soon  to  plant  the  rankest  weeds  of  tyrannic  injustice  in  that  field  where  the 
seeds  of  liberty  had  been  so  happily  sown. 

The  company  of  patentees  had  received  orders  from  the  king  to  transport 
to  Virginia  a  hundred  idle,  dissolute  persons  who  were  in  prison  for  various 
misdemeanours  in  London.**  These  men  were  dispersed  through  the  prov- 
ince as  servants  to  the  planters  ;  and  the  degradation  of  the  provincial 
character  and  manners,  produced  by  'such  social  intermixture,  was  over- 
looked, in  consideration  of  the  advantage  that  was  expected  from  so  man} 
additional  and  unpaid  laborers.  Having  once  associated  felons  with  their 
pursuits,  and  committed  the  cultivation  of  their  fields  to  servile  and  de- 
praved hands,  the  colonists  were  prepared  to  yield  to  the  temptation  ^vhi^ll 
speedily  presented  itself,  and  to  blend,  in  barbarous  combination,  the  char- 
acter of  oppressors  with  the  claims  and  condition  of  freemen.  A  Dutch 
ship,  from  the  coast  of  Guinea,  arriving  in  James  River,  sold  to  the  planters 
a  part  of  her  cargo  of  negroes  ;  ^  and  as  this  hardy  race  was  found  more 
capable  of  enduring  fatigue  in  a  sultry  climate  than  Europeans,  the  number 
was  increased  by  continual  importation,  till  p  large  proportion  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  Virginia  'vas  composed  of  men  degraded  to  a  state  of  slavery  by 
the  selfishness  and  ungrateful  barbarity  of  others,  who,  embracing  the  gifts 
without  imbibing  the  beneficence  of  their  Creator,  turned  into  a  scene  of 
bondage  for  their  fellows  the  territory  that  fiad  proved  a  seat  of  liberty  and 
happiness  to  themselves. 


•  Stith. 

•  Stith. 


Hazard, 
v^i.ui.  Cnptain  Smith  relatfig,  that,  sinre  his  dnparture  from  tlio  colony,  the  numhor  of 
felons  and  vagabondu  tramportcd  to  Virpnia  Iwought  such  evil  report  on  the  place,  "  that  somti 
Old  choose  to  be  han;;cd  ere  th«y  would  ao  thither,  and  were."  "  This  custom,"  says  Stith, 
"  hath  laid  one  of  tht*  finest  eountri«H  in  Amorica  under  the  aniust  scandal  of  boing  another 
Siberia,  fit  only  for  tiie  reception  of  malefactors  and  the  vilest  of  the  people." 
'  Beverly,    'History  of  Virgirua. 


CHAP.  II.]  YOUNG  WOMEN  SENT  OUT  TO  VIRGINIA. 


69 


ivated  their 
d  referred, 
to  the  will 
firmest  and 
;nity  of  the 
s  rendered 
be  violated 
ireservative 
lodness  the 
i  most  ad- 
id  counter- 
rginians  too 
I  where  the 

Lo  transport 

for  various 
h  the  prov- 
i  provnicial 
I  was  over- 
ni  so  many 
i  with  their 
ile  and  dc- 
ation  whirli 
1,  the  char- 

A  Dutch 
the  planters 
bund  more 
the  number 
f  the  inhab- 

slavery  by 
ng  the  gifts 
a  scene  of 

liberty  and 


(he  number  of 
;c, "  that  8omr 
n,"  Bays  Stith, 
boinc  anotlivr 


Another  addition,  at  this  epoch  [1620],  more  productive  of  virtue  and 
felicity,  was  made  to  the  number  of  the  colonists.     Few  women  had  as  yet 
ventured  to  cross  the  Atlantic  ;  and  the  English,  restrained  by  the  pride  and 
rigidity  of  their  character  from  that  incorporation  with  the  native  Americans, 
which  the  French  and  Portuguese  have  found  so  conducive  to  their  inter- 
ests and  so  accordant  with  the  phancy  of  their  manners,  were  generally 
flestitute  of  the  comforts  and  connections  of  married  life.     Men  so  situated 
could  not  regard  Virginia  as  a  permanent  residence,  and  must  have  gener- 
ally entertained  the  purpose  of  returning  to  their  native  country  after  amass- 
ing as  expeditiously  as  possible  a  competency  of  wealth.     Such  views  are 
inconsistent  with  patient  industry,  and  with  those  extended  interests  that 
produce  or  support  patriotism  ;  and  in  conformity  with  the  more  liberal 
policy  which  the  company  now  began  to  pursue  towards  the  colony,  it  was 
proposed  to  send  out  a  hundred  young  women  of  agreeable  persons  and 
respectable  characters,  as  wives  for  the  settlers.  Ninety  were  sent  ;  and  the 
speculation  proved  so  profitable  to  the  company,  that  a  repetition  of  it  was 
suggested  by  the  emptiness  of  their  exchequer  in  the  following  year  [1621], 
when  sixty  more  were  collected  and  transported.     They  were  immediately 
disposed  of  to  the  young  planters,  and  produced  such  an  accession  of  happi- 
ness to  the^colony,  that  the  second  consignment  fetched  a  larger  profit  .ban 
the  first.     The  price  of  a  wife  was  estimated  first  at  a  hundred  and  twenty, 
and  afterwards  at  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of  tobacco,  which  was  then  sold 
at  three  shillings  per  pound.    The  young  women  were  not  only  bought  with 
avidity,  but  received  with  such  fondness,  and  so  comfortably  established, 
that  others  were  invited  to  follow  their  example  ;  and  virtuous  sentiments 
and  provident  habits  spreading  consequently  among  the  planters  enlarged 
the  happiness  and  prosperity  of  the  colony. ^     To  the  blessings  of  marriage 
naturally  succeeded  some  provision  for  the  benefits  of  education.     A  sum 
of  money  was  collected  by  the  English  bishops,  by  direction  of  the  king,  for 
the  mahuenance  of  an  institution  in  Virginia  for  the  Christian  education  of 
Indian  children  ;  and  in  emulation  of  this  good  example,  various  steps  were 
taken  by  the  chartered  company  towards  the  foundation  of  a  provincial  col- 
lege, which  was  afterwards  completed  in  the  reign  of  William  and  Mary. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  rise  of  civil  liberty  in  North  America  was  nearly 
coeval  with  the  first  dispute  between  her  inhabitants  and  the  government  of 
the  mother  country.  With  the  increasing  industry  of  the  colony,  the  produce 
of  Its  tobacco  fields  became  more  than  sufficient  for  the  supply  of  England, 
where,  also,  its  disposal  was  vexatiously  restricted  by  the  wavering  and 
arbitrary  policy  of  the  king,  in  granting  monopolies  for  the  sale  of  it,  in 
limiting  the  quantities  permitted  to  be  imported,  in  appointing  commis- 
sioners "  for  garbhng  the  drug  called  tobacco,"  with  arbitrary  powers  to 
confiscate  vyhatever  portions  of  it  they  might  consider  of  base  quality,  in 
loading  the  importation  with  a  heavy  duty,  and  at  the  same  time  encouraging 
the  import  of  tobacco  from  Spain.  The  company,  harassed  by  these  absurd 
and  iniquitous  restranits,  opened  a  trade  with  Holland,  and  established  ware- 
^'""'^'^^   ^"  ^^'^^  country,   to  which  they  sent  their  tobacco  directly  from 

'  Htitli.  Tliis  int.restiiis  i'ranch  of  traffic  appears  to  have  subsisted  for  many  years,  during 
kvhicli  Its  seeming  indcliciicy  was  qualified  as  far  urn  pos8il)!e  by  the  nice  attention  that  was 
paid  to  the  ascertaiimiont  of  tiie  moral  rharartor  of  every  woman  aspiring  to  become  a  Virginian 
matron.  In  the  year  U>^2,  Iiy  an  order  of  the  provincial  council,  two  young  women,  who  had 
hecn  seduced  during  their  passage  from  England,  were  ordered  to  t)e  sent  back,  as  "  unwor 
iny  to  pr<ij>a(jhT»r  iht;  imt-  of  Virginians."       Bulk  s  History  of  I'irginia. 


70 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


Vircinia  •  but  the  king  interposed  to  prohibit  such  evasion  of  his  revenue, 
aiKrected  that  all  the  ViVginian  tobacco  should  be  brought  in  the  first 
instance  England.  A  Icngtbened  and  acrimonious  dispute  arose  between 
h  feeble  prince  and  the  colonists  and  colonial  corporation.  Against  the 
nonopdy  established  in  England  they  petitioned  the  House  of  Conimons; 
and  in  support  of  their  practice  of  trading  directly  with  Holland,  they  con- 
tended fot  the  general  rfght  of  Englishmen  to  carry  their  commodities  to  the 
be"t  market  they  could  find,  and  pleaded  the  special  concessions  of  their 
own  charter,  which  expressly  conferred  on  them  unlimited  liberty  of  com- 
merce. At  length,  the  dispute  was  adjusted  by  a  conipromise,  hj  which  the 
company  obtained,  on  the  Ene  hand,  the  exclusive  right  of  impor  mg  tobacco 
into  the  kingdom,  and  engaged,  on  the  other,  to  pay  an  import  duty  of  mne- 
nence  per  |ound,  and  to  send  all  the  tobacco  produce  of  Virginia  to  Lng- 

^Vt  a  cloud  had  been  for  some  time  gathering  over  the  colony ;  and  even 
the  circumstances  that  were  supposed  most  forcibly  to  betoken  the  prosperity 
of  its  inhabitants  were  provoking  the  storm  to  burst  with  more  destructive 
violence  on  their  heads.   [1622.]  At  peace  with  the  Indians,  unapprehensive 
of  danger,  and  wholly  engrossed  with  the  profitable  cultivation  of  a  fertile 
territory,  their  increasing  numbers  had  spread  so  extensively  over  the  prov- 
ince, that  no  fewer  than  eighty  settlements  were  already  formed  ;  and  every 
planter  being  guided  only  by  his  own  peculiar  taste  or  convenience  m  t l.o 
choice  of  his  dwelling,  and  more  disposed  to  shun  than  to  court  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  his  countrymen,  the  settlements  were  universally  straggling  and 
uncompact.2     !„  the  Scriptures,  which  the  colonists  received  as  their  rule 
of  faith,  they  might  have  found  ample  testimony  to  the  cruelty  and  treachery 
of  mankind  in  their  natur^^l  state ;  and  from  their  own  experience  they  might 
have  derived  the  strongest  assurance  that  the  savages,  by  whom  they  were 
surrounded,  could  claim  no  exemption  from  this  testimony  of  divine  wisdom 
and  truth.     Yet  the  pious  labors  by  which  the  evil  dispositions  ol  the  Indians 
might  have  been  corrected,  and  the  military  exercises  and  precautions   )\ 
which  their  hostility  might  have  been  overawed  or  repelled,  were  equa  ly 
neglected  by  the  English  settlers  ;  who,  moreover,  contributed  to  foster  the 
martial  habits  of  the  Indians  by  employing  them  as  hunters,  and  en  argcd 
their  resources  of  destrtiction  by  furnishing  them  with  firearms,  which  they 
very  soon  learned  to  use  with  dexterity. 

The  marriage  of  the  planter  Rolfe  to  the  Indian  princess  did  not  pro- 
duce as  lasting  a  friendship  between  the  English  and  the  Indians  as  at  first 
it  seemed  to  portend.  The  Indians  eagerly  courted  a  repetition  of  sucl. 
intermarriages,  and  were  painfully  stung  by  the  disdain  witn  which  [he  Eng- 
lish receded  from  their  advances  and  declined  to  become  the  husbands  ot 
Indian  women.^  The  colonists  forgot  that  they  had  inflicted  this  mortihca- 
tion  •  but  it  was  remembered  by  the  Indians,  who  sacredly  embalmed  tlio 
memory  of  every  affront  in  lasting,  stern,  silent,  and  implacable  resentment. 
Earnest  recommendations  were  repeatedly  transmitted  from  England  to  at- 
tempt the  conversion  of  the  savages  ;  but  these  recommendations  were  not 
promoted  bv  a  sufficient  attention  to  the  means  requisite  for  their  accom- 
plishment. Yet  neither  were  they  entirely  neglected  by  the  colonists,  borne 
attempts  at  conversion  were  made  by  a  few  pious  individuals,  and  the  suc- 
-_._  5r  - —  „f  tV^  ..nfU.jl^tofllir  mino-ntpH  thfi  ralnniitv  that  was  impending; ; 

nstitiil  «^Smilh.  '  Bovcrly. 


CHAP   11] 


INDIAN  CONSPIRACY. 


71 


I  revenue, 
[1  the  first 
3  between 
gainst  the 
onimons  ; 
they  con- 
ties  to  the 
IS  of  their 
jr  of  coni- 
which  the 
ig  tobacco 
ty  of  nine- 
ia  to  Eng- 

;  and  even 
prosperity 
destructive 
prehensive 
)f  a  fertile 
r  the  prov- 

and  every 
!nce  in  the 

the  neigh- 
agghng  and 
3  their  rule 
i  treachery 
they  might 

they  were 
ine  wisdom 
the  Indians 
cautions  by 
ere  equally 
0  foster  tho 
id  enlarged 
which  they 

id  not  pro- 
is  as  at  first 
Jon  of  such 
ch  the  Eng- 
tiusbands  of 
is  mortifica- 
ibalmed  the 

resentment, 
igland  to  at- 
)ns  were  not 
.heir  accom- 
nists.  Some 
ind  the  suc- 

impending ; 


but  these  efforts  were  feeble  and  partial,  and  the  majority  of  the  colonists 
lied  contented  themselves  with  cultivating  a  friendly  acquaintance  with  the 
Indians,  who  were  admitted  at  all  times  into  their  habitations,  and  encour- 
aged to  consider  themselves  as  welcome  and  familiar  guests.' 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  this  free  and  unguarded  intercourse,  that  the  In 
dians  formed,  with  deliberate  and  unrelenting  ferocity,  the  project  of  a 
general  massacre  of  the  English,  which  devoted  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  in  the  colony  to  indiscriminate  destruction.  On  the  death  of  Pow- 
hatan, in  1618,  the  power  of  executing  a  scheme  so  daring  and  sanguinary 
devolved  on  a  man  fully  capable  of  contriving  and  conducting  it.  Opeclian- 
canough,**  who  succeeded  to  the  supremacy  over  Powhatan's  tribe,  and 
possessed  extensive  influence  over  all  the  neighbouring  tribes  of  Indians, 
was  distinguished  by  his  ferocious  bravery,  his  j)rufound  dissimulation,  and 
a  rancorous  hatred  and  jealousy  of  the  European  colonists  of  America.  He 
renewed  the  pacific  treaty  which  Powhatan  had  concluded  with  the  English 
after  the  marriage  of  his  daughter  to  Rolfe  ;  and  he  availed  himself  of  the 
security  into  which  it  lulled  the  objects  of  his  guile,  to  prepare,  during  the 
four  ensuing  years,  his  friends  and  followers  for  the  several  parts  they  were 
to  act  in  the  tragedy  which  he  contemplated.  The  tribes  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  English,  except  those  on  the  eastern  shore,  whom,  on  account 
of  their  peculiar  friendship  for  the  colonists,  he  did  not  venture  to  intrust 
with  the  design,  were  successively  gained  over  ;  and  all  cooperated  with 
that  singlemindedness  and  intensity  of  purpose  characteristic  of  Indian  con- 
spiracy and  revenge. 

In  a  tribe  of  savage  idolaters,  the  passions  of  men  arc  left  unpurified  by 
the  influence  of  religion,  and  unrestrained  by  a  sound  or  elevated  morality  ; 
and  human  character  is  not  subjected  to  that  variety  of  impulse  and  impres- 
sion which  it  undergoes  in  civilized  society.  The  sentiments  inculcated  and 
the  dispositions  contracted  in  the  family  and  in  the  tribe,  in  domestic  edu- 
cation and  in  public  life,  in  all  the  scene?  through  which  the  savage  passes 
from  his  cradle  to  his  grave,  are  the  same  ;  there  is  no  contest  of  opposite 
principles  or  conflicting  habits  to  dissipate  his  mind  or  weaken  its  determina- 
tions ;  and  the  system  of  morals  (if  it  may  be  so  called)  which  he  em- 
braces being  the  offspring  of  wisdom  and  dispositions  congenial  to  his  own, 
a  seeming  dignity  of  character  arises  from  the  simple  vigor  and  consistency 
of  that  conduct  which  his  moral  sentiments  never  disturb  or  reproach. 
The  understanding,  neither  refined  by  variety  of  knowledge,  nor  elevated 
by  the  grandeur  of  its  contemplations,  instead  of  moderating  the  passions, 
becomes  the  abettor  of  their  violence  and  the  instrument  of  their  gratifi- 
cation. Men  in  mahce,  but  children  in  sense,  it  is  in  the  direction  of  fraud 
and  cunning  that  the  intellectual  faculties  of  savages  are  chiefly  exercised  ; 

'  Stith.  To  the  remonstrances  of  certain  of  the  coIonistB  against  their  worship  of  demons, 
some  of  the  Indians  of  Virginia  answered  that  thoy  believed  in  two  great  spirits,  a  good  and 
an  evil  one ;  that  the  first  was  a  being  sunk  in  the  enjoyment  of  everlasting  indolence  and 
case,  who  showered  down  blessings  indiscriminately  from  the  skies,  leaving  men  to  scramble 
for  them  as  they  chose,  and  totally  indiflerent  to  their  concerns ;  but  that  tlie  second  was  an 
active,  jealous  spirit,  whom  they  were  obliged  to  propitiate,  that  he  might  not  desiroy  them. 
Oldmixon. 

'  Stith.  Opechancanough,  in  imitation  of  the  English,  had  built  himself  a  house,  nnd  was 
so  delighted  with  the  contrivance  of  a  lock  and  key,  that  he  used  to  spend  whole  hours  in 
repetition  of  tho  experiment  of  locking  and  unlocking  his  door.  Oldmixon.  No  European 
invention  struck  the  Indians  witii  greater  surprise  than  a  windmill ;  they  came  from  vast  dis- 
tances and  cnntin'.ied  for  mnx.y  dnvs  fn  gsizc  at  a  phenomenon  wfiich  thoy  asrribed  to  tho 
agency  of  demons  shut  up  within  tfio  edifice. 


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Sciences 
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23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER, NY.  M580 

(716)  872-4503 


72 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOX  I. 


and  so  perfect  is  the  harmony  between  their  passions  and  their  reflective 
powers,  that  the  same  delay  which  would  mitigate  the  ferocity  of  more 
cultivated  men  serves  but  to  hai-den  their  cruelty  and  mature  the  devices 
ior  Its  mdulgence.  Notwithstanding  the  long  interval  that  elapsed  between 
tiie  lormation  and  the  execution  of  their  present  enterprise,  and  the  continual 
intercourse  that  subsisted  between  them  and  the  white  people,  the  most  im- 
penetrable secrecy  was  preserved  by  the  Indians  ;  and  so  fearless,  consum- 
mate,  and  inscrutable  was  their  dissimulation,  that  they  were  accustomed. to 
borrow  boats  from  the  English  to  cross  the  river,  in  order  to  concert  and 
communicate  the  progress  of  their  design.* 

An  incident,  which,  though  minute,  is  too  curious  to  be  omitted,  con- 
I  Uibuted  to  stimulate  the  malignity  of  the  Indians  by  the  sense  of  recent 
provocation.  There  was  a  man,  belonging  to  one  of  the  neighbciuring  tribes 
called  Nemattanow,  who,  by  his  courage,  craft,  and  good  fortune,  had  at' 
tamed  the  highest  repute  among  his  countrymen.  In  the  skirmishes  and 
engagements  which  their  former  wars  with  the  English  produced,  he  had  ex- 
posed his  person  with  a  bravery  that  commanded  the  esteem  of  his  fellow- 
savages,  and  an  impunity  that  excited  their  astonishment.  They  iudged  him 
.nvunerable,  whom  so  many  dangers  had  vainly  menaced  ;  and  the  obiect 
ol  their  admiration  partook,  or  at  least  encouraged,  the  delusion  which 
seemed  to  invest  Inm  with  a  character  of  sanctity.  Opechancanough,  the 
king  whether  jealous  of  this  man's  reputation,  or  desirous  of  embroiling  tlie 
J'.nglish  vviUi  the  Indians,  sent  a  message  to  the  governor  of  the  colony,  to 
acquaint  him  that  he  was  welcome  to  cut  Nemattanow's  throat.  Such  an 
indication  of  Indian  character  as  this  message  afforded  ought  to  have  oro- 
duced  alarm  and  distrust  in  the  minds  of  the  English. 

Though  the  offer  of  the  king  was  disregarded,  his'  wishes  were  not  dis- 
appointed.  Nemattanow,  having  murdered  a  planter,  was  shot  by  one  of 
the  servants  of  his  victim,  who  attempted  to  arrest  him.  In  the  pangs  of 
death  the  pride,  but  not  the  vanity,  of  the  savage  was  subduedf  and  he 
entreated  his  captors  that  they  would  never  reveal  that  he  had  been  slain  by 
a  bullet,  and  that  they  would  bury  him  among  the  English,  in  order  that  the 
secret  of  his  mortality  might  remain  imknown  to  his  countrymen.  The  re- 
quest seems  to  mfer  the  possibility  of  complying  with  it ;  and  the  colonists, 
of  d,iT/I  "'''  f  sleeted,  had  cause  to  regret  their  imprudent  disclosure 
of  the  fa  al  event.  The  Indians  were  filled  with  grief  and  indignation  ; 
and  Opechancajiough  inflarned  their  anger  by  pretending  to  share  it.  Having 
nSn  r'f    ?rtf  "r«  ^^'  S«  satisfaction  of  his  subjects,  he  affected 

£  So  7.  '  ^cf'r  i  ^''  ""T^"^'  ^"'^  ^^^"--^^  the  English  that  the 

sky  should  sooner  fall  than  the  peace  be  broken  by  him.  But  the  plot  mean- 
while advanced  to  maturity,  and,  at  last,  the  day  was  fixed  on  which  all 
the  l.nglish  settlements  were  at  the  same  instant  to  be  attacked.      The 

and  that  they  might  be  enabled  to  occupy  their  posts  without  awakening 
suspicion,  some  carried  presents  of  fish  and  game  into  the  interior  of  the 
colony,  and  others  presented  themselves  as  guests  soliciting  the  hospitahty 
ot  their  English  friends,  on  the  evemng  before  the  massacre.  As  the  fatal 
hour  drew  nigh,  the  rest,  under  various  pretences,  and  with  every  demon- 

SLh     Z  P??^"^  i"'^"''  ^''^^^^^^^  «round  the  detached  and 

unfortified^  settlements  of  the  colo^-  sts  ;  and  not  a  sentiment  of  compunction, 

>  stitiT  ~ • 


1 


CHAP.  II.] 


MASSACRE  OF  THE   COLONISTS. 


73 


compunction, 


not  a  rash  expression  of  hate,  nor  an  unguarded  look  of  exultation,  had 
occurred  to  disconcert  or  disclose  the  purpose  of  their  well  disciplined 
ferocity. 

The  universal  destruction  of  the  colonists  seemed  unavoidable,  and  was 
prevented  only  by  the  consequences  of  an  event,  which,  perhaps,  at  the 
time  when  it  came  to  pass,  appeared  but  of  little  importance  in  the  colony, 
—  the  conversion  of  an  Indian  to  the  Christian  faith.  On  the  night  before 
the  massacre,  this  man  was  made  privy  to  it  by  his  own  brother,  who  com- 
municated to  him  the  command  of  his  king  and  his  countrymen  to  share  in 
the  exploit  that  would  enrich  their  race  with  spoil,  revenge,  and  glory.  A 
summons  of  such  tenor  was  well  calculated  to  prevail  with  a  savage  mind  ; 
but  a  new  mind  had  been  given  to  this  convert,  and,  as  soon  as  his  brother 
left  him,  he  revealed  the  secret  to  an  EngHsh  gentleman  in  whose  house  he 
was  residing.  This  planter  immediately  carried  the  tidings  to  Jamestown, 
from  whence  the  alarm  was  communicated  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  nearest 
settlements  barely  in  time  to  prevent  the  last  hour  of  the  perfidious  truce  from 
being  the  last  hour  of  their  lives. 

But  the  intelligence  came  too  late  to  be  more  generally  available.  At 
mid-day  [March  22,  1622],  the  moment  they  had  previously  fixed  for  this 
execrable  deed,  the  Indians,  raising  a  hideous  yell,  rushed  at  once  on  the 
English  in  all  their  scattered  settlements,  and  butchered  men,  women,  and 
children  with  undistinguishing  fury,  and  every  aggravation  of  brutal  outrage 
and  enormous  cruelty.  In  one  hour,  three  hundred  and  forty-seven  persons 
were  cut  off,  almost  without  knowing  by  whose  :hands  they  fell.  The 
slaughter  would  have  been  still  greater,  if  the  English,  even  in  some  of  those 
districts  where  no  prior  intimation  of  the  danger  was  received,  had  not  flown 
to  their  arms  with  the  energy  of  despair,  and  defended  themselves  so  bravely 
as  to  repulse  the  assailants,  who  almost  universally  displayed  a  cowardice 
proportioned  to  their  malignity,  and  fled  at  the  sight  of  weapons  in  the  hands 
even  of  the  women  and  boys,  whom,  unarmed,  they  were  willing  to  attack 
and  destroy.^  « 

The  colony  received  a  wound  no  less  deep  and  dangerous  than  painful 
and  alarming.  Six  of  the  members  of  council,  and  several  of  the  wealthiest 
and  most  respectable  inhabitants,  were  among  the  slain  ;  at  some  of  the  set- 
tlements, the  whole  of  their  population  had  been  exterminated  ;  at  others, 
a  remnant  escaped  the  general  destruction  by  the  efibrts  of  despair  ;  and  the 
survivors  were  impoverished,  terrified,  and  confounded  by  a  stroke  that  at 
once  bereaved  them  of  friends  and  fortune,  and  showed  that  they  were 
surrounded  by  legions  of  foes,  whose  enmity  was  equally  furious  and  unac- 
countable, and  whose  treachery  and  ferocity  seemed  to  proclaim  them  a  race 
of  fiends  rather  than  men.**  To  the  massacre  succeeded  a  vindictive  and 
exterminating  war  between  the  English  and  the  Indians  ;  and  the  colonists 
were  at  last  provoked  to  retaliate,  in  some  degree,  the  fraudful  guile  and 
indiscriminate  butchery  to  which  they  found  themselves  exposed  from  their 
savage  adversaries.  But  though  a  dire  necessity  was  thought  to  justify  or 
palliate  such  proceedings,  yet  the  warfare  of  the  colonists  was  never  wholly 
divested  of  honor  and  magnanimity.     During  this  disastrous  period,  the 

~  '"Smith.    SUthl  ~~~~~ 

*  It  was  long  before  the  British  colonists  were  properly  on  their  guard  against  the  ferorit> 
of  a  race  of  men  capable  of  such  consummate  treachery,  nnd  who  "  in  anger  wore  not,  like 
fhfi  KnjgrliHh,  talkative  nntl  hoistnrous,  hut  Bullen  find  revrngeful."  TrunibuU's  History  of 
Connerlicut. 

VOL.    I.  10  0 


74 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


design  that  had  been  entertained  of  erecting  a  provincial  college,  and  various 
other  public  institutions,  was  abandoned  ;  the  number  of  the  settlements  was 
reduced  from  eighty  to  six  ;  and  an  afflicting  dearth  of  food  was  added  to 
the  horrors,  of  war.' 

When  the  tidings  of  this  calamity  arrived  in  England,  they  excited,  along 

with  much  disapprobation  of  the  defective  policy  and  inefficient  precautions 

of  the  company  of  patentees,  a  lively  i.ympathy  with  the  danger  and  distress 

of  the  colonists.     By  order  of  the  king,  a  supply  of  arms  from  the  Tower 

was  delivered  to  the  treasurer  of  the  company  ;  and  vessels  were  despatched 

to  Virginia  with  cargoes  of  such  articles  as  were  supposed  to  be  most 

urgently  needed  by  the  planters.    Captain  Smith  submitted  to  the  company 

the  project  of  an  enterprise,  which  he  offered  to  conduct,  for  the  deliverance 

of  the  colony  by  the  expulsion  or  subjugation  of  all  the  Indian  tribes  within 

the  limits  of  its  territory  ;  but,  though  generally  approved,  this  proposition 

was  not  embraced.     By  dint  of  the  exertions  which  they  made  in  their  own 

behalf,  and  with  the  assistance  of  the  supplies  that  were  actually  sent  to 

them  from  England,  the  colonists  were  barely  saved  from  perishing  with 

hunger  ;  and  it  was  not  till  after  a  severe  and  protracted  struggle  that  they 

were  enabled  again  to  resume  their  prosperous  attitude  and  extend  their 

settlements. 

More  amj)le  supplies  and  more  active  assistance  would  have  been  afforded 
to  the  colonists  from  England,  but  for  the  dissensions  among  the  associate^ 
patentees,  which  had  been  spreading  for  a  considerable  period,  and  at  this 
juncture  attained  a  height  that  portended  the  dissolution  of  the  corporation. 
1  he  company  was  now  a  numerous  body  ;  and  being  composed  of  able  and 
enterprising  men,  drawn  from  every  class  in  society,  it  presented  a  faithful 
abstract  of  tlie  state  of  poHtical  feeling  in  the  nation  ;  while  its  frequent 
courts  or  convocations  afforded  a  convenient  arena  in  which  the  parties 
tried  tlieir  strength,  and  a  conspicuous  organ  by  which  the  prevailing  senti- 
ments were  publicly  expressed.     At  every  meeting,  the  transaction  of 
business  was  impeded  Uy  the  intrigues  of  rival  factions,  and  tb'.^  debates 
were  inflamed  and  protracted  by  tlieir  mutual  altercations.     At  every  elec- 
tion, the  offices  of  the  company  were  courted  and  contested  by  the  most 
emment  persons  in  the  state.    [1623.]    The  controversy  between  the  court 
party  and  the  country  party,  that  was  spreading  through  the  nation,  was  the 
more  readily  insinuated   into  those   assemblies   from  the  infrequency  and 
irregularity  of  its  more  legitimate  theatre,  the  parliament ;  and  various  cir- 
cumstances in  the  history  of  the  company  tended  to  nourish  and  extend  this 
source  of  disagreement.    Many  of  the  proprietors,  dissatisfied  with  the  slen- 
der pecuniary  returns  that  the  colony  afforded,  were  disposed  to  blame  the 
existing  officers  and  administration  for  the  disappointment  of  their  hopes  ; 
not  a  few  resented  the  procurement  of  the  third  charter,  the  exclusion  of 
Captain  Smith  from  the  direction  which  he  had  shown  himself  so  well  quali- 
fied to  exercise,  and  the  insignificance  to  which  they  were  themselves  con- 
demned  by  the  arbitrary  multiplication  of  their  associates  ;  and  a  small  but 

.k'-5L''^i-.^*  '^M*  I  am  al)lo  to  discover,  the  retaliatory  deceit  practised  by  the  colonists  in 
their  hostihtios  with  the  Indians  has  been  greatly  overrated.  Stith  seems  to  have  mistaken 
expressions  of  indignation  for  deliberate  designs;  and  Dr,  Robertson  has  extended  the  error  !)v 
mistaking  purposes  for  the  execution  tlicy  never  attained.  The  contemplation,  and  especiall'v 
the  endurance,  of  cruelty  tends  to  make  men  cruel ;  yet,  to  the  honor  of  the  colonists,  bo  it 
renjembered,  that,  even  during  the  prevalence  of  those  hostilities,  a  deliberate  attempt  to  cozon 
and  subjugate  a  body  of  Indians  was  punished  by  the  provincial  magistrates,  as  an  ofTenro 
against  the  law  of  God  and  against  national  faith  iind  honor.      Stith 


CHAP.  II] 


DISSENSIONS  OF  THE  LONDON  COMPANY. 


76 


active  and  intriguing  party,  who  had  labored  with  earnest  though  unsuccess- 
ful rapacity  to  engross  the  offices  of  the  company,  to  usurp  the  direction  of 
its  affairs,  and  to  convert  the  colonial  trade  into  their  own  private  patrimony 
by  monopolies  which  they  bought  from  needy  courtiers,  naturally  ranged 
themselves  on  the  side  of  the  court,  and  by  their  complaints  and  misrepre- 
sentations to  the  king  and  privy  council,  sought  to  interest  them  in  the 
quarrels,  and  infect  them  with  suspicions  of  the  corporation.' 

At  the  head  of  this  least  numerous,  but  most  dangerous,  faction  was  the 
notorious  Captain  Argal,  who  continued  to  display  a  rancorous  enmity  to 
the  liberty  of  Virginia,  and  hoped  to  compass  by  intrigue  and  servility  at 
home  the  same  objects  which  he  had  pursued  by  tyranny  and  violence 
abroad.     Sir  Thomas  Smith,  too,  the  treasurer,  whose  predilection  for  ar- 
bitrary government  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  remark,  encouraged 
every  complaint  and  proposition  that  tended  to  abridge  the  privileges  of 
the  colonial  company,  and  give  to  its  administration  a  less  popular  form. 
The  arbitrary  changes  which  the  charter  had  already  undergone  taught  all 
the  malcontents  to  look  up  to  the  crown  for  such  farther  alterations  as 
might  remove  the  existing  obstructions  to  their  wishes  ;  and  the  complete 
ascendency  which  the  country  party  acquired  in  the  company  strongly  dis- 
posed the  king  to  suppress  or  modify  an  institution  that  served  to  cherish 
public  spirit  and  disseminate  liberal  opinions.     "  These  Virginia  courts," 
said  Gondemar,  the  Spanish  envoy,  to  him,  '•  are  but  a  seminary  to  a 
seditious  parliament."  ^     The  hardihood  which  the  rt  mpany  had  displayed 
in  their  late  dispute  with  him  concerning  the  restrictions  of  their  tobacco 
trade,  the  freedom  with  which  his  policy  was  canvassed  in  their  delibera- 
tions, the  firmness  with  which  his  measures  were  resisted,  and  the  contempt 
they  had  shown  for  the  supremacy  alike  of  his  wisdom  and  his  prerogative 
in  complaining  to  the  House  of  Commons,  eradicrtpd  frorn  the  mind  of 
James  all  that  partiahty  to  an  institution  of  his  own  creation,  that  might 
have  sheltered  it  from  the  habitual  dislike  and  suspicion  with  which  he  re- 
garded the  authority  of  a  popular  assembly.     But  the  same  qualities  that 
rendered  them  odious  caused  them  also  to  appear  somewhat  formidable, 
and  enforced  some  attention  to  equitable  appearances,  and  deference  to 
public  opinion,  in  wreaking  his  displeasure  upon  them.     The  murmurs  and 
discontents,  that  were  excited  in  England  by  the  intelligence  of  the  Indian 
massacre,   furnished  him  with  an  opportunity  which  he  did  not  fail  to 
improve. 

Having  signalized  his  own  concern  for  the  misfortunes  of  the  colony  by 
sending  thither  a  quantity  of  military  stores  for  defence. against  the  Indians, 
and  by  issuing  his  mandate  to  the  company  to  desjpatch  an  ample  supply  of 
provisions,  he  proceeded  to  institute  an  inquiry  into  the  cause  of  the  dis- 
aster. A  commission  was  addressed  to  certain  of  the  English  judges  and 
other  persons  of  distinction  [Majr,  1623],  requiring  them  to  examine  thu 
transactions  of  the  corporation  smce  its  first  estabhshment  ;  to  report  to 
the  privy  council  the  causes  of  the  late  disasters  ;  and  to  suggest  the  ex 
pedients  most  likely  to  prevent  their  recurrence.^  In  order  to  obstruct  the 
efforts  of  the  company  for  their  own  vindication,  and  to  discover,  if  pos 

'  Suth.  .      ,  . , .  „  ,     , 

»  So  powerful  were  the  leaders  of  the  Virginia  Companv,  that  they  could  influence  the  eleo 
tion  of  members  of  parliament.    Under  their  auspices,  the  pious  and  accomplished  Nicholaii 
Ferrar  obtained  about  this  time  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  where  he  distinguished  him- 
self by  an  active  opposition  to  the  court.      Bishop  Turner's  Life  of  Ferrar. 

'  Stith. 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


sible,  additional  matter  of  accusation  against  them,  measures  the  most  arbi- 
trary  and  tyrannical  were  employed.    All  their  charters,  books,  and  papers 
were  seized  ;  two  of  their  principal  officers  were  arrested  ;  and  all  letters 
from  the  colony  intercepted  and  carried  to  the  privy  council.     Among  the 
witnesses  whom  the  commissioners   examined  was  Captain   Smith,  who 
might  reasonably  be  supposed  to  entertain  little  favor  for  the  existing  con- 
stitution of  the  corporate  body  by  which  his  career  of  honor  and  usefulness 
had  been  abridged,  and  who  had  recently  sustained  the  mortification  of  see- 
ing  his-  offer  to  undertake  the  defence  of  the  colony  and  subjugation  of  the 
Indians  treated  with  thankless  disregard,  notwithstanding  the  approbation  of 
a  numerous  party  of  the  proprietors.    Smith  ascribed  the  misfortunes  of  the 
CO  ony,  and  the  slenderness  of  the  income  derived  from  it,  to  the  neglect  of 
mihtary  precautions  ;  the  rapid  succession  of  governors,  which  stimulated 
the  rapacity  of  their  dependents ;  the  multiphcity  of  public  offices,  by  which 
industry  was  loaded  and  revenue  absorbed  ;  and,  in  general,  to  the  inability 
ot  a  numerous  body  of  men  to  conduct  an  undertaking  so  complex  and 
arduous.  He  recommended  the  annexation  of  the  colony  and  of  all  the  juris- 
diction over  It  to  the  crown,  the  introduction  of  greater  simplicity  and 
economy  mto  the  frame  of  its  government,  and  an  abandonment  of  the  prac- 
tice of  transporting  criminals  to  its  shores. i 

The  commissioners  did  not  communicate  any  of  their  transactions  to  the 
company,  who  first  learned  the  tenor  of  the  report  in  which  they  were  so 
deeply  mterested  from  an  order  of  the  king  and  privy  council  [Oct.  16231 
signifying  to  them  that  the  misfortunes  of  Virginia  had  arisen  from  theii- 
misgovernment,  and  that,  for  the  purpose  of  repairing  them,  his  Maiestv 
had  deterramed  to  revoke  the  old  charter  and  issue  a  new  one,  which  should 
commit  the  powers  of  government  to  fewer  hands.     In  order  to  quiet  the 
minds  ol  the  colonists,  it  was  declared,  that  private  property  would  be  re- 
spected,  and  that  all  past  grants  of  land  should  remain  inviolate.     An  in- 
stant surrender  of  their  privileges  was  required  from  the  company  ;  and,  in 
default  of  their  voluntary  submission,  they  were  assured  that  the  king  was 
prepared  to  carry  his  purpose  into  effect  by  process  of  law.^ 

1  his  arbitrary  mandate  produced  so  much  astonishment  and  consternation 
in  the  assembled  court  of  proprietors,  that  a  long  and  deep  silence  ensued 
on  Its  communication.     But,  resuming  their  spirit,  they  prepared  to  defend 
their  rights  with  a  resolution,  which,  if  it  could  not  avert  their  fate,  at  least 
redeemed  their  character.     They  indignantly  refused  to  sanction  the  stigma 
affixed  to  their  conduct  by  the  order  of  council,  — to  surrender  the  fran- 
chises which  they  had  legally  obtained,  and  on  the  faith  of  which  they  had 
expended  large  sums  of  money,  —  or  to  consent  to  the  abolition  of  a  popu- 
Jar  frame  of  government,  and  deliver  up  their  countrymen  in  Virginia  to  the 
dominion  of  a  narrow  junto  wholly  dependent  on  the  pleasure  of  the  king. 
In  these  sentiments  they  persisted,  in  spite  of  all  the  threats  and  promisei 
by  which  their  firmness  was  assailed  ;  and  by  a  vote,  which  only  the  dissem 
oi  Captmn^rgal  and  seven  of  his  adherents  rendered  not  quite  unanimous, 

'  Smith.  -— ^ , ___ 

opln^ed''lheVr'lIi^JiVNnHi''A  "^''"^^  diotracfions,  pay«  S.i.h,  tl.nt  the  Muses  for  the  first  tim, 
^iAiJI •  .  P       .    .  ""  Amor.cn.     One  of  the  ei.r  est     ferBrv  nroduitioiis  i.f  the  Fn.rlish 

of  Zvir.fni"„  r"""'""""  °^.^''"^''  ^""""^/"'---  nm.le  in  ]fi2:jL^Gt"  go  Sandy  trSe^ 
tl  Flry.%  i".h  Snu  »V'r  m""^";''''  P"''"^j'-' J"  England,  and  dedicated  lo  Char  ci 
■^.Thni^in.  J^    'I     "  Inudable  performance  for  the  times"  ;  and  Drvden  mentionfi  the 

••.thor  with  respect,  in  the  prefoce  to  his  own  Iramlations  from  Ovid.  ^        "'"ntions  the 


CHAP.  II  ] 


THE   LONDON  COMPANY   DISSOLVED. 


77 


they  finally  rejected  the  king's  proposal,  and  declared  their  resolution  to 
defend  themselves  against  any  process  he  might  institute. 

Incensed  at  their  audacity  in  disputing  his  will,  James  directed  a  writ  of 
quo  warranto  to  be  issued  against  the  company,  in  order  to  try  the  validity 
of  their  charter  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.  With  the  hope  of  coUectuig 
additional  proofs  of  their  maladministration,  he  despatched  envoys  to  Vir- 
ginia to  inspect  the  condition  of  the  colony,  and  attempt  to  form  a  parly 
there  opposed  to  the  pretensions  of  the  court  of  proprietors.  The  royal 
envoys,  finding  the  provincial  assembly  embodied  [Feb.  1624],  endeavoured, 
with  great  artifice  and  magnificent  promises  of  military  aid,  and  of  other 
marks  of  royal  favor,  to  detach  the  members  from  their  adherence  to  the 
company,  and  to  procure  an  address  to  the  king,  expressive  of  "  their 
willingness  to  submit  to  his  princely  pleasure  in  revoking  the  ancient  pa- 
tents." But  their  exertions  were  unsuccessful.  The  assembly  transmitted 
a  petition  to  ,the  king,  professing  satisfaction  to  find  themselves  the  objects 
of  his  especial  care,  beseeching  him  to  continue  the  existing  form  of  gov- 
ernment, and  sohcitiug,  that,  if  the  promised  military  force  should  be  granted 
to  them,  it  might  be  placed  undeir  the  control  of  their  own  governor  and 
house  of  representatives.  The  domestic  legislation  of  this  assembly  was 
marked  by  the  same  good  sense  and  patriotism  that  appeared  in  the  recep- 
tion which  it  gave  to  the  propositions  of  the  royal  envoys.  The  governor 
was  deprived  of  an  arbitrary  authority  which  he  had  hitherto  exercised.  It 
was  ordained  that  he  should  no  longer  have  power  to  withdraw  the  inhabit- 
ants from  their  private  labors  to  his  own  service,  and  should  levy  no  taxes 
but  such  as  the  provincial  assembly  should  impose  and  appropriate.  White 
women  still  were  objects  of  great  scarcity  and  value  in  the  colony  ;  and  to 
obviate  an  inconvenience  that  resulted  from  the  ardor  and  frequency  of 
amorous  competition,  a  fine  was  now  imposed  on  any  woman  who  should 
encourage  the  matrimonial  addresses  of  more  than  one  man  at  a  time. 
Various  wise  and  judicious  laws  were  enacted  for  the  improvement  of  man- 
ners and  the  reformation  of  abuses,  the  support  of  divine  worship,  the  secu- 
rity of  civil  and  political  freedom,  arid  the  regulation  of  traffic  with  tlie 
Indians. 

Whether  the  suit  between  the  king  and  the  company  was  prosecuted  to 
a  judicial  consummation  or  not  is  a  point  involved  in  some  uncertainty,  and  ' 
truly  of  very  little  importance ;  for  the  issue  of  a  suit  between  the  king  and 
any  of  his  subjects  at  that  period  could  never  be  doubtful  for  a  moment. 
Well  aware  of  this,  the  company  looked  to  |>rotection  more  efficient  than 
the  ordinary  administration  of  law  could  afford  them,  and  presented  a  peti- 
tion to  the  House  of  Commons,  detailing  a  part  of  their  grievances,  and 
soliciting  redress.  Their  application  was  entertained  by  the  House  so 
cordially,  that,  had  it  been  sooner  presented,  it  might  have  saved  the  cor- 
poration ;  but  they  had  deferred  this  last  resource  till  so  late  a  period  of  the 
session  of  parliament,  that  there  was  not  time  to  enter  on  the  wide  inquiry 
which  their  complaints  demanded  ;  and  fearing  to  exasperate  the  king  by 
preferring  odious  charges  which  they  could  not  hope  to  substantiate,  they 
confined  their  pleading  before  the  House  to  the  discouragement  of  their 
tobacco  trade,  which  the  Commons  without  hesitation  pronounced  a  national 
grievance.  They  gained  no  other  advantage  from  their  complaint,  nor  from 
their  limitation  of  it.  The  king,  enraged  at  their  presumption,  and  en- 
couraged by  their  timidity,  launched  forth  a  proclamation  [July,  1624], " 

Q* 


78 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


suppressing  the  courts  of  the  company,  and  committing  the  temporary 
administration  of  the  colonial  affairs  to  certain  of  his  privy  counsellors  in 
conjunction  with  Sir  Thomas  Smith  and  a  few  other  persons.'  The  Vir- 
ginia  Company  was  thus  dissolved,  and  its  rights  and  privileges  reabsorbed 
by  the  crown. 

James  did  not  suffer  the  powers  he  had  resumed  to  remain  long  unex- 
ercised.    He  issued  a  special  commission  [August,  1624],  appointing  a 
governor  and  twelve  counsellors,  to  whom  the  direction  of  the  affairs  of  the 
colony  was  intrusted.     No  mention  was  made  in  this  instrument  of  a  house 
of  representatives  ;  a  circumstance,  which,  coupled  with  the  subsequent  im- 
position of  royal  proclamations  as  legislative  edicts,  has  led  almost  all  the 
historians  of  Virginia  into  the  mistaken  belief,  that  the  provincial  assembly 
was  abolished  along  with  the  mercantile  corporation.     The  commission  as- 
cribes the  disasters  of  the  settlement  to  the  popular  shape  of  its  late  gov- 
ernment, which  intercepted  and  weakened  the  beneficial  in^uence  of  the 
king's  superior  understanding  ;  and,  in  strains  of  the  most  vulgar  and  lus- 
cious self-complacency,  prospectively  celebrates  the  prosperity  which  the 
colony  must  infallibly  attain,  when  blessed  with  the  directer  rays  of  royal 
wisdom.    With  this  demonstration  of  hostility  to  the  political  liberties  of  the 
colonists,  there  was  mingled  some  favorable  attention  to  their  commercial 
interests  ;  for,  in  consequence  of  the  remonstrance  of  the  English  parliament 
[Sept.  1624],  James  renewed  by  proclamation  his  former  prohibition  of  the 
culture  of  tobacco  in  England,  and  restricted  the  importation  of  this  com- 
modity to  Virginia  and  the  Somer  Isles,  and  to  vessels  belonging  to  British 
subjects.  2 

This  was  James's  last  public  act  in  relation  to  the  colony  ;  for  his  inten- 
tion of  composing  a  code  of  laws  for  its  domestic  administration  v^as  frus- 
trated by  his  death.   [1625.]     He  died  the  first  British  sovereign  of  an 
established  empire  in  America  ;  and  thus  closed  a  reign,  of  which  the  only 
illustrious  feature  was  the  colonization  which  he  impelled  or  promoted.   To 
this  favorite  object  both  the  virtues  and  the  vices  of  his  character  proved 
subservient.     If  the  merit  he  might  claim  from  his  original  patronage  of  the 
Virgmian  colonists  be  cancelled  by  his  subsequent  efforts  to  bereave  them 
of  their  liberties  ;  and  if  his  persecution  of  the  Puritans  in  their  native 
country  be  but  feebly  counterbalanced  by  his  willingness  to  grant  them  an 
asylum  m  New  England  ;  —  his  attempts  to  civilize  Ireland  by  colonization 
connect  him  more  honorably  with  the  great  events  of  his  reign.     Harassed 
by  the  turbulent  and  distracted  state  of  Ireland,  and  averse  to  the  sanguinarj' 
remedy  of  military  operation,  he  endeavoured  to  impart  a  new  character  to 
Its  inhabitants  by  planting  colonies  of  the  English  in  the  six  northern  counties 
of  that  island.     He  prosecuted  this  plan  with  so  much  wisdom  and  steadi- 
ness, as  to  cause,  in  the  space  of  nine  years,  greater  advances  towards  the 
reformation  of  Ireland  than  were  made  in  the  four  hundred  and  forty  years 
which  had  elapsed  since  the  conquest  of  the  country  was  first  attempted, 
and   aid  the  foundation  of  whatever  affluence  and  security  it  has  since  been 
enabled  to  attam.3     It  is  difficult  to  recognize  the  dogmatical  oppressor  of 
Uie  Turitans,  and  the  weak  and  arrogant  tyrant  of  Virginia,  in  the  wise  and 
humane  legislator  of  Ireland. 

The  fall  of  the  Virginia  Company  excited  the  less  concern,  and  the  arbi- 


Rymer. 

1   I^lnn^l'. 


Hazard. 


Uimt,^..  ^r   I I I 

•  •*v*vr^   «y      XtClUltU. 


IIuiuc'b  HUiory  of  England, 


Ibid. 


CHAP.  II.] 


EFFECT  OF  THE  COMPANY'S  DISSOLUTION. 


79 


trary  measures  of  the  king  the  less  odium,  in  England,  from  the  disappoint- 
ments and  calamities  with  which  the  colonial  plantation  had  been  attended. 
More  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds  '  were  already  expended 
on  diis  settlement,  and  upwards  of  nine  thousand  inhabitants  had  been  sent 
to  it  from  the  mother  country.  Yet,  at  the  dissolution  of  the  company,  the 
•TOSS  value  of  the  annual  imports  from  Virginia  did  not  exceed  twenty 
thousand  pounds,  and  the  population  of  the  province  was  reduced  to  about 
eighteen  hundred  persons.'  The  effect  of  this  unprosperous  issue,  in  facili- 
tating tlie  overthrow  of  the  corporation,  may  be  regarded  as  a  fortunate  cir- 
cumstance for  Virginia  ;  for,  however  unjust  and  tyrannical  were  the  views 
and  conduct  of  the  king,  they  were  overruled  to  the  production  of  a  most 
important  benefit  to  the  colony,  in  the  suppression  of  an  institution  which 
would  have  dangerously  loaded  and  cramped  its  infant  prosperity  and  free- 
dom. It  is  an  observation  of  the  most  eminent  teacher  of  political  science, 
that,  of  all  the  expedients  that  could  possibly  be  contrived  to  stunt  the  natural 
growth  of  a  new  colony,  the  institution  of  an  exclusive  company  is  the  most 
effectual ;  ^  and  the  observation  is  confirmed  by  the  experience  of  history. 
In  surveying  the  constitutions  and  tracing  the  progress  of  the  various  colo- 
nial establishments  which  tlie  nations  of  Europe  have  successfully  formed, 
we  find  a  close  and  invariable  connection  between  the  decline  and  the  revival 
of  their  prosperity  and  the  ascendency  and  overthrow  of  sovereign  mercantile 
corporations. 

A  sovereign  company  of  merchants  must  ever  consider  their  political 
power  as  an  instrument  of  commercial  gain,  and  as  deriving  its  chief  value 
from  the  means  it  gives  them  to  repress  competition,  to  buy  cheaply  the 
commodities  they  obtain  from  their  subject  customers,  and  to  sell  as  dearly 
as  possible  the  articles  with  which  they  supply  them  ;  that  is,  to  diminish  the 
incitement  and  the  reward  of  industry  to  the  colonists,  by  restricting  their 
powers  and  opportunities  of  acquiring  what  they  need  and  disposing  of  what 
they  have.  The  mercantile  habits  of  the  rulers  prevail  over  their  political 
interest,  and  lead  them  not  only  to  prefer  immediate  profit  to  permanent 
revenue,  but  to  adapt  their  administration  to  this  policy,  and  render  govern- 
ment subservient  to  the  purposes  of  monopoly.  They  are  almost  necessa- 
rily led  to  devolve  a  large  discretionary  power  on  their  provincial  officers, 
over  whom  they  retain  at  the  same  time  but  a  feeble  control.  Whether  we 
regard  the  introduction  of  martial  law  into  Virginia  as  the  act  of  the  com- 
pany, or  (as  it  really  seems  to  have  been)  the  unauthorized  act  of  the 
treasurer  and  the  provincial  governors,  the  prevalence  it  obtained  displays, 
in  either  case,  the  unjust  and  arbitrary  pohcy  of  an  exclusive  company,  or 
the  inability  of  such  a  sovereign  body  to  protect  its  subjects  against  the  op- 
pression of  its  officers.  How  incapable  an  organ  of  this  description  must 
be  to  conduct  a  plan  of  civil  policy  on  fixed  and  stable  principles,  and  how 
strongly  its  system  of  government  must  tend  to  perpetual  fluctuation,  is  at- 
tested by  the  fact,  that,  in  the  course  of  eighteen  years,  no  fewer  than  ten 
successive  governors  had  been  appointed  to  preside  over  the  province. 
Even  after  the  vigorous  spirit  of  liberty,  which  was  so  rapidly  gaining  grotmd 
in  that  age,  had  enabled  the  colonists  to  extort  from  the  company  the  right 
of  composing  laws  for  the  regulation  of  their  own  community,  still,  as  the 
company's  sanction  was  requisite  to  give  legal  prevalence  to  the  enactments 
of  the  provincial  legislature,  the  paramount  authority  resided  with  men  who 

»  Smith's  fVealth  of  jyations. 


Smith. 


*  ChaliaetB'B  AnruiU. 


80 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


had  but  a  temporary  interest  in  the  fate  of  their  subjects  and  the  resources 
of  their  territories.  While,  therefore,  we  sympathize  with  the  generous 
indignation  which  the  historians  of  America  have  expressed  at  tlie  tyrannical 
measures  by  wliiuli  the  company  was  dissolved,  we  must  regard  with  salis- 
I'action  an  event,  which,  by  its  concomitant  circumstances,  inculcated  an 
abhorrence  of  arbitrary  power,  and  by  its  operation  overthrew  a  system 
under  which  no  colonv  has  ever  grown  up  to  a  vigorous  maturity. 

Charles  the  First  mheriied  [March,  1625],  with  his  father's  throne,  all 
the  maxims  that  had  latterly  regulated  his  colonial  policy.  Of  this  he  has- 
tened to  give  assurance  to  his  subjects  by  a  series  of  proclamations,  which 
he  issued  soon  after  his  accession  to  the  crown,  and  which  distinctly  un- 
folded the  arbitrary  principles  which  he  entertained,  and  the  tyrannical 
administration  he  intended  to  pursue.  He  declared,  that,  after  mature 
deliberation,  he  had  adopted  his  father's  opinion,  that  the  misfortunes  of  the 
colony  were  occasioned  by  the  democratical  frame  of  its  civil  constitution, 
and  the  incapacity  of  a  mercantile  company  to  conduct  even  the  most  insig- 
nificant affairs  of  state  ;  that  he  held  himself  in  honor  engaged  to  accomplish 
the  work  that  James  had  begun  ;  that  he  considered  the  American  colonies 
to  be  a  part  of  the  royal  empire  devolved  to  him  with  the  other  dominions 
of  the  crown  ;  that  he  was  fully  resolved  to  establish  a  uniform  course  of 
government  through  the  whole  British  monarchy  ;  and  that  henceforward 
the  entire  admhiistration  of  the  Virginian  government  should  be  vested  in  a 
council  nominated  and  directed  by  himself,  and  responsible  to  him  alone. 
This  unlimited  arrogation  of  power  has  given  rise  to  the  common  belief,  that 
Charles  deemed  the  provincial  assembly  already  abolished  ;  and  the  arbi- 
trary manner  in  which  the  functions  of  this  body  were  repeatedly  superseded 
by  exertions  of  royal  prerogative  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  present  reign  has 
induced  the  greater  number  of  the  historians  of  Virginia  erroneously  to  sup- 
pose and  relate,  that  no  assembly  was  actually  convoked  in  the  province 
during  that  period.  But  in  truth  neither  the  king  nor  his  father  seems  to 
have  entertained  the  design  of  extirpating  the  popular  branch  of  the  consti- 
tution. Their  object  appears  to  have  been  to  reduce  it  to  what  they  con- 
ceived a  due  subordination  to  the  supremacy  of  their  own  prerogative  ;  and 
to  vindicate  and  develope  the  efficacy  of  royal  proclamations,  both  in  sus- 
pending laws  already  made,  and  in  legislating  for  cases  not  yet  regulated  by 
statutory  provision. 

While  Charles  expressed  the  utmost  scorn  of  the  capacity  of  a  mercantile 
corporation,  he  did  not  disdain  to  embrace  its  illiberal  spirit,  and  copy  its 
interested  policy.  As  a  specimen  of  the  extent  of  legislative  authority  which 
he  intended  to  exert,  and  of  the  purposes  to  which  he  meant  to  render  it 
subservient,  he  prohibited  the  Virginians,  under  the  most  absurd  and  frivo- 
lous pretences,  from  selling  their  tobacco  to  any  persons  but  certain  com- 
missioners appointed  by  himself  to  purchase  it  on  his  own  account.'  Thus 
the  colonists  found  themselves* subjected  to  a  municipal  administratiqn  that 
combined  the  vices  of  both  its  predecessors,  —  the  unlimited  prerogative  of 
an  arbitrary  prince,  with  the  narrowest  maxims  of  a  mercantile  corporation  ; 
and  saw  their  legislatorial  rights  invaded,  their  laws  and  usages  rendered 
uncertain,  all  the  profits  of  their  industry  engrossed,  and  their  only  valuable 
commodity  monopolized  by  the  sovereign,  who  pretended  to  have  resumtd 
the  government  of  the  colony  only  in  order  to  blend  it  more  perfectly  vviili 
the  general  frame  of  the  British  empire. 

•  Rymer.     Hazard!    Burk. 


CHAP,  ir.] 


HARVEY'S  TYRANNICAL   CONDUCT 


81 


Charles  conferred  the  office  of  governor  of  Virginia  on  Sir  fleorge 
Yeardley,  and  empowered  him,  in  conjunction  with  a  council  of  twelve  per- 
sons, to  exercise  the  authority  of  an  indefinite  prerogative  ;  to  make  and 
execute  laws  ;  to  impose  and  levy  taxes  ;  to  seize  the  property  of  the  late 
company,  and  apply  it  to  public  uses  ;  and  to  transport  the  colonists  to  Kng- 
land,  to  be  tried  there  for  offences  committed  in  Virginia.  The  governor 
and  council  were  specially  directed  to  exact  the  oaths  of  allegiance  and  su- 
premacy from  every  inhabitant  of  the  colony,  and  in  all  points  to  conform 
their  own  conduct  to  the  inslructions  which  from  time  to  time  the  king  might 
transmit  to  them.'  [1627.]  Yeardley's  early  death  prevented  the  full  weight 
of  his  authority  from  being  experienced  by  the  colonists  during  his  short 
iidministration.  He  died  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1 627,  and,  two  years 
after,  was  succeeded  by  Sir  John  Harvey.  Meanwhile,  and  during  a  long 
subsequent  course  of  time,  the  king,  who  seems  to  have  inherited  his  father's 
prejudices  respecting  tobacco,^  continued  to  restrict  and  encumber  the  im- 
portation and  sale  of  this  commodity  by  a  series  of  regulations  so  vexatious, 
oppressive,  multifarious,  and  unsteady,  that  it  is  impossible  to  undergo  the 
fatigue  of  perusing  them  without  a  mixture  of  contempt  for  the  fluctuations 
and  caprice  of  his  counsels,  and  of  indignant  pity  for  the  wasted  prosperity 
and  abused  patience  of  his  people.  Notwithstanding  these  disadvantages, 
however,  the  colonial  population  increased  with  rapidity  ;  and  in  the  year 
1628  more  than  a  thousand  persons  emigrated  from  Europe  to  Virginia.^ 

Sir  Jdhn  Harvey,  the  new  gsovernor,  proved  a  fit  instrument  to  carry  the 
king's  systsra  of  arbitrary  rule  into  complete  execution.  Haughty,  rapacious, 
and  cruel,  he  exercised  an  odious  authority  with  the  most  offensive  insolence, 
and  by  the  rigor  of  his  executive  energy  increased  the  provocation  inspired 
by  his  legislatorial  usurpation  and  injustice.  His  disposition  was  perfectly 
congenial  with  the  system  which  he  conducted  ;  and  so  thoroughly  did  ho 
personify  as  well  as  administer  tyranny,  as  not  only  to  attract,  but  to  engross 
in  his  own  person,  the  odium  of  which  a  large  share  was  properly  due  to 
the  prince  who  employed  him.  He  added  every  decree  of  the  Court  of 
High  Commission  in  England  to  the  ecclesiastical  constitutions  of  Virginia  ; 
and  selected  for  especial  enforcement  every  regulation  of  English  law  which 
was  unsuitable  to  the  circumstances  of  the  colonists,  and  therefore  likely  to 
entail  and  multiply  legal  penalties,  all  of  which  were  commuted  into  fines  and 
forfeitures  appropriated  to  the  governor.*  Of  the  length  to  which  he  carried 
his  arbitrary  exactions  and  tyrannical  confiscations  some  notion  may  be 
formed  from  a  letter  of  instructions  by  which  the  royal  committee  of  council 
for  the  colonies  in  England  at  length  thought  proper  [July,  1634]  to  incul- 
cate on  him  a  more  moderate  demeanour.  It  signified,  that  the  king,  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  bounty,  and  for  the  encouragement  of  the  planters,  desired 
that  the  interests  which  had  been  acquired  under  the  late  corporation  should 
be  respected,  and  that  the  colonists,  '■'■for  the  present,  shall  enjoy  their  es- 
tates with  the  same  freedom  and  privilege  as  they  did  before  the  recalling  of 
the  patent. '"* 

'  Chalmers.  _______  _ 

'  That  he  inherited  also  his  Tathor's  style  of  writing  against  the  use  of  this  commodity  ap- 
pears from  a  letter  wliich  he  addressed  to  the  governor  and  council  of  Virginia  in  IffifT,  m 
which  he  declares,  that  "  it  may  well  be  said  that  the  plantation  is  wholly  built  on  smoke, 
which  will  easily  turn  into  air,  ifeither  English  tobacco  be  pennitted  to  be  planted,  or  Spanish 
imoorted."      Burk.  '  »-  ,        P». 

'  Rymer.    Chalmers.     Hazard.    Campbell.  *  Bcrcrly.       Bwrk. 

'  State  Paper*,  ap.  Chalmen. 

VOL.    I.  11 


82 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH    AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


We  might  suppose  this  to  be  the  mandate  of  an  Kastern  sultan  to  one  of 
his  satraps  ;  and,  indeed,  the  rapacious  tyranny  of  the  governor  seems  hardly 
more  odious  than  the  cruel  mercy  of  the  prince,  who  interposed  to  mitigate 
oppression  only  when  it  had  reached  an  extreme  which  is  proverbially  liable 
to  inflame  the  wise  with  madness  and  drive  the  patient  to  despair.  The 
most  significant  comment  on  the  letter  is,  that  Harvey  was  neither  censured 
nor  displaced  for  the  injustice  which  it  commanded  him  to  restrain.  The 
effect,  moreover,  which  it  was  calculated  to  produce,  in  ascertaining  the 
rights  and  quieting  the  apprehensions  of  the  colonists,  was  counterbalanced 
by  large  and  vague  grants  of  territory  within  the  province,  which  Charles 
inconsiderately  bestowed  on  his  courtiers,  and  which  gave  rise  to  numerous 
encroachments  on  established  possession,  and  excited  general  distrust  of  the 
validity  of  tides  and  the  stability  of  property.  The  consequence  of  one  of 
these  grants  was  the  formation  of  the  State  of  Maryland,  by  dismembering  a 
large  portion  of  territory  that  was  previously  annexed  to  Virginia.  For  many 
years,  this  event  proved  a  source  of  much  discontent  and  serious  incon- 
venience to  the  Virginian  colonists,  who  had  endeavoured  to  improve  their 
trade  by  restricting  themselves  to  the  exportation  only  of  tobacco  of  superior 
quality,  and  now  found  themselves  deprived  of  all  the  advantage  of  this  sac- 
rifice by  the  transference  of  a  portion  of  their  own  territory  to  neighbours 
who  refused  assent  to  their  regulations.* 

The  instructions  communicated  by  the  letter  of  the  royal  committee  left 
Harvey  still  in  possession  of  ample  scope  to  his  tyranny  [1635]  ;  and  the 
colonial  assembly,  respecting  or  overawed  by  the  authority  with  which  he 
was  invested,  endured  it  for  some  time  longer  without  resistance,  and  prac- 
tically restricted  their  own  functions  to  the  degrading  ceremonial  of  register- 
ing the  edicts  and  decrees  of  their  tyrant.  At  length,  after  a  spirited,  but 
ineffectual,  attempt  to  curb  his  excesses  by  enactments  which  he  disregarded, 
the  assembly,  yielding  to  the  general  desire  of  their  constituents,  suspended 
him  from  his  ofiice,  and  sent  him  a  prisoner  to  England,  along  with  two 
deputies  from  their  own  body,  who  were  charged  with  the  duty  of  repre- 
senting the  grievances  of  the  colony  and  the  misconduct  of  the  governor. 
But  their  reliance  on  the  justice  of  the  king  proved  to  be  very  ill  founded. 
Charles  was  fated  to  teach  his  subjects,  that,  if  they  meant  to  retain  their 
liberties,  they  must  prepare  to  defend  them  ;  that  neither  submissive  pa- 
tience nor  respectful  remonstrance  could  avail  to  relax  or  divert  his  arbitrary 
purposes  ;  and  that,  in  order  to  obtain  justice  to  themselves,  they  must  de- 
prive him  of  the  power  of  withholding  it.  The  inhabitants  of  Virginia  en- 
dured oppression  (of  which  he  had  already  avowed  his  consciousness)  with 
long  resignation,  and,  even  when  their  yoke  became  intolerable,  showed  that 
they  neither  imputed  their  wrongs  to  him  nor  doubted  his  disposition  to  re- 
dress them.  Against  the  hardships  and  ill  treatment  to  which  they  were 
exposed,  they  appealed  to  him  as  their  protector,  and  impiored  a  relief  to 
which  their  claim  was  supported  by  every  consideration  that  could  impress 
a  just  or  move  a  generous  mind.  Yet,  instead  of  commiserating  their  suf- 
ferings, or  redressing  their  wrongs,  Charles  resented  their  conduct  on  this 
occasion  as  an  act  of  presumptuous  audacity  little  short  of  rebellion  ;  and 
all  the  applications  of  their  deputies  were  rejected  with  calm  injustice  and 
inflexible  disdain.  Harvey,  released  from  his  bonds,  became  in  his  turn 
the  accuser  ;  and  the  calumnies  of  the  disgraced  and  banished  tyrant  were 

'  Beverly. 


CHAP.  II] 


THE  PROVINCIAL  LIBERTIES  RESTORED. 


83 


listened  to  with  complacency  and  attention,  while  the  representatives  of  the 
brave  and  loyal  people  whom  he  had  oppressed  were  regarded  as  traitors, 
and  forbidden  to  appear  in  the  presence  of  their  sovereign.  The  king  re- 
fused to  hear  a  single  word  from  the  provincial  deputies,  cither  in  defence  of 
their  countrymen  or  in  crimination  of  Harvey  ;  and,  having  reinstated  tliis 
obnoxious  governor  in  his  office,  sent  him  back  to  Virginia  [April,  1637] 
with  a  renovation  of  the  powers  which  he  had  so  grossly  abused.  There, 
elated  with  his  triumph,  and  inflamed  with  rage,  Harvey  resumed  and  aggra- 
vated a  tyrunnical  sway  that  has  entailed  infamy  on  himself  and  disgrace  on 
his  sovereign,  and  provoked  complaints  so  loud  and  vehement,  that  they 
began  to  penetrate  into  England,  where  thev  produced  an  impression, 
which,  mingling  with  the  general  irritation  in  the  parent  state,  could  not  be 
siifcly  disregarded.* 

If  the  administration  of  Sir  John  Harvey  had  been  protracted  much 
longer,  it  must  have  ended  in  the  revolt  or  the  ruin  of  the  colony.  So 
great  was  the  distress  it  occasioned,  as  to  excite  the  earnest  attention  of  the 
Indians,  and  awaken  their  slumbering  hostility  by  suggesting  the  hope  of  ex- 
erting it  with  success.  Opechancanough,  the  ancient  enemy  of  the  colonists, 
was  now  far  advanced  in  years  [1638]  ;  but  age,  though  it  had  bent  his 
body  and  dimmed  his  eyes,  had  neither  impaired  his  discernment  nor  ex- 
tinguished his  animosity.  Proud,  subtle,  sly,  fierce,  and  cruel,  he  watched, 
with  enduring  and  considerate  hate,  the  opportunity  of  redeeming  his  glory 
and  satiating  his  revenge.  Seizing  the  favorable  occasion  presented  by  the 
distracted  state  of  the  province,  he  again  led  his  warriors  to  a  sudden  and 
furious  attack,  which  the  colonists  did  not  repel  without  the  loss  of  five  hun- 
dred men.  A  general  war  ensued  between  them  and  all  the  Indian  tribes 
under  the  influence  of  Opechancanough." 

But  a  great  change  was  now  [1639]  to  reward  the  patience  of  the  Vir- 
ginians with  a  bloodless  redress  of  their  grievances.  The  public  discon- 
tents, which  had  for  many  years  been  gathering  force  and  virulence  in  Eng- 
land, were  advancing  with  rapid  strides  to  a  full  maturity,  and  threatened 
to  issue  in  some  violent  eruption.  After  a  long  intermission,  Charles  was 
forced  to  contemplate  the  reassembling  of  a  parliament ;  and  perfectly  aware 
of  the  ill-humor  abeady  engendered  by  his  government  at  home,  he  had  rea- 
son to  apprehend  that  the  displeasure  of  the  Commons  would  be  inflamed, 
and  their  worst  suspicions  confirmed,  by  representations  of  the  despotism 
exercised  in  Virginia.  There  was  yet  time  to  soothe  the  irritation,  and 
even  secure  the  adherence  of  a  people,  who,  in  spite  of  every  wrong,  re- 
tained a  generous  attachment  to  the  prince  whose  sovereignty  was  regarded 
as  the  bond  of  political  union  between  them  and  the  parent  state  ;  and  from 
the  propagation  of  the  complaints  of  colonial  grievances  in  England,  it  was 
easy  to  foresee  that  the  redress  of  them,  if  longer  withheld  by  the  king, 
would  be  granted,  to  the  great  detriment  of  his  credit  and  influence,  by  the 
parliament.  To  this  assembly  the  Virginians  had  applied  on  a  former  occa- 
sion, and  the  encouragement  they  had  met  with  increased  the  probability 
both  of  a  repetition  of  their  application  and  of  a  successful  issue  to  it. 
These  considerations  alone  seem  to  account  for  the  entire  and  sudden  alter- 
ation which  the  colonial  policy  of  the  king  underwent  at  this  period.  Harvey 
was  recalled,  and  the  government  of  Virginia  was  committed  [1641],  first, 
to  Sir  Francis  Wyatt,  and  afterwards  to  Sir  William  Berkeley,  —  a  person 
i~Chalmen.    Oldmixonr  Burk.  *  Beverly. 


u 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


not  only  of  superior  rank  and  abilities  to  any  of  his  immediate  predecessors, 
but  distinguished  by  every  popular  virtue  of  which  Harvey  was  deficient,  — 
of  upright  and  honorable  character,  mild  and  prudent  temper,  and  manners 
at  once  dignified  and  engaging.  A  change  not  less  gratifying  was  introduced 
into  the  system  of  government.  The  new  governor  was  instructed  to  rec- 
ognize in  the  amplest  manner  the  legislative  privileges  of  the  provincial  as- 
sembly, and  to  invite  tliis  body  to  compose  a  code  of  laws  for  the  province, 
and  improve  the  administration  of  justice  by  introduction  of  the  forms  of 
English  judicial  procedure. 

Thus,  all  at  once,  and  when  they  least  expected  it,  was  restored  to  the 
colonists  the  full  enjoyment  of  those  liberties  which  they  had  originally  pro- 
cured from  the  Virginian  Company,  and  which  had  been  exposed  to  con- 
tinual peril  and  violation  from  the  same  authority  by  which  the  company 
itseir  was  subverted.  Universal  joy  and  gratitude  were  excited  throughout 
the  colony  ;  and  the  king,  who,  amidst  the  hostility  that  lowered  upon  him 
om  every  other  quarter  of  his  dominions,  was  addressed  in  the  language  of 

ateful  loyalty  by  this  people,  seems  to  have  been  a  little  touched  by  the 
generous  sentiments  which  he  had  so  ill  deserved,  and  which  forcibly 
proved  to  him  how  cheap  and  easy  were  the  means  by  which  princes  may 
render  their  subjects  attached  and  happy.  And  yet  so  strong  were  the 
illusions  of  his  self-love,  or  so  deliberate  his  artifice,  that,  in  his  answeb  to 
an  address  of  the  colonists,  he  eagerly  appropriated  the  praise  for  which  he 
was  indebted  to  their  generosity  alone,  and  endeavoured  to  extend  the  appli- 
cation of  their  expressions  of  gratitude  even  to  the  policy  from  which  he  had 
desisted  in  order  to  awaken  this  sentiment.* 

While  Charles  thus  again  introduced  the  principles  of  the  British  consti- 
tution into  the  domestic  government  of  Virginia,  he  was  not  inattentive  to 
the  policy  of  preserving  its  dependence  on  the  mother  country,  and  securing 
to  England  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  colonial  trade.  [1641.]  For 
this  purpose  Sir  William  Berkeley  was  directed  to  prohibit  all  commerce 
with  other  nations;  and  to  require  a  bond  from  the  master  of  every  vessel 
sailing  from  Virginia,  obliging  him  to  land  his  cargo  in  some  part  of  the 
king's  dominions  in  Europe.  Yet  the  pressure  of  this  restraint  was  more 
than  counterbalanced  by  the  gracious  strain  of  the  other  contemporary 
measures  of  the  crown  ;  and  with  a  mild  and  liberal  domestic  government, 
which  offered  a  peaceful  asylum  and  distributed  ample  tracts  of  land  to  all 
emigrants  who  sought  its  protection,  the  colony  advanced  so  rapidly  in  pros- 
perity and  population,  that,  at  the  beginning  of  the  civil  war  m  the  parent 
state,  it  contained  upwards  of  twenty  thousand  inhabitants.  By  the  vigor 
and  conduct  of  Sir  William  Berkeley,  the  Indian  war,  after  a  few  cam- 
paigns, was  brought  to  a  successful  close  ;  Opechancanough  was  taken 
prisoner  ;^  and  a  peace  concluded  with  the  savages,  which  endured  for  many 
years. 

It  was  happy  for  Virginia  that  the  restitution  of  her  domestic  liberties  was 
accomplished  in  this  manner,  and  not  deferred  tiii  a  later  period,  when  the 

•  Beverly.       Clmlmeni.    Campbell. 

•  Beverly.  Jt  was  the  intonUon  of  Sir  William  Berkeley  to  send  this  remarkable  person- 
ufio  to  England  ;  but  ho  was  shot,  after  being  taken  prisoner,  by  a  soldier,  in  resentment  of  ihr 
calamities  ho  had  inflicted  on  the  proviaco.  Ho  liii7ered  under  tho  mortal  wound  for  several 
days,  and  continued  proud  and  stout-hearted  to  t'  .  st.  Indignnnt  nt  the  crnwda  who  rnmi! 
to  gaze  at  him  on  his  death-bed,  he  exclaimed,  «•  If  1  had  taken  Sir  William  Berkeley  prisoner, 
I  would  not  have  exposbd  him  as  a  show  to  the  people."  He  would  probably  have  made  him 
expire  under  Indian  torture. 


CHAP.  U.] 


VIRGINIA  ESPOUSES  THE  ROYAL  CAUSE. 


3d 


boon  would  probably  have  been  attended  with  the  reestablishment  of  the 
company  of  patentees.  To  this  consummation  some  of  the  members  of  the 
suppressed  company  had  been  eagerly  looking  forward ;  and  notwithstanding 
the  disapj)ointment  inflicted  on  their  hopes  by  the  redress  of  those  grievances 
whose  existence  would  have  aided  their  pretensions,  they  endeavoured  to 
turn  to  their  own  advantage  the  jealous  avidity  with  which  every  complaint 
against  the  roj^al  government  was  received  in  the  Long  Parliament,  by  pre- 
senting a  petition  in  the  name  of  the  assembly  of  Virginia,  praying  for  a 
restoration  of  the  ancient  patents.  This  petition,  though  supported  by  some 
of  the  colonists,  who  were  justly  dissatisfied  with  the  discouragement  which 
ihe  Puritan  doctrines,  and  certain  preachers  of  them  whom  they  had  invited 
from  Massachusetts, 1  experienced  from  the  domestic  government  of  Vir- 
ginia, was,  undoubtedly,  not  the  act  of  the  assembly,  nor  the  expression  of 
the  prevailing  sentiment  in  the  colony.  The  assembly  had  tasted  the  sweets 
of  unrestricted  freedom,  and  were  not  disposed  to  hazard  or  encumber  their 
system  of  liberty  by  reattaching  it  to  the  mercantile  corporation  under  which 
it  was  originally  established.  No  sooner  were  they  apprized  of  the  petition 
to  the  House  of  Commons  than  they  transmitted  an  explicit  disavowal  of  it ; 
and  at  the  same  time  presented  an  address  to  the  king,  acknowledging  his 
bounty  and  favor  to  them,  and  desiring  to  continue  under  his  immediate 
protection.  In  the  fervor  of  their  loyalty,  they  framed  and  published  a 
declaration  [1642],  "that  they  were  born  under  monarchy,  and  would 
never  degenerate  from  the  condition  of  their  births  by  being  subject  to  any 
other  government."  ^ 

The  only  misfortune  attending  the  manner  in  which  the  Vu-ginians  had  re- 
gained their  liberties  was,  that  it  allied  their  partial  regards  to  an  authority 
which  was  destined  to  be  overthrown  in  the  approaching  civil  war,  and  which 
could  no  more  reward  than  it  deserved  tlieir  allegiance.  During  the  whole 
period  of  the  struggle  between  the  king  and  parliament  in  England,  they  re- 
mained unalterably  attached  to  the  royal  cause ;  and  after  Charles  the  First 
was  beheaded,  and  his  son  driven  out  of  the  kingdom,  they  acknowledged 
the  fugitive  prince  as  their  sovereign,  and  conducted  the  provincial  govern- 
ment under  a  commission  which  he  despatched  to  Sir  William  Berkeley 
from  Breda.'  The  royal  family,  though  they  had  little  opportunity  during 
their  exile  of  cultivating  their  interest  in  the  colony,  were  not  entirely  re- 
gardless of  it.  [June,  1650.]  Henrietta  Maria,  the  queen-mother,  obtained 
the  assistance  of  the  French  government  to  the  execution  of  a  scheme  pro- 
jected by  Su:  William  Davenant,  the  poet,  of  emigrating  in  company  with 
a  large  body  of  artificers  whom  he  collected  in  France,  and  founding  with 
them  a  new  plantation  in  Virginia.  The  expedition  was  intercepted  by  the 
English  fleet ;  and  Davenant,  who  was  taken  prisoner,  owed  the  safety  of 
liis  life  to  l:he  friendship  of  Milton.* 

'  Thi*  tiauKaction  forins  a  part  of  the  history  of  New  England. 

*  Chalmers.     Gordon's  History  of  America.    Burk. 

^  Hume's  England.  Chalmers.  This  year  a  tract  was  published  at  London,  by  one  Edward 
Williams,  recommendinff  the  culture  of  silk  in  Virginia. 

*  Johnson's  Life  ofMUton.   Encydopicdia  Britanniea,  V.688.   Cowley,  in  a  poem  addr«:88e<t 
to  Davenant,  exclaims, 

"  Sure  't  was  tli^  noble  boldness  of  the  Muse 
Did  thy  desire  to  seek  new  worlds  infuse." 
But  the  motive  of  Davenant  is,  perhaps,  better  illustrated  by  the  example  than  by  the  geniua 
nf  Cowley.  ImpatintJt  of  thn  tiimuUssnus  distrnrfinns  r.f  Essropo,  thp?«5  vcfsrirs  cf  th?i  prn.-rfwj 
pursuits  o'f  literature  sighed  for  a  sojourn  in  the  "  safer  world  "  of  America.    In  the  preface 
to  a  volume  of  his  poems,  published  in  1656,  Cowley  declare*,  that  "  his  desire  had  been  for 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


•i.     . . 


But  the  parliament,  having  subdued  all  opposition  in  England,  was  not 
disposed  to  sufier  its  authority  to  be  questioned  in  Virginia.  Incensed  at 
the  open  defiance  of  its  power  in  this  quarter,  it  issued  an  ordinance  [Oct. 
165C],  declaring  that  the  settlement  of  Virginia,  having  originated  from  the 
wealth  and  population  of  England  and  the  authority  of  the  state,  ought  to  be 
subordinate  to  and  dependent  upon  the  English  commonwealth,  and  subject 
to  the  legislation  of  parliament ;  that  the  colonists,  instead  of  rendering  this 
dutiful  submission,  had  audaciously  disclaimed  the  supremacy  of  their  parent 
state,  and  rebelled  against  it ;  and  that,  consequently,  they  now  deserved  to 
be  regarded  as  notorious  robbers  and  traitors.  Not  only  was  all  connection 
prohibited  with  these  refractory  colonists,  and  the  council  of  state  em- 
powered to  send  out  a  fleet  and  army  to  reduce  them  to  obedience,  but  all 
foreign  nations  were  expressly  interdicted  from  trading  with  any  of  the  Eng- 
lish settlements  in  America.^  It  might  reasonably  be  supposed  that  this 
latter  restriction  would  have  created  a  common  feeling,  throughout  all  the 
English  colonies,  of  opposition  to  the  government  of  the  parent  state.  But 
the  colonists  of  Massachusetts  were  much  more  cordially  united  by  simi- 
larity of  political  sentiments  and  religious  opinions  with  the  leaders  of  the 
English  commonwealth,  than  by  identity  of  commercial  interest  with  the 
inhabitants  of  Virginia.  The  religious  views  that  had  founded  their  colonial 
society  long  regulated  all  its  municipal  policy,  and  prevailed  over  every  other 
consideration.  And  no  sooner  were  the  people  of  Massachusetts  apprized 
of  the  parliamentary  ordinance,  than  they  hastened  to  corroborate  its  pro- 
hibition of  intercourse  with  Virginia,  by  a  corresponding  enactment  of  their 
own  domestic  legislature.' 

The  measures  of  the  republican  rulers  of  England  were  as  prompt  and 
decisive  as  their  language.  They  quickly  despatched  Sir  George  Ayscue 
vrith  an  armament  sufficient  to  overpower  the  provincial  royalists,  and  ex- 
tinguish the  last  traces  of  living  monarchical  authority  that  still  lingered  in 
the  extremities  of  the  empire.  The  commissioners  who  were  appointed  to 
accompany  this  expedition  received  instructions  more  creditable  to  the 
vigor  than  to  the  moderation  and  humanity  of  the  parliamentaiy  councils. 
They  were  empowered  to  try,  in  the  first  instance,  the  efficacy  of  pardons 
and  other  conciliatory  propositions  in  reducing  the  colonists  to  obedience  ; 
but  if  their  pacific  overtures  should  prove  ineffectual,  they  were  directed 
then  to  employ  every  species  of  hostile  operation,  to  set  free  the  servants 
and  slaves  of  all  the  planters  who  continued  refractory,  and  furnish  them 
with  arms  to  assist  in  the  subjugation  of  their  masters.^  This  barbarous  plan 
of  hostility  resemVss  less  a  war  than  a  massacre,  and  suggests  the  painful 
reflection,  that  an  assembly  possessed  of  absolute  power,  and  contmually 
protesting  that  the  glory  of  God  and  the  liberty  of  mankind  were  the  chief 
ends  for  which  they  assumed  it,  never  once  projected  the  liberation  of  the 
negro  slaves  in  their  own  dominions,  except  for  the  purpose  of  converting 
them  into  instruments  of  bloodshed,  ravage,  and  conquest. 

The  English  squadron,  after  reducing  the  colonies  m  Barbadoes  and  other 
islands  to  the  sway  of  the  commonwealth,  entered  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake. 
[1651.]  Berkeley,  apprized  of  the  invasion,  hastened  to  engage  the  as- 
sistance of  a  few  Dutch  ships  which  were  then  trading  to  Virginia,  contrary 

some  time  paat,  and  did  still  very  vnhuincntly  continue,  to  retire  himself  to  somo  of  thu 
Ainencan  pisntaiions,  auu  io  lOrsakc  iivts  wofiu  lOf  ever." 

«  Scobell'g  jicts,  1650,  cap.  28.  »  Hazard. 

*  Thurloe's  Stale  Papers.    Hazard. 


CHAP.  II.] 


SUBDUED  BY  THE  LONG  PARLIAMENT, 


87 


'  to  Bome  of  tho 


both  to  the  royal  and  the  parliamentary  injunctions,  and  with  more  courage 
than  prudence  prepared  to  oppose  the  invading  armament ;  but  though  he 
was  cordially  supported  by  the  royalists,  who  formed  the  great  majority  of 
the  inhabitants,  it  was  evident  that  he  had  undertaken  an  unequal  contest. 
Yet  his  gallant  demonstration  of  resistance,  though  unavailing  to  repel  the 
invaders,  enabled  him  to  procure  to  his  people  favorable  terms  of  submission. 
By  the  articles  of  surrender,  a  complete  indemnity  was  stipulated  for  all 
past  offences  ;  and  the  colonists,  recognizing  the  authority,  were  admitted 
into  the  bosom  of  the  English  commonwealth,  and  expressly  assured  of  an 
equal  participation  in  all  the  civil  rights  of  the  people  of  England.  In  par- 
ticular, it  was  conditioned  that  the  provincial  assembly  should  retain  its 
wonted  functions  ;  and  that  "the  people  of  Virginia  shall  have  as  free  trade 
as  the  people  of  England  to  all  places  and  with  all  nations,"  and  "  shall  be 
free  from  all  taxes,  customs,  and  impositions  whatsoever,  without  the  con- 
sent of  their  own  assembly."  Berkeley  disdained  to  make  any  stipulation 
for  himself  with  those  whom  his  principles  of  loyalty  taught  him  to  regard 
as  usurpers.  Without  leaving  Virginia,  he  withdrew  to  a  retired  situation, 
where  he  continued  to  reside  as  a  private  individual,  universally  beloved  and 
respected,  till  a  new  revolution  was  to  summon  him  once  more  to  defy  the 
republican  forces  of  England,  and  restore  the  ascendency  of  royalty  in  the 
province.^ 

But  it  was  the  dependence,  and  not  the  mere  adherence  of  the  colonies, 
that  the  rulers  of  the  English  commonwealth  were  desirous  to  obtain  ;  anc 
their  shameless  disregard  of  the  treaty  concluded  by  their  own  commissioners 
demonstrated  in  a  striking  manner  with  how  little  equity  absolute  power  is 
exercised,  even  by  those  who  have  shown  themselves  most  prompt  to  resent 
the  infliction  of  its  rigor  upon  themselves.  Having  now  obtained  from  the 
colonies  a  recognition  of  the  authority  which  they  administered,  they  has- 
tened to  adopt  measures  for  promoting  their  dependence  on  England,  and 
securing  the  exclusive  possession  of  their  increasing  commerce.  With  this 
view,  as  well  as  for  the  purpose  of  provoking  a  quarrel  with  the  Dutch,  by 
aiming  a  blow  at  their  carrying  trade,^  the  parliament  not  only  forbore  to 
repeal  the  ordinance  of  the  preceding  year,  which  prohibited  commercial 
intercourse  between  the  English  colonies  and  foreign  states,  but  framed 
another  law  [1652]  which  was  to  introduce  a  new  era  of  commercial  juris- 
prudence, and  to  found  the  celebrated  navigation  system  of  England.  By 
this  remarkable  law,  (of  which  the  general  policy  was  warmly  commended 
in  the  parliamentary  speeches  and  political  writings  of  the  learned  Selden,) 
it  was  enacted  that  no  production  of  Asia,  Africa,  or  America  should  be 
imported  into  the  dominions  of  the  commonwealth,  except  in  vessels  belong- 
ing to  English  owners  or  inhabitants  of  the  English  colonies,  and  navigated 
by  crews  of  which  the  captain  and  the  majority  of  the  sailors  should  be 
Englishmen.^  Willing,  at  the  same  time,  to  encourage  the  cultivation  of  the 
staple  commodity  of  Virginia,  the  parhament  soon  after  passed  an  act  con- 
tirniing  all  the  royal  proclamations  against  planting  tobacco  in  England.* 

'  Beverly,      Oldmixon.    Chalmora.     Burk.  *  Hume's  England. 

'•'  ScobeH'B  Acts,  1651,  cap.  22.  The  fferm  of  this  famous  system  of  policy  occurs  in  English 
Icgislution  so  early  as  the  year  1381,  wnen  it  was  enacted  by  the  statute  of  .'>  Rich.  H.  cap.  3, 
"  that,  to  increase  the  navy  of  England,  no  aoods  or  merchandises  shall  be  cither  exported  or 
imported  but  only  in  ships  belonging  to  the  King's  subjects."  This  enactment  was  premature, 
and  soon  foil  into  disuse.  A  bill  proclaiming  its  revival  to  a  limited  extent,  in  1460,  was 
rejected  by  Henry  the  Sixth.  These  measur-  s  were  probably  suggested  fay  the  commercial 
policy  of  Aragon.     See  Prescott's  History  of  Fttvdinand  and  Isabella,  Introduct.  §  2. 

«  Scobell's  Jicts,  1652,  cap.  2. 


I 


88 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


This  unjust  restriction  of  the  colonial  traffic,  though  by  no  means  rigor- 
ously enforced,  tended  to  keep  alive  in  Virginia  the  attachment  to  the  royal 
cause,  which  was  farther  maintained  by  emigrations  of  the  distressed  cava- 
liers, who  resorted  thither  in  such  numbers,  that  the  population  of  the  colo- 
ny amounted  to  thirty  thousand  persons  at  the  epoch  of  the  Restoration. 
.  IJut  Cromwell  had  now  prevailed  over  the  parliament  [1653],  and  held  the 
reins  of  the  commonwealth  in  .his  vigorous  hands  ;  and  though  the  flame  pf 
discontent  was  secretly  nourished  in  Virginia  by  the  passions  and  intrigues 
of  so  many  cavalier  exiles,  yet  the  eruption  of  it  was  repressed  by  the  terror 
of  his  name,  and  the  energy  which  he  infused  into  every  department  of  his 
administration.  Other  causes,  too,  which  have  been  long  obscured  by  the 
misrepresentations  of  partial  or  ignorant  historians,  contributed  to  the  tran- 
quillity and  security  of  Cromwell's  dominion  in  Virginia.  For  a  century 
and  a  half  it  had  been  repeatedly  asserted,  without  contradiction,  by  suc- 
cessive generations  of  writers,'  that  the  government  of  the  Protector  in 
this  province  was  illiberal  and  severe  ;  that  he  appointed  governors  whose 
dispositions  rendered  them  fit  instruments  of  a  harsh  policy,  and  yet  fre- 
quently displaced  them  from  distrust  of  their  exclusive  devotion  to  his  in- 
terest ;  and  that,  wliile  he  indulged  his  favorite  colonists  of  Massachusetts 
with  a  dispensation  from  the  commercial  laws  of  the  Long  Parliament,  he 
exacted  the  strictest  compliance  with  them  from  the  Virgmians.  But  the 
reputation  of  Cromwell's  colonial  policy  has  been  triumphantly  vindicated 
by  the  intelligent  industry  and  research  of  a  modern  historian'  of  this  prov- 
ince, who  has  proved,  beyond  the  possibility  of  further  doubt  or  denial,  that 
the  treatment  which  tlie  Virginians  experienced  under  the  protectorate  was 
mild  and  humane  ;  that  their  privileges  were  rather  enlarged  than  circum- 
scribed ;  and  that  Cromwell  dignified  his  usurped  dominion  over  thern  by 
the  most  liberal  justice  and  fearless  magnanimity. 

So  far  from  having  regulated  the  appointment  and  dismission  of  governors 
by  the  principles  which  have  been  imputed  to  him,  he  never  appointed  or 
displaced  a  smgle  governor  of  the  province  ;  but,  from  the  first,  surrendered 
this  branch  of  the  sovereign's  prerogative  to  the  legislative  assembly  of  a 
state  which  he  knew  to  be  the  resort  of  his  own  most  implacable  enemies  ; 
aiid  though  he  appears  not  to  have  granted  to  the  Virginians  an  express 
exemption  from  the  commercial  ordinances  of  the  Long  Parliament,  he 
suffered  them  practically  to  indulge  a  total  disregard  of  these  oppressive 
restrictions.  Though  his  government  was  not  fitted  to  inspire  attachment, 
it  seems  to  have  gained  the  esteem  and  approbation  of  impartial  and  con- 
siderate men  in  Virginia,  and  to  have  trained  their  minds  to  freer  reflection 
and  inquiry  than  they  had  ever  before  entertamed  with  respect  to  the  rea- 
sonable objects  and  purposes  for  which  municipal  governments  are  instituted. 
But  from  a  numerous  and  increasing  party  of  the  inhabitants  of  Virginia 
neither  dispassionate  reflection  nor  impartial  judgment  could  reasonably  be 
expected.  To  many  of  them  the  name  of  Cromwell  was  associated  with 
recollections  of  personal  disappointment  and  humiliation  ;  and  to  all  of 
them  it  recalled  the  ruin  of  their  friends  and  the  death  and  exile  of  their 
kings.     Hatred  and  hope  combined  to  unite  their  hearts  to  the  downfall 

'  Among  whom  we  find  the  respectable  names  of  Beverly.    Oldmixou,  Chalmers,  Robert- 
son,  and  dordon. 
'  Burk.    The  history  of  Virginia  has  derived  the  most  valiinbic  and  impi 

...„j„..j    ^.. _  ,.,    ,,,._    ■,5,„,f       ,,,_    .,j,^    ,2   utrlutvu    Dy    it; 

ornament. 


7 


ortnnt  illustration 
oriii,  iiiuirutriciuu) 


CHAP.  II.] 


REVOLT  OF  VIRGINIA. 


B9 


of  the  protectorate  and  commonwealth  ;  and  as  passionate  are  much  more 
contagious  than  merely  reasonable  sentiments,  the  public  mind  in  Virginia, 
notwithstanding  the  liberality  of  Cromwell's  administration,  was  strongly 
leavened  with  the  wish  and  expectation  of  change. 

The  Puritan  colonists  of  New  England  had  always  been  the  objects  of 
suspicion  and  dislike  to  a  great  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  Virginia  ; 
and  the  manifest  partiality  which  Cromwell  entertained  for  them  now  in- 
(^reased  the  aversion  with  which  they  were  heretofore  regarded.  New 
England  was  generally  considered  by  the  cavaliers  as  the  centre  and  focus 
of  ruritan  sentiment  and  republican  principle  ;  and,  actuated  partly  by 
religious  and  partly  by  political  feelmgs,  the  Virginian  cavaliers  conceived 
a  violent  antipathy  against  all  the  doctrines,  sentiments,  and  practices  that 
were  reckoned  peculiar  to  the  Puritans  ;  and  rejected  all  communication 
of  the  knowledge  that  flourished  in  New  England,  from  hatred  of  the  au- 
thority under  whose  shelter  it  grew  and  of  tho  principles  to  which  it 
administered  support.^  At  length  the  disgust  and  impatience  of  the  roy- 
alist party  in  Virginia  spurned  further  restraint.  Matthews,  the  last  gov- 
ernor appointed  during  the  supremacy  of  Cromwell  [1658],  died  nearly 
at  the  same  period  with  the  Protector  ;  and  before  an  assembly  could  be 
convened  to  nominate  his  successor,  a  numerous  body  of  the  inhabitants, 
though  yet  unacquainted  with  Cromwell's  death,  assembled  in  a  tumultuous 
manner,  and,  having  forced  Sir  W^illiam  Berkeley  from  his  retirement, 
declared  him  the  only  governor  whom  they  would  acknowledge  in  Vir- 
ginia.^ Berkeley  declining  to  act  under  usurped  authority,  the  insurgents 
venturously  erected  the  royal  standard,  and  proclaimed  Charles  the  Second 
to  be  their  lawful  sovereign  ;  a  measure  which  entailed  apparently  a  contest 
with  the  arras  of  Cromwell  and  all  the  force  of  the  parent  state.  Happily 
tor  the  colonists,  the  distractions  that  ensued  in  England  deferred  the  ven- 
geance which  her  rulers  had  equal  ability  and  inclination  to  inflict  till  the 
sudden  and  unexpected  restoration  of  Charles  to  the  throne  of  ms  ances- 
tors [1660]  converted  imprudent  temerity  into  meritorious  service,  and 
enabled  the  Virginians  safely  to  exult  in  the  singularity  which  they  long 
and  proudly  commemorated,  that  they  were  the  last  of  the  British  sub- 
jects who  renounced,  and  the  first  who  resumed,  their  allegiance  to  the 


crown. 


'  The  prejudices  of  an  old  cavalier  against  popular  education  are  strikingly  displayed  by 
Sir  William  Berkeley,  in  a  letter  descriptive  of  the  state  of  Virginia,  some  years  after  the 
Restoration.  "  I  thank  God,"  he  says,  "  there  are  no  free  schools  nor  printing ;  and  I  hope 
we  shall  not  have  them  these  hundred  years.  For  learning  has  brought  heresy  and  disobe- 
dience and  sects  into  the  world,  and  priutiiu;  has  divulged  them,  and  libels  against  the  best 
government :  God  keep  us  from  both  f "      Cbalmen. 

*  That  Cromwell  meditated  some  important  changes  in  Virginia,  which  death  prevented 
him  from  attempting  to  accomplish,  may  be  inferred  from  the  publication  of  a  small  treatise 
at  London  in  the  year  1657,  entitled  ^^  Public  Good  without  Private  Interest,"  written  by 
Dr.  Gatford,  and  dedicated  to  the  Protector.  In  this  little  work,  the  Protector  is  urged  to  re- 
(oTva  the  numerous  abuses  extant  in  Virginia,  —  the  Jisreeard  of  religion,  —  the  neelect  of 
education,  —  and  the  fraudulent  dealings  of  the  f^'ai'v.Ti  with  the  Indians;  on  all  which  topics 
the  author  descants  very  forcibly.  Of  this  tr«^r,  a^  well  as  of  the  tracts  by  Hamor  and 
Williams  and  gome  others,  which  I  have  hud  occr.,  ;d  notice  elsewhere,  I  found  copies  in 
the  library  of  the  late  George  Chalmers. 

^  Oldmixon.    Beverly.      Chalmers.    Burk.    Campbell. 


iluiers,  Robert- 


VOL.    I. 


12 


H 


90 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


fBOOK  I 


CHAPTER     III. 

The  Navigation  Act—  its  Impolicy.  —  Discontent  and  Distrew  of  the  Colonista.  —  Naturali- 
zation of  Aliens.  —  Progress  of  the  provincial  Discontent.  —  Indian  Hostilities.  —  Bacon'i 
Rebellion  —  Death  of  Bacon  — and  Restoration  of  Tranquillity.—  Bill  of  Attainder  passed 
by  the  colonial  Assembly.  —  Sir  William  Berkeley  superseded  by  Colonel  Jeffreys.  —  Par- 
tiality of  the  new  Governor  —  Dispute  with  the  Assembly.  —  Renewal  of  Discontents.  — 
Lord  Culpepper  appointed  Governor  —  Severity  and  Rapacity  of  his  Administration.  —  An 
Insurrection  —  Punishment  of  the  Insurgents.  —  Arbitrary  Measures  of  the  Crown.  —  James 
the  Second  — augments  the  Burdens  of  the  Colonists.  —  Corrupt  and  oppressive  Govern- 
ment of  Lord  Effingham.  —  Revolution  in  Britain.  — Complaints  of  the  Colonies  against 
the  former  Governors  discouraged  by  King  William.  —  Eflect  of  the  English  Revolution 
on  the  American  Colonies.  —  State  of  Virginia  at  this  Period  —  Population  —  Laws  — 
Manners. 

The  intelligence  of  the  restoration  of  the  House  of  Stuart  to  the  throne 
of  Britain  excited  very  different  emotions  in  the  various  British  colonies 
which  were  now  established  in  America.  We  shall  have  occasion  hereafter 
to  notice  the  gloomy  impressions  it  produced  in  the  States  of  New  England. 
In  Virginia,  whose  separate  history  we  still  exclusively  pursue,  it  was  re- 
ceived by  a  great  majority  of  the  people  like  the  surprising  fulfilment  of  an 
agreeable  dream,  and  hailed  with  acclamations  of  unfeigned  and  unbounded 
joy.  Even  that  class  of  the  inhabitants,  which  had  recently  expressed 
esteem  and  approbation  of  the  protectoral  government,  manifested  a  new- 
born zeal  for  royalty  hardly  inferior  to  the  more  consistent  ardor  of  the 
genuine  cavaliers.  These  sentiments,  confirmed  by  the  gracious  expressions 
of  regard  and  good-will^  which  the  king  very  readily  vouchsafed,  begot 
hopes  of  substantial  favor  and  recompense  which  it  was  not  easy  to  gratify, 
and  which  were  fated  to  undergo  a  speedy  and  severe  disappointment. 
Sir  William  Berkeley,  having  received  a  new  commission  from  the  crown 
to  exercise  the  office  of  governor  [1660],  convoked  the  provincial  assem- 
bly, which,  after  zealous  declarations  of  loyally  and  satisfaction,  undertook 
a  general  revision  of  the  laws  and  institutions  of  Virginia.  Trial  by  jury, 
which  had  been  discontinued  for  some  years,  was  now  again  restored  ; 
judicial  procedure  was  disencumbered  of  various  abuses  ;  and  a  provision 
of  essential  importance  to  the  interests  of  liberty  was  made  for  enlarging  the 
number  of  representatives  in  the  assembly  in  proportion  to  the  increase  of 
the  province  in  peopled  and  cultivated  territory.  The  supremacy  of  the 
church  of  England  was  recognized  and  established  by  law  ;  stipends  were 
allotted  to  its  ministers ;  and  no  preachers  but  those  who  had  received  their 
ordination  from  a  bishop  in  England,  and  who  should  subscribe  an  engage- 
ment of  conformity  to  the  forms  and  constitutions  of  this  established  church, 
were  permitted  to  exercise  their  functions  either  publicly  or  privately  within 
the  colony.^  A  law  was  shortly  after  enacted  against  the  importation  of 
Quakers  into  Virginia,  under  the  penalty  of  five  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco 
inflicted  on  the  importers  ;  but  with  a  special  exception  of  such  Quakers  as 

'  Sir  William  Berkeley,  who  made  a  journey  to  England  to  congratulate  the  king  on  hia 
restoration,  was  received  at  court  with  distinguished  regard ;  and  Charles,  in  honor  of  his  loyul 
Virginians,  wore  at  his  coronation  a  robe  manufactured  of  Virginian  silk.      Oldmixon. 

This  was  not  the  first  royal  robe  that  America  supplied.  Queen  Elizabeth  wore  a  gown 
made  of  the  silk  grass,  of  whirli  Raleigh's  colonists  sent  a  quantity  to  England.  Coxe'a 
Description  of  Carofana.  There  is  a  copy  of  this  curious  work  in  the  library  of  the  Royal 
liistltulion  ol'  Great  Britain 

•  Chalmers.    Burk. 


CHAP.  HI] 


THE  NAVIGATION  ACT. 


9\ 


might  be  judicially  transported  from  England  for  breach  of  her  legislative 
ordinances.^ 

The  same  principles  of  government  which  prevailed  in  England  after  the 
Restoration  uniformly  extended  their  influence,  whether  salutary  or  baneful, 
across  the  Atlantic  ;  and  the  colonies,  no  longer  deemed  the  mere  property 
of  the  prince,  were  considered  as  adjunctions  of  the  British  lerritor)',  and 
subject  to  parliamentary  legislation.  The  explicit  declaration  by  the  Long 
Parliament  of  the  dependence  of  the  colonies  on  the  parent  state  introduced 
maxims  which  received  the  sanction  of  the  courts  of  Westminster  Hall,  and 
were  thus  interwoven  with  the  fabric  of  English  law.  In  a  variety  of  cases 
which  involved  this  great  constitutional  point,  the  judges  pronounced,  that, 
by  virtue  of  those  principles  of  the  common  law  which  bind  the  territories 
to  the  state,  the  American  plantations  were  included  within  the  pale  of 
British  dominion  and  legislation,  and  affected  by  acts  of  parliament,  either 
when  specially  named  or  when  reasonably  supposable  within  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  legislature.''  In  conformity  with  the  adjudications  of  the  courts 
of  law  was  the  uniform  tenor  of  the  parliamentary  proceedings  ;  and  the 
colonists  soon  perceived,  that,  although  the  Long  Parliament  was  no  more, 
it  had  bequeathed  to  its  successors  the  spirit  which  influenced  its  commer- 
cial councils.  The  new  House  of  Commons  determined  not  only  to  retain 
the  system  of  colonial  policy  which  the  Long  Parliament  had  introduced, 
but  to  mature  and  extend  it,  —  to  render  the  trade  of  the  colonies  com- 
pletely subject  to  parliamentary  governance,  and  exclusively  subservient  to 
the  interests  of  English  commerce  and  navigation. 

No  sooner  was  Charles  seated  on  the  throne,  than  a  duty  of  five  per  cent. 
was  imposed  by  the  parliament  on  all  merchandise  exported  from,  or  im- 
ported into,  any  of  the  dominions  belonging  to  the  crown  ; '  and  the  same 
session,  in  producing  the  celebrated  JSPavigation  Jlct  [1660],  originated  the 
most  memorable  and  important  branch  of  the  commercial  code  of  England. 
By  this  statute,  (in  addition  to  many  other  important  provisions,  which  are 
foreign  to  our  present  consideration,)  it  was  ordained,  that  no  commodities 
should  be  imported  into  any  British  settlement  in  Asia,  Africa,  or  America, 
or  exported  from  thence,  but  in  vessels  built  in  England  or  her  colonial 
plantations,  and  navigated  by  crews  of  which  the  masters  and  three  fourths 
of  the  mariners  should  be  English  subjects,  under  the  penalty  of  forfeiture 
of  ship  and  cargo ;  that  none  but  natural-born  subjects  of  the  English  crown, 
or  persons  legally  naturalized,  should  exercise  the  occupation  of  merchant 
or  factor  in  any  English  colonial  settlement,  under  the  penalty  of  forfeiture 
of  goods  and  chattels ;  that  no  sugar,  tobacco,  cotton,  wool,  indigo,  ginger, 
or  woods  used  in  dyeuig,  produced  or  manufactured  in  the  colonies,  should 
be  shipped  from  them  to  any  other  country  than  England  ;  and  to  secure 
the  observance  of  this  regulation,  ship-owners  were  required,  at  the  port  of 
lading,  to  give  bonds  with  surety  for  sums  proportioned  to  the  tonnage  of 
their  vessels. "^  The  commercial  wares  thus  restricted  were  termed  enumer- 
ated commodities ;  and  when  new  articles  of  colonial  produce,  as  the  rice 
of  Carolina  and  the  copper  ore  of  the  northern  provinces,  were  raised  into 
importance,  and  brought  into  commerce  by  the  increasing  industry  of  the 

'  Chalmers.  In  1663,  the  assembly  entertained  a  complaint  against  one  of  its  own  mem- 
bers,  of  "  being  loving  to  the  Quakers."      Burk. 

»  Freeman's  Reports,  175.  Modern  Reports,  III.  159, 160,  IV.  225.  Vaughan's  Reports,  170, 
400.    Salktjid'ii  ICeporls,  II.  0. 

»  12  Car.  II.  cap.  4.  *  Ibid.  cap.  18. 


98 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


colonists,  they  were  successively  added  to  the  original  list  which  we  have 
noted,  and  subjected  to  the  same  regulations. 

As  some  compensation  to  the  colonies  for  these  commercial  restraints, 
the  parliament  at  the  same  time  conferred  on  them  the  exclusive  supply  of 
tobacco,  by  prohibiting  its  cultivation  in  England,  Ireland,  Guernsey,  and 
Jersey.'  The  Navigation  Act  was  soon  after  enlarged,  and  additional  re- 
strictions imposed  by  a  new  law  [1663],  which  prohibited  the  importation 
of  European  commodities  into  the  colonies,  except  in  vessels  laden  in  Eng- 
land and  navigated  and  manned  in  conformity  with  the  requisitions  of  the 
original  statute.  More  rigorous  and  effectual  provisions  were  likewise  de- 
vised for  securing  the  infliction  of  the  penalties  attached  to  the  transgres- 
sion of  the  Navigation  Act ;  and  tlie  principles  of  commercial  policy  on 
which  the  whole  system  was  founded  were  openly  avowed  in  a  declaration, 
tliat,  as  it  was  tlie  practice  of  other  nations  to  keep  the  trade  of  their  plan- 
tations to  themselves,  so  the  colonies  that  were  founded  and  peopled  by 
English  subjects  ought  to  be  retained  "in  6rm  dependence  upon  England, 
and  obliged  to  contribute  to  her  advantage  in  the  eraplOTment  of  English 
shipping,  the  vent  of  English  commodities  and  manufactures,  and  the 
conversion  of  England  into  a  settled  mart  or  emporium,  not  only  of  the 
productions  of  her  own  colonies,  but  also  of  such  commodities  of  other 
countries  as  the  colonies  themselves  might  require  to  be  supplied  with.' 
Advancing  a  step  farther  in  the  prosecution  of  its  domineering  policy,  the 
parliament  assumed  the  prerogative  of  regulating  the  trade  of  the  several 
colonies  with  each  other  ;  and  as  the  Act  of  Navigation  had  left  all  the 
colonists  at  liberty  to  export  the  enumerated  commodities  from  one  settle- 
ment to  another  without  paybe  any  duty,  this  exemption  was  subsequently 
withdrawn,  and  they  were  subjected,  in  trading  with  each  other,  to  a  tax 
equivalent  to  what  was  levied  on  the  consumption  of  their  pecuhar  com- 
modities in  England.^ 

The  system  pursued  by  these  regulations,  of  securing  to  England  a 
monopoly  of  the  trade  of  her  colonies,  by  shutting  up  every  other  channel 
which  competition  might  have  formed  for  it,  and  into  which  the  interest  of 
the  colonists  might  have  caused  it  preferably  to  flow,  excited  in  their  minds 
the  utmost  disgust  and  indignation.  In  England,  it  was  long  applauded  as 
a  masterpiece  of  political  sagacity  ;  retained  and  cherished  as  a  main  source 
of  national  opulence  and  power  ;  and  defended  on  the  plea  of  expediency, 
deduced  from  its  supposed  advantages.  The  philosophy  of  political  sci- 
ence, however,  has  amply  refuted  these  illiberal  principles,  and  would  long 
ago  have  corrected  the  views  and  amended  the  institutions  which  they 
sanctioned  or  introduced,  but  that,  from  the  general  prevalence  of  narrow 
jealousies,  and  of  those  obstinate  and  violent  prepossessions  that  constitute 
wilful  ignorance,  the  cultivation  of  political  science  has  much  more  fre- 
quently terminated  m  knowledge  merely  speculative,  than  visibly  operated 
to  improve  human  conduct,  or  increase  human  happiness. 

Nations,  biased  by  virulent  enmities,  as  well  as  mean  partialities,  have 
suffered  an  illiberal  jealousy  of  other  states  to  contract  the  views  thev  have 
formed  of  their  own  interests,  and  to  induce  a  line  of  pdicy,  of  which  the 
operation  i^  to  procure  a  smaller  imount  of  exclusive  gain,  in  preference 
to  a  larger  contingent  in  the  participation  of  general  advantage.  Too 
uttssionate  or  eross-siehted  to  discern  the  bonds  that  connect  the  interests 


'12  Car.  II.  cap.  34. 


«  15  Car.  II.  cap.  7. 


3  25  Car.  II.  cup.  7,  Anno  1672. 


rHAP.  iti  1 


IMPOLICY  OF  THE  EXCLUSIVE  SYSTEM. 


93 


of  all  the  members  of  the  great  family  of  mankind,  they  have  accounted 
the  detriment  and  exclusion  of  their  rivals  equivalent  to  an  extension  of 
benefit  to  themselves.     The  prevalence  of  this  mistaken  policy  has  com- 
monly been  aided  by  the  interested  representations  of  tlie  lew  who  contrive 
to  extract  a  temporary  and  partial  advantage  from  every  abuse,  however 
generally  pernicious  ;  and  when,  in  spite  of  a  faulty  commercial  system, 
the  prosperity  of  a  state  has  been  augmented  by  the' force  of  its  natural  ad- 
vantages, this  effect  has  been  eagerly  ascribed  to  the  very  causes  which 
really  impeded  and  abridged,  without  being  able  entirely  to  intercept  it. 
But  the  discoveries  obtained  by  the  cultivation  of  poHtical  science  have,  in 
this  respect,  coincided  with  the  dictates  of  Christian  morality,  and  demon- 
strated, that,  in  every  transaction  between  nations  and  individuals,  the  inter- 
course most  solidly  and  lastingly  beneficial  to  both  and  each  of  the  parties 
is  that  which  is  founded  on  the  principles  of  fair  reciprocity  and  mutual  ac- 
commodation ;  that  all  policy  suggested  by  jealous  or  malevolent  regard  of 
the  advantage  of  others  implies  a  narrow  and  perverted  view  of  our  own  ; 
that  that  which  is  morally  wrong  can  never  be  politically  right ;  and  that  to 
do  as  we  would  be  done  by  is  not  less  the  maxim  of  prudence  than  the 
precept  of  piety.     So  coherent  must  true  philosophy  ever  be  with  the 
prescriptions  of  divine  wisdom.     But,  unfortunately,  this  coherence  has  not 
always  been  recognized  even  by  those  philosophers  whose  researches  have 
tended  to  its  illustration  ;  and  confining  themselves  to  reasonings  sufficiently 
clear  and  convincing,  no  doubt,  to  persons  contemplating  human  affairs  m 
the  simplicity  and  disinterested  abstraction  of  theoretical  survey,  they  have 
neglected  to  promote  the  acceptance  of  important  truths  by  reference  to 
those  principles  that  derive  them  from  infallible  wisdom,  and  connect  them 
with  the  strongest  sanctions  of  human  duty.  ... 

They  have  demonstrated*  that  a  parent  state,  by  restraining  the  com- 
merce of  her  colonies  with  other  nations,  impairs  the  industry  and  produc- 
tiveness both  of  the  colonies  and  of  foreign  nations ;  and  hence,  by  enfeebling 
the  demand  of  foreign  purchasers,  which  must  be  proportioned  to  their 
ability,  and  lessening  the  quantity  of  colonial  commodities  actually  produced, 
which  must  be  proportioned  to  the  actual  demand  for  them,  enhances  the 
price  of  the  colonial  produce  to  herself  as  well  as  to  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  so  far  diminishes  its  power  to  increase  the  enjoyments  and  animate,  the 
industry  of  her  own  citizens  as  well  as  of  other  states.      Besides,  the 
monopoly  of  the  colonial  trade  produces  so  high  a'rate  of  profit  to  the 
merchants  who  carry  it  on,  as  to  attract  into  this  channel  a  great  deal  of 
the  capital  that  would,  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  be  directed  to  other 
branches  of  trade  ;  and  in  these  branches  the  profits  must  consequently  be 
augmented  in  proportion  to  the  diminished  competition  of  the  capitals  em- 
ployed in  them.    But  whenever  the  ordinary  rate  of  profit  in  any  country  is 
raised  by  artificial  means  to  a  higher  pitch  than  it  would  naturally  attain, 
that  country  is  necessarily  subjected  to  great  disadvantage  in  every  branch 
of  trade  of  which  she  does  not  command  a  monopoly.   Her  merchants  can- 
not obtain  such  higher  profit  without  selling  dearer  than  they  otherwise 
would  do  both  the  commodities  of  foreign  countries  which  they  import  into 
their  own,  and  the  goods  of  their  own  country  which  they  carry  abroad. 
The  country  thus  finds  herself  undersold   at  foreign  markets   in  many 
I — ._i, f  „_ -«„  .  o  «i:ca/ifranta<r<>  ♦"  whirb  she  is  the  more  exposed, 

Smith's  Weaiih  of  No 


94 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


'«f  *"' 


■I' 


that  In  foreign  states  much  capital  has  been  forced  into  those  branches  by 
her  exchision  of  foreigners  from  partalcing  her  colonial  trade,  which  would 
have  absorbed  a  part  of  it.  Thus,  by  the  operation  of  a  monopoly  of  tlie 
colonial  trade,  the  parent  state  obtains  an  overgrowth  of  one  branch  of  dis- 
tant  traffic,  at  the  expense  of  diminishing  the  advantages  which  her  own 
citizens  might  derive  from  the  unrestricted  produce  of  the  colonies,  and  of 
impairing  all  those  branches  of  nearer  trade,  which,  by  the  greater  frequency 
of  their  returns,  afford  the  most  constant  and  beneficial  excitement  to  na- 
tional industry.  Her  commerce,  instead  of  flowing  in  a  variety  of  moderate 
channels,  is  trained  to  seek  principally  one  great  conduit ;  and  hence  the 
whole  system  of  her  trade  and  industry  is  rendered  dangerously  liable  to 
obstruction  and  derangement. 

But  the  injurious  consequences  of  this  exclusive  policy  are  not  confined 
to  its  immediate  operation  upon  trade.  The  progress  of  our  history  will 
demonstrate,  that  the  connection,  which  a  parent  state  seeks,  by  the  aid  of 
such  a  system,  to  maintain  with  colonies  in  which  the  spirit  and  institutions 
of  liberty  obtain  any  prevalence,  carries  within  itself  the  principles  of  its 
own  dissolution.  During  the  infancy  of  the  colonies,  a  perpetual  and 
vexatious  exertion  is  required  from  the  parent  state  to  execute  and  de- 
velope  her  restraining  laws  ;  while  a  corresponding  activity  is  awakened  in 
the  colonies  to  obstruct  or  elude  their  operation.  Every  rising  branch  of 
trade,  which  is  left,  for  a  time  or  for  ever,  free  to  the  colonists,  serves,  by 
the  effect  of  contrast,  to  render  more  striking  and  sensible  the  disadvantages 
of  their  situation  in  the  regulated  branches  ;  and  every  extension  of  the 
restrictions  provokes  additional  discontent.  As  the  colonies  increase  their 
internal  siiength,  and  make  advances  in  the  possession  and  appreciation  of 
social  importance,  the  disposition  of  their  inhabitants  to  emancipate  them- 
selves from  such  restraints  is  combined  with  ability  to  accomplish  their 
deliverance,  by  the  very  circumstances  and  at  the  very  period  which  will 
expose  the  trade  of  the  parent  state  to  the  greatest  injury  and  disorder. 
And  the  advantages  which  the  commerce  of  other  nations  must  expect  from 
the  destruction  of  the  monopoly  unites  the  wishes  of  the  whole  world  with 
the  revolt  of  the  colonies,  and  gives  assurance  of  the  most  powerful  assist- 
ance to  promote  their  emancipation. 

A  better  apology  for  the  system  which  England  adopted  towards  her 
colonies,  than  the  boasted  expediency  of  her  measures  would  thus  appear 
to  supply,  may  be  derived  from  the  admitted  fact,  that  her  colonial  policy, 
on  the  whole,  was  much  less  illiberal  and  oppressive  than  that  which  any 
other  nation  of  Europe  had  ever  been  known  to  pursue.  While  the  foreign 
trade  of  the  colonies  was  restrained  for  the  supposed  advantage  of  England, 
whose  prosperity  they  partook,  and  by  whose  power  they  were  or  were 
supposed  to  be  defended,  their  internal  liberty  was  in  the  main  suffered  to 
flourish  and  mature  itself  under  the  shelter  of  wise  and  liberal  domestic  insti- 
tutions ;  and  even  the  commercial  restrictions  imposed  on  them  were  niuch 
less  rigorous  and  injurious  than  those  which  the  colonies  of  France,  Spain, 
Portugal,  and  Denmark  endured  from  their  respective  parent  states.  The 
trade  of  the  British  settlemehts  was  not  committed,  according  to  the  prac- 
tice of  some  of  those  states,  to  exclusive  companies,  nor  restricted,  accord- 
ing to  the  practice  of  others,  to  a  particular  port  ;  but,  being  left  free  to  all 
the  people,  and  admitted  to  all  the  harbours  of  England,  employed  a  body 
ot  iiritish  traders  too  numerous  and  dispersed  to  admit  of  their  renouncing 


CHAP.  Ill  ] 


THE  NAVIGATION   ACT  A  GRIEVANCE. 


96 


mutual  competition  and  uniting  in  a  general  confederacy  to  oppress  the 
colonists  and  extort  exorbitant  profits  to  themselves.  This  apology  is  ob- 
viously very  unsatisfactory,  as  every  attempt  to  palliate  injustice  niust 
necessarily  be.  It  was  urged  with  a  very  bad  grace  by  the  people  of  Eng- 
land, and  totally  disregarded  by  the  inhabitants  of  America. 

In  none  of  the  American  colonies  did  this  tyrannical  system  excite  greater 
resentment  than  in  Virginia,  where  the  larger  commerce  of  the  people, 
iheir  preeminent  loyalty,  and  the  recent  experience  of  the  lenient  and  liberal 
policy  of  Cromwell,  rendered  the  pressure  of  the  burden  more  severe,  and 
the  infliction  of  it  more  exasperating.*     No  sooner  was  the  Navigation  Act 
promulgated  in  Virginia,  and  us  effects  perceived,  than  the  colonists  warmly 
remonstrated  against  it  as  a  grievance,  and  petitioned  earnestly  for  relief. 
Ut't,  although  the  English  monarchs  were  accustomed  at  this  period  to  ex- 
ercise a  dispensing  power  over  the  laws,  —  insomuch,  that,  when  the  court 
at  a  later  period  ventured  openly  to  pursue  a  system  of  arbitrary  govern- 
ment, even  the  Act  of  Navigation  itself,  so  great  a  favorite  with  the  nation, 
was  suspended  for  a  while  by  an  exertion  of  this  stretch  of  prerogative,  — 
yet,  during  the  early  period  of  his  reign,  Charles,  unassured  of  the  sta- 
bility of  his  throne,  and  surrounded  by  ministers  of  constitutional  principles, 
was  compelled  to  observe  the  limits  of  a  legal  administration,  and  to  aid 
with  his  authority  the  execution  even  of  those  laws  that  were  most  repug- 
nant to  his  principles  and  wishes.''     So  far  from  lending  a  favorable  ear  to 
the  petition  of  Virginia,  Charles  and  his  ministers  adopted  measures  for 
carrying  the  act  into  strict  execution.     Intelligence  having  been  received 
that  its  provisions  were  violated  almost  as  generally  as  tliey  were  detested, 
and  that  the  provincial  authorities  were  reluctant  to  promote  the  efficacy  of 
a  system  which  they  perceived  was  so  hateful  to  the  persons  over  whom 
they  presided,  —  a  royal  mandate  was  issued  to  the  governors  of  the  settle- 
ments, reprimanding  them  for  the  "  neglects,  or  rather  contempts,"  which 
the  law  had  sustained,  and  enjoining  their  future  attention  to  its  rigid  en- 
forcement ;  ^  and  in  Virginia,  more  especially,  demonstration  was  made  of 
the  determined  purpose  of  the  English  government  to  overcome  all  provin- 
cial resistance,  by  the  erection  of  forts  on  the  banks  of  the  principal  rivers, 
and  the  appointment  of  vessels  to  cruise  on  the  coasts.     But,  notwith- 
standing the  threatening  measures  employed  to  overawe  them,  and  the  vigi- 
lance of  the  British  cruisers,  the  Virginians  contrived  to  evade  the  law,  and 
to  obtain  some  vent  to  the  accumulating  stores  of  their  depreciated  produce, 
by  a  clandestine  traffic  with  the  settlement  of  the  Dutch  on  Hudson's 
River.     This  relief,  however,  was  inconsiderable  ;  and  the  discontent  of 

'  It  was  to  Virginia  alone  that  Montesquieu's  justificatory  principle  of  the  system  of  re- 
stricted trade  could  be  considered  as  in  any  degree  applicable.  "  It  has  been  established,' 
says  this  writer,  "  that  the  mother  country  alone  shall  trade  in  the  colonies,  and  that  from  very 
good  reason,  —  because  the  design  of  the  settlement  was  the  extension  of  commerce,  and  not 
the  foundation  of  a  city  or  of  a  new  empire."  Spirit  of  Laws.  This  was  in  some  measure 
true  in  regard  to  Virginia,  though  her  first  charter  professes  more  enlarged  designs ;  but  it 
was  not  applicable  to  New  England,  Maryland,  or  the  other  posterior  settlements  of  the 

English.  ....       /.     „ 

»  When  the  parliament,  in  1666,  proposed  the  unjust  and  violent  law,  which  they  finally 
established,  against  the  importation  of  Irish  cattle  into  England,  the  king  was  so  much  struck 
with  the  remonstrances  of  the  Irish  people  against  this  measure,  that  he  not  only  exerted  all 
hiit  interest  to  oppose  the  bill,  but  openly  declared  that  he  could  not  conscientiously  assent  to 
it ;  bat  the  Commons  were  inflexible  in  their  purpose,  and  the  king  was  compelled  to  submit. 
"  The  spirit  of  tyranny,"  says  Hume,  "  of  which  nations  are  as  susceptible  as  individuals,  had 
estremely  animated  the  English  to  exert  their  authority  over  their  dependent  state." 
'  Chalmers.    State  Paper i,  ibid. 


96 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


the  planters,  inflamed  by  the  hostilities  which  the  frontier  Indians  now 
resumed,  began  to  spread  so  widely  as  to  inspire  some  veteran  soldiers  of 
Cromwell,  who  had  been  banished  to  Virginia,  with  the  hope  of  rendering 
themselves  masters  of  the  colony,  and  delivering  it  entirely  from  the  yoke 
of  England.  A  conspiracy,  which  has  received  the  name  of  Birkinhead's 
Plot,  was  formed  for  this  purpose  ;  but  the  design,  having  been  seasonably 
disclosed  by  the  fear  or  remorse  of  one  of  the  persons  engaged  in  it,  was 
easily  defeated  by  the  prudence  and  vigor  of  8ir  William  Berkeley,  and 
with  no  farther  bloodshed  than  the  execution  of  four  of  the  conspirators.' 

The  distress  of  the  colony  continuing  to  increase  with  the  increasing 
depreciation  of  tobact.  ,  now  confined  almost  entirely  to  one  market,  and 
with  the  augmentation  of  the  price  of  all  foreign  commodities,  now  de- 
rivable only  from  the  supplies  which  one  country  could  furnish, —-various 
ellbrts  were  made  from  time  to  time  by  the  provincial  assembly  for  the  re- 
lief of  their  constituents.  Retaliating,  in  some  degree,  the  injustice  with 
which  they  were  treated,  they  framed  a  law  ordaining,  that,  in  the  payment 
of  debts,  foreign  creditors  should  be  postponed  to  Virginian  claimants,  and 
that  the  provincial  tribunals  should  give  precedence  in  judgments  to  en- 
gagements contracted  within  the  colony.  Statutes  were  enacted  for  re- 
straining the  culture  of  tobacco  ;  and  attempts  were  made  to  introduce  a 
new  staple,  by  encouraging  the  plantation  of  mulberry-trees  and  the  manu- 
facture of  silk  ;  but  neither  of  these  projects  was  successful.  Numerous 
French  Protestant  refugees  being  attracted  to  Maryland  by  a  statute  of 
naturalization  in  their  favor,  which  was  enacted  in  this  province  in  the  year 
1666,  the  Virginian  assembly  endeavoured  to  recruit  the  wealth  and  popu- 
lation of  its  territories  from  the  same  source,  by  framing,  in  like  manner,  a 
series  of  laws  which  empowered  the  governor  to  confer  on  aliens  taking  tlie 
oath  of  allegiance  all  the  privileges  of  naturalization  [1671]  ;"  but  it  was 
provisionally  subjoined,  that  this  concession  should  not  be  construed  to  vest 
aliens  with  the  power  of  exercising  any  function  which  they  were  disabled 
from  performing  by  the  statutes  of  the  English  parliament  relative  to  the 
colonies.  This  prudent  reference  to  a  restriction  which  the  provincial 
patents  of  naturalization  must  inevitably  have  received  from  the  common 
law  was  intended  to  guard  against  the  disputes  and  confiscations  which 
might  ensue  from  the  attempts  of  naturalized  aliens  to  infringe  the  Navigation 
Act.  But  the  precaution  was  unavailing  ;  and  at  an  after  period  many  for- 
feitures of  property  were  occasioned,  and  much  judicial  controversy  pro- 
duced, by  the  traffic  which  aliens  in  the  colonies  carried  on        o>-  rhe 

'  Oldmixon.     Beverly.       Burk. 

•  It  was  not  till  after  the  Revolution  of  1688  that  the  population  of  Virjpnis    •  i  -x, 

ccession  from  the  influx  of  these  or  other  foreigners.     In  1671,  Sir  William  ^^i-.-l/ th 


describes  the  state  of  its  population  :  —  "  There  are  in  Virginia  ahove  40,000  persons,  men, 
women,  and  children  ;  of  whidi  there  are  ,-',000  black  s),i'",s,  6.000  Christian  servanui  for  » 
nhort  time,  and  the  rest  have  heen  born  iu  the  country,  or  have  come  in  to  settle  or  serve  in 
hope  of  bettering  lh?iT  condition  in  a  growing  country.  Yearly,  we  suppose,  there  como  in 
of  servants  about  1 ,500,  of  which  most  are  English,  few  Scotch,  and  fewer  Irish  ;  and  noi 


Answers  to  the  Lords  of  the  Committee 
iif  Colonies,  apud  C!lnJ,mfi^  She  numerous  importations  of  servants  mentioned  by  Sir  William 
Berkeley  were  protiii'y  ,V  iked  hy  Jie  troubles  that  preceded  and  attended  Bacon's  Rebellion. 
The  later  importatif  (is^  w  ■  mo>.  available  than  the  earlier  ones  ;  the  diseases  of  the  country 
huring  diminished  in  ircij!  'ncy  and  vioL>nce  as  the  woods  were  progressively  cut  down , 
diseases  occasioned  by  the  repugnance  of  the  human  constitution  to  novelty  of  climate  were 
diminished  by  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  conscaucnt  gradual  compliance  oi  the  bodily  frnina 
with  the  properties  of  the  rofion.  The  mortality  among  the  new  comers,  we  learn  from 
^ir  William  Berkeley,  was  at  tirbt  enormous,  but  had  became  very  trifiing  phui  iw  liMl. 


niAP.  ni.] 


INDIAN   WAR. -INSURRECTIONS 


97 


in  It,  was 


niithority  of  general  patents  of  denization  granfrd  to  thcni  by  the  ignorance 
or  inattention  of  the  royal  governors.  Their  pretensions,  though  quite  re- 
pugnant to  the  navigation  laws,  were  supported  bv  the  American  r^ourts 
!)l' justice,  but  uniformly  disallowed  by  the  English  privy  council,  which, 
lifter  repeated  decisions  m  conformity  with  the  principle,  that  the  ordinances 
of  a  provincial  legislature  cannot  derogate  from  the  general  jurisprudence 
of  the  empire,  finally  prohibited  all  farther  denizations  by  the  provinciul 
governors  or  assemblies.* 

Far  from  being  mitigated  by  the  lni)se  of  time,  tlie  discontents  in  Vir- 
a;inia  were  exasperated  by  the  incrca5<ing  pressure  of  the  commercial  re- 
strictions, corresponding  with  the  successive  exertions  of  the  English  gov- 
ernment to  pronuUe  their  more  cflectual  operation.  Various  additional 
causes  co;ilrihufed  ic  inflame  the  displeasure  of  the  colonists  ;  and  a  con- 
siderable native  population  having  now  grown  up  in  Virginia,  the  rc.sent- 
iiK  ni  of  these  ^icrsons  was  no  way  abated  by  the  habitual  regard  and  fond 
remembrance  which  emigrants  retain  for  the  parent  state  which  is  also  the 
land  of  their  individual  nativity.  The  defectiveness  of  their  education  ex- 
cluded the  influence  of  literature  from  acting  in  this  respect  as  a  substitute 
to  experience  ;  and  they  knew  little  of  England  beyond  the  wrongs  which 
they  heard  daily  imputed  to  her  iniustice.  It  was  natural  that  all  the  politi- 
<al  leaders  and  reasoners,  who  either  sincerely  undertook  to  demonstrate  or 
lactiously  endeavoured  to  magnify  these  wrongs,  should  contrast  the  op- 
pression that  followed  restored  royalty  in  England  with  the  liberality  which 
the  colony  had  experienced  from  Oliver  Cromwell ;  and  the  effect  of  this 
suggestion  was  to  associate  national  prosperity  with  denaocratical  ideas  in 
the  minds  of  a  numerous  and  increasing  party  of  the  Virginian  planters.'-' 

The  Indian  hostilities,  after  infesting  the  frontiers,  began  now  to  pene- 
trate into  the  interior  of  the  province  ;  and  while  the  colonists  were  re- 
duced to  defend  their  property  at  the  hazard  of  their  lives,  they  fotmd  it 
additionally  endangered  [1673]  by  the  large  and  improvident  grants  of  land 
which  the  king,  after  the  example  of  his  father,  yielded  with  lavish  profusion 
and  facility  to  the  solicitations  of  his  favorites.  The  fate  of  that  parent  had 
warned  him  to  avoid,  in  general,  rather  the  arrogance  that  provoked  than 
the  injustice  that  deserved  it ;  and  in  granting  those  applications,  without 
fatiguing  himself  by  any  inquiry  into  their  merits,  he  at  once  indulged  the 
indolence  of  his  disposition,  and  exerted  a  liberality  that  cost  him  nothing 
that  he  cared  for.  Many  of  the  royal  grants  not  only  were  of  such  exorbitant 
extent  as  to  be  unfavorable  to  the  progress  of  cultivation,  but,  from  ignorance 
( ;  irpccuiacy  in  the  definition  of  their  boundaries,  were  so  conceived  as  to 
include  tracts  of  land  that  had  already  been  planted  and  appropriated. 
Such  a  complication  of  exasperating  circumstances  brought  the  discontents 
of  the  colony  to  a  crisis. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  year  1675,  two  slight  insurrections,  which  were 
rather  the  hasty  explosions  of  popular  irritation  than  the  fruits  of  rnatured 
design,  were  easily  suppressed  by  the  governor,  but  gave  significant  intima- 
tion of  the  state  and  the  tendency  of  public  feeling  in  Virginia.  In  the  hope 
of  averting  tlic  crisis,  and  obtaining  redress  of  the  more  recent  grievances 

'  Chalmers. 

»  The  partial  and  contradictory  accounts  that  have  been  transmitted  of  the  subsequent  events 
boar  unhappy  testimony  to  the  influence  of  the  distinrtion  that  now  began  to  prevail  in  Vir- 
ginia between  a  royalist  nnd  n  democratical  party.  The  misrepresentations  of  faction  continue 
to  hide  and  disguise  truth,  after  its  passions  have  ceaaed  to  disturb  happiness. 

VOL.    I.  13  I  " 


98 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


which  were  provoking  it,  the  assembly  despatched  deputies  to  England, 
who,  after  u  tedious  negotiation  with  the  king  and  his  ministers,  had  brought 
matters  to  the  point  of  a  happy  adjustment,  and  obtained  the  promise  of  a 
royal  charter,  defining  both  the  constitution  and  the  territory  of  Virginia, 
when  their  expectations  were  frustrated  and  the  proceedings  suspended  by 
intelligence  of  a  formidable  rebelhon  in  the  colony.  A  tax,  imposed  by  th« 
assembly  to  defray  the  expense  of  the  deputation  [1676],  increased  the 
discontent  which  the  deputation  was  intended  to  remove  ;  and  when  the 
dilatory  proceedings  of  the  English  ministers,  who  disdained  to  allow  the 
intelligence  of  past  or  the  apprehensions  of  future  insurrection  to  quicken 
their  diligence,  seemed  to  confirm  the  assurances  of  the  factious  leaders  v)f 
the  colonists  that  even  their  last  sacrifice  was  thrown  away,  the  tide  of  rage 
and  disaffection  began  again  to  swell  to  the  point  of  rebellion.  It  did  not 
long  wait  for  additional  provocation  to  excite,  or  an  able  leader  to  impel, 
its  fury.  For,  to  crown  the  provincial  distress,  the  Indian  warfare,  which 
continued  to  prevail  notwithstanding  all  the  governor's  attempts  to  suppress 
it,  now  spread  out  with  redoubled  extent  and  fury,  and  threatened  a  for- 
midable addition  of  danger,  hardship,  and  expense. 

The  Indians  were  alarmed  and  irritated  by  a  series  of  enterprises  which 
the  governor  promoted  for  exploring  the  large  and  yet  unvisited  districts 
adjoining  the  colonial  occupation,  and  which  the  savages  regarded  as  a  pre- 
paratory step  to  farther  encroachments  on  their  domains.  Even  the  popu- 
larity of  the  long  tried  and  magnanimous  friend  of  Virginia,  Sir  William 
Berkeley,  was  overcast  by  the  blackness  of  this  cloud  of  calamities.  The 
spirit  and  fidehty  with  which  he  had  adhered  to  the  colony  through  every 
variety  of  fortune,  his  earnest  remonstrances  with  the  English  government 
against  the  commercial  restraints,  his  generosity  in  devoting  a  considerable 
part  of  his  own  private  fortune  to  the  improvement  and  embellishment  of 
the  province,  and  the  disinterestedness  he  had  shown  in  declining,  during  the 
unprosperous  state  of  the  provincial  finances,  to  accept  an  addition,  pro- 
posed by  the  assembly,  to  his  official  emoluments,  were  disregarded,  denied, 
or  forgotten.  [1676.]  To  hh  age  and  incapacity  were  now  attributed  the 
burdens  of  the  people  and  the  distractions  of  the  time  ;  and  he  was  loudly 
accused  of  wanting  ahke  honesty  to  resist  the  tyrannical  pohcy  of  the  mother 
country,  and  courage  to  repel  the  hostility  of  the  savages.^  Such  ungrate- 
ful injustice  is  rarely,  if  ever,  committed  by  any  people  advanced  beyond  a 
state  of  national  barbarism,  except  when  the  insidious  suggestions  of  factious 
leaders  have  imposed  on  tlieir  credulity  and  fanned  their  passions  into  fury. 
The  populace  of  Holland,  when,  a  few  years  before  this  period,  they  tore 
in  pieces  their  benefactor,  John  De  Witt,  were  not  only  terrified  by  the 
progress  of  their  national  calamities,  but  deluded  by  the  profligate  artifices 
of  the  retainers  of  the  House  of  Orange.  To  similar  influence  (exerted  in 
similar  circun.3tances)  were  the  enraged  and  misguided  Virginians  now  ex- 
posed from  the  artifice  and  ambition  of  Nathaniel  Bacon. 

This  man  was  educated  to  the  profession  of  a  lawyer  in  England  ;  and 
only  three  years  had  elapsed,  since,  for  sorne  unexplained  reason,  he  emi- 
grated to  Virginia.  Short  as  this  interval  was,  it  sufficed  to  advance  him 
to  a  conspicuous  station  in  the  colony,  and  to  illustrate  the  disposition  and 
talents  of  a  popular  leader.     The  consideration  he  derived  from  his  legal 


uiiaiiuisciiis. 


ailu  tijc  cSteSiTi  ji6  SCCjliircu  uV  SH  liiSSiiUd 


mfy   avtT.il  T_;3a,    it«T.t    iti^ 


Beverly.      Chalmers.    Oldmixon  (2d  odit.).    Campbell.    Burk. 


CHAP.  Ill] 


BACON'S  REBELLION. 


9a 


ason,  he  emi- 


rured  him  already  a  seat  m  the  council,  and  the  rank  of  colonel  in  the 
nrovincial  miUtia.     But  his  temper  was  not  accommodated  to  subordinate 
Office  •  and,  unfortunately,  the  distractions  of  the  colony  presented  to  him  a 
sohere  of  action  more  congenial  to  his  character  and  capacity.     Young, 
saneuine,  eloquent,  and  daring,  yet  artful  and  ambitious,  he  presented  him- 
selfin  the  assemblies  of  the  discontented  planters,  and,  by  his  spirited 
iiarangues  on  the  grievances  under  which  they  labored,  he  promoted  their 
exasperation  and  attracted  their  favor.     He  was  implicated  m  the  abortive 
insurrection  of  the  preceding  year,  and  had  been  imprisoned  and  subse- 
nuenUy  pardoned  by  the  governor  ;  but  less  affected  by  the  clemency  than 
encouraged  by  the  impunity  which  he  experienced,  and  sensible  that  the 
avenue  to  legitimate  promotion  was  now  for  ever  closed  against  him,  he  de- 
termined to  unite  his  lot  with  the  fortune  of  the  malcontent  party ;  and  taking 
advantage  of  their  present  excitation,  he  once  again  came  forward,  and  ad- 
dressed them  with  artifice  which  their  uncultivated  understandings  were 
unable  *o  detect,  and  with  eloquence  which  their  untamed  passions  rendered 
nuite  irresistible.    Finding  that  the  sentiments  most  prevalent  with  his  audi- 
tory were  the  alarm  and  indignation  excited  by  the  Indian  ravages,  he  has- 
tened to  strike  in  with  the  impressions  of  which  he  proposed  to  lay  hold, 
and  loudly  charged  the  governor  with  neglect  or  incapacity  to  exert  the  vigor 
that  was  requisite  for  the  general  safety  ;  and  having  expatiated  on  the 
facility  with  which  the  whole  Indian  race  might  be  exterminated,  he  exhorted 
his  fellow-colonists  to  take  arms  in  their  own  defence,  and  achieve  the  de- 
liverance they  mrst  no  longer  expect  from  auy  other  quarter.     So  accept- 
able was  this  address  and  the  speaker  to  the  temper  of  the  popular  mmd, 
that  his  exhortation  was  instantly  obeyed,  and  his  mam  object  no  less  suc- 
cessfully accomplished. 

A  great  multitude  hastened  to  embody  themselves  fcr  an  expedition 
against  the  Indians ;  and  electing  Bacon  to  be  their  general,  committed 
themselves  to  his  direction.     He  assured  them,  in  return,  that  he  would 
never  lay  down  his  arms,  tUl  he  had  avenged  their  sufferings  and  redressed 
their  wrongs.     To  give  some  color  of  legitimacy  to  the  preeniinence  he 
had  obtained,  and,  perhaps,  expecting  to  precipitate  matters  to  the  extrem- 
ity which  his  interest  required  that  they  should  speeddy  reach,  he  applied 
to  the  governor  for  an  official  confirmation  of  the  popular  election,  and 
offered  to  march  immediately  against  the  common  enemy.     Berkeley,  sus- 
pecting his  real  designs,  thought  it  prudent  to  temporize,  and  try  the  effect 
of  negotiation  ;  but  he  had  to  deal  with  a  much  more  practised  adept  in 
dissimulation  tlian  himself;  and  encountered  in  Bacon  a  man  precautioned 
bv  his  own  guile  and  insincerity  against  the  craft  of  others,  and  fully  con- 
scious that  promptitude  and  resolute  perseverance  alone  could  extricate  him 
with  safety  or  credit  from  the  dangers  of  his  situation.     Pressed  for  an 
answer,  and  finding  that  the  applicants  were  not  to  be  soothed  by  his  con- 
ciliating demeanour,  Berkeley  issued  a  proclamation,  commandmg  the  multi- 
tude to  disperse  under  pain  of  incurring  the  ^uilt  of  rebelhon. 

Bacon,  no  more  dlscancpi^eti  Jjy/fmfe.Jafefeivnptioo. of  vigor  than  he  had 
been  duped  by  the  preVrius-ndgoiiatibn,  initaAtly-M^JOOpd  to  Jamestown  at 
the  head  of  sfx  hundred  p/  his  followers.,: and,  swjouodins  the  house  where 
the  governor  and  assembly,  w^^t?  6nga^e^;iH:deiibe}:atioi>,  he  demanded  the 
commU.-mn  which  his  pro6eedrngs  and'reWnUb  fehoW^d'how  little  he  either 
noeded'or  regarded.     Berkeley,  undismayed  by  the  dangers  that  environea 


100 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1, 


m-L 


him,  was  sensible  of  his  inability  to  repel  the  force  of  the  insurgents,  and 
yet  disdained  to  bend  his  authority  before  their  menacing  attitude,  or  "ield 
to  their  imperious  demands.  Confronting,  with  invincible  courage,  the  men 
who  reproached  him  with  defect  of  this  virtue,  he  peremptorily  commanded 
them  to  depart ;  and  when  they  refused,  he  presented  his  breast  to  their 
weapons,  and  calmly  defied  their  rage.  But  the  council,  more  considerate 
of  their  own  safety,  and  fearful  of  driving  the  multitude  to  some  fatal  act  of 
fury,  hastily  prepared  a  commission,  by  which  Bacon  was  appointed  captain- 
general  of  all  the  forces  of  Virginia,  and,  by  dint  of  earnest  entreaty,  pre- 
vailed with  the  governor  to  unite  with  them  in  subscribing  it.  The  insur- 
gents, thus  far  successful,  retired  in  triumph  ;  and  the  council  no  sooner 
felt  themselves  delivered  from  the  immediate  presence  of  danger,  than,  pass- 
ing from  the  depth  of  timidity  to  the  height  of  presumption,  they  enacted 
and  published  an  ordinance  annulling  the  commission  they  had  granted,  as 
having  been  extorted  by  force,  proclaiming  Bacon  a  rebel,  com-nanding  his 
followers  to  deliver  him  up,  and  summoning  the  militia  to  arm  in  defence 
of  the  constitution.  They  found  too  little  difficulty  in  persuading  the  gov- 
ernor to  confirm,  by  his  sanction,  this  indiscreet  affectation  of  an  authority 
which  they  were  totally  incapable  of  supporting.  The  consequences  might 
have  been  easily  foreseen.  Bacon  and  his  associates,  flushed  with  their  re- 
cent triumph,  and  incensed  at  the  impotent  menace,  which  they  denounced 
as  a  base  and  treacherous  breach  of  compact,  returned  directly  to  James- 
town ;  and  the  governor,  destitute  of  any  force  sufficient  to  cope  with  the 
insurgents,  retired  across  the  bay  to  Accomac  on  the  eastern  shore.  Some 
of  the  counsellors  accompanied  him  thither  ;  the  rest  retired  to  their  estates  ; 
the  frame  of  the  provincial  administration  seemed  to  be  dissolved,  and  Bacon 
took  unresisted  possession  of  the  vacant  government. 

The  preeminence  which  he  attained  by  this  vigorous  conduct  Bacon  em- 
ployed with  much  address  to  add  strength  and  reputation  to  his  party.  To 
mvest  his  usurped  jurisdiction  with  the  semblance  of  a  legal  estabhshment, 
he  summoned  a  convention  of  the  principal  planters  of  the  province,  and 
prevailed  with  a  numerous  body  of  them  to  pledge  themselves  by  oath  to 
.support  his  authority  and  resist  his  enemies.  A  declaration  or  manifesto 
was  published,  in  the  name  of  this  body,  setting  forth  that  Sir  William 
Berkeley  had  wickedly  fomented  a  civil  war  among  the  people,  and  that, 
after  thus  violating  his  trust,  he  had  abdicated  the  government,  to  the  sur- 

f>rise  and  confusion  of  the  country ;  that  General  Bacon  had  raised  an  army 
or  the  public  service  and  with  the  public  approbation  ;  that  the  late  gov- 
ernor having,  as  was  reported,  abused  the  ear  of  the  king  by  falsely  repre- 
senting that  the  general  and  his  followers  were  rebels,  and  pressing  his 
Majesty  to  send  forces  to  subdue  them,  the  welfare  of  the  colony  and  their 
true  allegiance  to  his  most  sacred  Majesty  alike  required  that  they  should 
oppose  and  suppress  all  forces  whatsoever,  except  those  commanded  by  the 
general,  till  the  king  should  be  fully  informed  of  the  real  merits  and  nature 
of  the  case  by  persons  despatched  to  him  by  Bacon,  <o  whom,  in  the  interim, 
all  the  inhabitants  w6i;e  tcgair*^  lo'U<k^  an  oittht?f  allegiance.  It  was  re- 
marked by  the  wise,  tl/af  this  •itiatiifestt),'Wliich  might  have  been  expected 
to  display  the  genuine  source  of  thef  revolt,' m^ntionflpd  none  of  the  original 
causes  of  quarrel  ;•' wd'  heficc-they  justly  Jsuspoctod  that  the  leader  of  the 

inat%w»tmnia  antnvfntnaA  r\t\rar\nn\  ar\n  fimniti/tiia  nAoinrna  tn  nrni/^n  ri/>  IMi1*nnQPn 
»»»!7r!tg,- tSl-  ^Ttr-  ., ,  .,  J.., , ny-i ; -  r  — ; 

to  render  the  discontents  of  his  followers  subservient,  which  extended  be- 


CHAP  HI] 


DEATH  OF  BACON. 


101 


yond  the  immediate  measures  in  relation  to  the  Indians,  and  which  had 
already  suggested  to  him  a  specious  pretence  for  exposing  the  colony  to  a 
war  with  the  forces  of  the  mother  country.  Yet  such  was  the  spirit  of  the 
times,  and  so  prompt  the  sympathy  with  resistance  to  every  branch  of  an 
administration  which  Charles  was  daily  rendering  more  odious  and  suspected, 
tliat,  when  the  rebel  manifesto  was  promulgated  in  England,  it  found  ad- 
mirers among  the  people,  and  even  within  the  walls  of  tliat  parliament  whose 
injustice  formed  the  only  real  grievance  that  Virginia  had  at  present  to  com- 
plain of.  Though  Bacon  designedly  omitted  to  remind  his  adherents  that 
the  conduct  of  the  Indian  war  was  the  object  for  which  they  had  originally 
intrusted  him  with  military  command,  it  was  to  tliis  object  that  his  first  exer- 
tions were  actually  directed.  To  redeem  his  promise  and  to  exercise  his 
troops,  he  marched  at  the  head  of  an  expedition  against  the  hostile  savages, 
who,  rashly  awaiting  a  general  engagement,  were  defeated  with  a  loss  which 
they  never  were  able  to  repair. 

Berkeley,  meanwhile,  having  collected  a  force  from  levies  among  the 
planters  who  remained  well  affected  to  him,  and  from  the  crews  of  the  Eng- 
lish shipping  on  the  coasts,  prepared  to  give  battle  to  the  army  of  the 
usurper  ;  and  several  sharp  encounters  ensued  between  the  parties  with  va- 
rious success.  All  tlje  horrors  of  civil  war  descended  on  the  colony.  James- 
town, which  already  contained  several  efegant  buildings,  erected  at  con- 
siderable expense  by  the  governor  and  the  more  opulent  planters,  was  re- 
duced to  ashes  by  the  insurgents,  at  the  command  of  Bacon,  who  judged  it 
a  station  which  he  could  not  safely  retain  ;  the  estates  of  the  loyalists  were 
pillaged,  their  friends  and  jelatives  seized  as  hostages,  and  the  richest  plan- 
tations in  the  province  laid  waste.     The  governor  was  prompted  by  his 
indignation,  as  well  as  by  the  rage  of  his  partisans,  to  retaliate  these  ex- 
tremities, and  even  to  execute  some  of  the  insurgents  by  martial  law  ;  and 
the  animosity  of  both  parties  was  rapidly  mounting  to  a  pitch  that  threatened 
a  war  of  mutual  extermination.     The  superiority  of  the  insurgent  force  had 
hitherto  confined  ihe  efforts  of  the  loyalists  in  the  field  to  mere  skirmishing 
engagements  ;  but  the  tidings  of  an  approaching  armament,  which  the  king 
despatched  from  England  under  Sir  John  Berry  to  the  assistance  of  the 
governor,  gave  promise  of  a  wider  range  of  carnage  and  desolation.  Charles 
had  issued  a  proclamation  [Oct.  1676],  declaring  Bacon  a  traitor  and  the 
sole  promoter  of  the  insurrection  ;  tendering  pardon  to  all  his  followers  who 
should  forsake  him,  and  freedom  to  all  slaves  who  would  assist  in  suppressing 
the  revolt.     However  elated  the  loyalists  might  be  with  the  intelligence  of 
the  approaching  succour,  the  leader  of  the  insurgents  was  no  way  dismayed 
by  it ;  and  his  influence  over  his  followers  was  unbounded.    Conscious  now 
tiiat  his  power  and  his  life  were  indissolubly  connected,  he  determined  to 
encounter  whatever  force  might  be  sent  against  him.    He  was  aware,  at  the 
same  time,  of  the  importance  of  striking  a  decisive  blow  while  the  advan- 
tage of  numbers  remained  with  him  ;  and  with  this  view,  having  enlarged 
his  resources  by  proclaiming  a  general  forfeiture  of  the  property  of  all  w  ho 
either  opposed  his  pretensions  or  even  affected  neutrality,  he  was  preparing 
to  take  tlie  field,  when  his  career  was  arrested  by  that  Power  which  can 
wither  in  an  instant  the  sinews  of  abused  strength,  and  arrest  the  uplifted  arm 
of  the  most  formidable  destroyer.  Happily  for  his  country,  and  to  the  mani- 
fest advantage  not  less  of  his  followers  than  his  adversaries.  Bacon  unex- 
pectedly sickened  and  died.     [Jan.  1677.] 


M 


HISTORY  Of  NORTH  AMERICA. 


tftOOK  I 


The  ascendency  with  which  this  remarkable  person  had  predominated, 
as  the  master-spirit  of  his  party,  was  illustrated  bv  the  effect  of  his  death 
on  their  sentiments  and  conduct.  The  bands  of  their  confederacy  seemed 
to  be  cut  asunder  by  the  loss  of  their  general,  nor  did  any  successor  even 
attempt  to  reunite  them  ;  and  their  sanguine  hopes  and  resolute  adherence 
to  Bacon  were  succeeded  by  mutual  distrust  and  universal  despondency. 
Ingram,  who  had  been  lieutenant-general,  and  Walklate,  who  had  been 
major-general  of  the  insurgent  forces,  showed  some  disposition  to  prolong 
the  struggle  by  maintaining  possession  of  a  stronghold  which  was  occupied 
by  their  party  ;  but  after  a  short  treaty  with  Sir  William  Berkeley,  they 
consented  to  surrender  it,  on  condition  of  receiving  a  pardon  for  their 
offences.  The  other  detachments  of  the  rebel  army,  finding  themselves 
broken  and  disunited,  afraid  to  protract  a  desperate  enterprise,  and  hoping, 
perhaps,  to  be  included  in  the  indemnity  granted  to  Walklate  and  Ingram, 
or  at  least  to  experience  equal  lenity,  laid  down  their  amis  [1677],  and 
submitted  to  the  governor. 

Thus  suddenly  and  providentially  was  dissipated  a  tempest  that  seemed 
to  portend  the  entire  ruin  of  Virginia.  From  the  man  whose  evil  genius 
excited  and  directed  its  fury,  this  insurrection  has  been  distinguished  by 
the  name  of  Bacon's  Rebellion.  It  placed  the  colony  for  seven  months  in 
the  power  of  that  daring  adventurer,  mvolved  the  inhabitants  during  all  that 
period  in  bloodshed  and  confusion,  and  was  productive  of  a  devastation  of 
property  to  the  extent  of  at  least  a  hundred  thousand  pounds.^  To  the 
mother  country  it  conveyed  a  lesson  which  she  appears  never  to  have  under- 
stood, till  the  loss  of  her  colonies  illustrated  its  meaning,  and  the  conse- 
quence of  disregarding  it.  For,  after  every  allowance  for  the  ability  and 
artifice  of  Bacon,  it  was  manifest  that  the  general  discontent  and  irritation, 
occasioned  by  the  commercial  restrictions,  had  formed  the  groundwork  of 
his  influence  ;  and  it  required  little  sagacity  to  foresee  that  those  sentiments 
would  be  rendered  more  inveterate  and  more  formidable  by  the  growth  of 
the  province,  and  by  the  increased  connection  and  sympathy  with  the  other 
colonial  settlements,  which  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  habitual  consciousness 
of  common  interests  and  grievances  would  infallibly  promote.  Had  Bacon 
been  a  more  honest  and  disinterested  leader,  this  lesson  would  perhaps  have 
been  more  distinctly  unfolded,  and  the  rebellion,  it  is  probable,  would  not 
have  ended  with  his  life.  But,  instead  of  sincerely  embracing  the  cause  of 
his  associates,  he  contrived  to  render  their  passions  instrumental  to  the 
gratification  of  his  own  sinister  ambition.  The  assertors  of  the  interests  of 
Virginia  were  thus  converted  into  the  partisans  of  an  individual  ;  and  when 
his  presence  and  influence  were  withdrawn,  they  perceived  at  once  that  they 
were  embarked  in  a  contest  which  to  themselves  had  neither  interest  nor 
object. 

No  sooner  were  the  insurgents  disbanded,  and  the  legitimate  government 
restored,  than  Sir  William  Berkeley  developed  the  vindictive  powers  of 
the  law  with  a  rigor  more  proportioned  to  the  guilt  of  the  rebels  and  the 
provocation  he  had  received  from  them,  than  akin  to  the  general  humanity 


'  Boverljf.      Oldmixon.    Modem  Vnitersnl  History,  XLI.    Sir  William  Keith's  History  of 
Virginia.    Chalmers.    Biirk.    Campbell.    Mrs.  Aphra  Bchn  celebrated  this  rebellion  m  a 
tf ni<i-comedy,  entitled  The  IVidinn  Ranter,  or  thi  History  of  Bacon  in  Virginia,  to  which  Dr 
wrote  a  prologue.    The  play  was  actod  unsucccssfiilly,  and  ailerwords  published  in  ' 

Ti'oru    i»  li  cu|jy  ^>l'  il  ill   lliu  iWiliah   Muntiuiii.     Il  i«,-Ui  hlHiorictii   IrUUl  uuUrtily  ttUil  aVuWtiJiy 

at  defiance,  andf  is  replete  with  coarse  humor  and  indelicate  wit. 


iryden 
1  1690. 


CHAP.  Ill  ] 


RIGOROUS  PUNISHMENT  OF  THE  REBELS. 


103 


ionsciousness 


of  his  character  and  the  lenity  which  he  had  extended  to  the  promoters  of 
former  insurrections.     But  the  recent  rebellion  had  produced  a  scene  of 
outrage  and  bloodshed  to  which  nothing  similar  had  occurred  in  the  pre- 
ceding commotions,  and  which  he  probably  regarded  as  the  reproach  and 
requital  of  his  lenity  on  those  occasions.     Refusing  to  publish  the  royal 
proclamation  which  he  now  received  from  England,  offering  pardon  to  all 
who  would  lay  down  their  arms,  he  caused  several  of  the  rebels  who  were 
not  included  in  his  treaty  with  Walklate  and  Ingram  to  be  brought  to  trial 
for  treason.     All  who  confessed  their  guilt  and  implored  mercy  seem  to 
have  been  exempted  from  the  extremity  of  legal  rigor  ;  but  of  others  who 
abided  the  issue  of  a  trial,  ten  were  convicted  and  executed.     The  number 
of  the  guilty,  which  at  first  had  seemed  to  betoken  their  security,  served 
now  to  aggravate  and  diffuse  the  terror  of  these  proceedings,  which  were 
at  last  interrupted  by  an  address  from  the  provincial  assembly,  beseeching 
the  governor  to  forbear  from  the  farther  infliction  of  capital  punishment. 
By  this  assembly  a  few  of  the  surviving  ringleaders  of  the  insurrection  were 
subjected  to  fines  and  disabilities,  and  Bacon,  together  with  certain  of  his 
officers  who  had  perished  in  the  contest,  was  attainted. 

An  attainder  of  the  dead  seems  an  arrogant  attempt  of  human  power  to 
extend  its  arm  beyond  the  scene  of  human  life,  to  invade  with  its  vengeance 
the  inviolable  sanctuary  of  the  grave,  and  to  reclaim  to  the  jurisdiction  of 
transient  authority  and  fallible  judgment  the  defenceless  being  and  supposed 
offender,  who  has  already  been  removed  by  the  act  of  divine  power  to 
abide  the  decree  of  eternal  and  unerring  justice.  In  England  the  measure 
was  regarded  as  an  act  of  sovereignty  beyond  the  competence  of  a  subor- 
dinate legislature,  and  held  to  be  void  from  defect  of  power  ;  but  this  ob- 
jection was  obviated,  and  the  attainder  subsequently  re^nacted,  by  a  bill  to 
the  same  effect,  which  was  framed  in  England,  and  transmitted  under  the 
great  seal  to  the  colonial  assembly.^ 

The  tardy  aid  despatched  from  England  to  the  defence  of  the  provincial 
government  did  not  reach  Virginia  till  after  the  rebellion  was  suppressed. 
With  the  fleet  arrived  Colonel  Jeffreys  [April,  1677],  appointed  by  the 
king  to  signify  the  recall  and  succeed  to  the  office  of  Sir  William  Berkeley, 
who  now  closed  in  peace  an  administration  of  nearly  forty  years  ;  and 
shortly  after,  closing  his  life,  may  be  said  to  have  died  in  the  service  of 
Virginia.  This  gallant  and  honorable  man  was  thus  spared  the  mortification 
of  beholding  the  injustice  and  impolicy  with  which  the  royal  authority  was 
soon  after  employed  to  blacken  his  fame,  and  to  weaken  all  those  senti- 
ments of  loyalty  in  the  colony,  which  it  had  been  the  great  object  of  his 

'  MridgmetU  of  the  Laws  of  Virginia.  Oldmixon.  Keith.  Chalmers.  Burk.  Campbell 
The  account  which  I  have  given  of  the  penal  proceedings  which  followed  the  suppresBion  of 
the  rebellion  is  derived  from  a  Btrict  examination  and  comparison  of  the  statements  of  these 
and  other  writers,  and  coincides  entirely  with  none  of  them.  Except  Burk  and  Campbell 
rwho  mprely  repeats,  without  vouching  for,  the  statements  of  Burk),  every  other  writer  has 
declared  that  Sir  William  Berkeley  punished  none  of  the  rebels  capitally,  and  ascribed  this 
forbearance  to  his  having  procured  their  surrender  by  a  promise  of  general  pardon.  Burk  ex- 
pressly asserts  that  Berkeley  gave  such  assurance  to  the  rebels,  and  charges  him  with  having 
violated  it  both  by  the  executions  which  I  have  related  and  by  others  inflicted  by  the  more 
summary  process  of  martial  law.  But  an  attentive  examination  of  the  documents  to  which  he 
refers  has  satisfied  me  that  there  is  no  credible  evidence  of  any  person  having  been  put  to 
death  by  martial  law,  except  during  the  subsistence  of  the  rebellion,  or  of  any  promise  of  par- 
don having  been  made  to  those  who  wero  tried  and  convicted  after  its  suppression.  Neither 
the  colonial  assembly,  in  their  address  against  further  capital  punishinente,  nor  the  royal  cotn- 
niisBioaers,  in  ihoir  subsequent  charges  aguinst  ihc  governor,  have  given  nny  rouRtcnonce  to 
the  suppositions  adopted  by  Burk. 


104 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


wishes  to  culiivate  and  cherish.     Entertaining  all  the  principles  of  an  old 
cavalier,  endowed  with  a  character  well  formed  to  recommend  his  princi- 
ples, and  presiding  in  a  colony  where  the  prevailing  sentiments  of  the  people 
were  for  a  loiig  lime  entirely  congenial  with  his  own,  he  had  hoped  to  ren- 
der Virginia  a  scene  where  the  loyalty  that  was  languishing  in  Europe  might 
be  renovated  by  transmigration  into  a  young  and  growing  body  politic,  and 
expand  to  a  new  andgpore  vigorous  maturity.     But  this  was  not  the  desti- 
nation of  the  provinces  of  America.     The  naked  republican  principle,  that 
substitutes  the  respect  and  approbation  of  citizens  toward  their  magistrate, 
in  place  of  the  reverence  and  attachment  of  subjects  to  their  sovereign,  was 
held  by  all  the  cavaliers  in  utter  abhorrence  ;  and  a  more  favorable  speci- 
men of  the  opposite  principle  which  they  embraced,  and  of  that  mixed  sys- 
tem of  opinion  and  sentiment  which  it  tended  to  produce,  will  not  easily  be 
found  than  in  the  character  and  conduct  of  Sir  William  Berkeley.     The 
courageous  regard  he  demonstrated  for  his  people  not  only  excited  their 
grateful  achuiration,  but  recommended  to  their  esteem  the  generous  devotion 
to  his  king  with  which  it  was  in  his  language  and  demeanour  inseparably 
blended.    When  the  hopes  of  the  royalists  were  extinguished  in  every  other 
(juarter  of  the  empire,  this  governor  of  an  infant  province  boldly  arrayed  his 
scanty  forces  on  the  Isanks  of  James  River,  in  defence  of  his  people  and 
his  principles,  against  the  victorious  arms  of  the  most  formidable  power  in 
Kurope  ;  and  afterwards,  emerging  from  retirement,  and  seconding  the  pop- 
ular  impulse,  he  again  braved  the  same  unequal  contest,  and,  disowning  tne 
authority,   defied   the  forces,  of  the  protectoral  government.     For  many 
years,  his  influence  in  Virginia  was  unbounded,  and  his  virtues  expanded 
with  the  growth  and  the  enjoyment  of  his  popularity.     But  in  the  close  of 
his  administration,  —  when  he  saw  the  efficacy  of  these  virtues  impaired,  his 
long  labors  defeated,  and  the  scene  of  all  his  loyal  and  disinterested  service 
gradually  pervaded  by  discontent  and  democratical  sentiment,  and  finally 
defaced  and  convulsed  by  rebellion,  —  liis  disposition  seemed  to  derive  a 
tincture  from  the  bitterness  of  disappointment,  and  his  conduct,  both  during 
the  continuance  and  after  the  suppression  of  Bacon's  rebellion,  has  been  re- 
jn-oached  with  splenetic  impatience  and  vindictive  severity.     In  happier 
times,  he  approved  himself  a  wise  legislator,  as  well  as  a  benevolent  and 
upright  magistrate  ;  and  we  are  informed  by  the  editor  of  the  Laws  of 
Virginia^  that  the  most  judicious  and  most  popular  of  them  were  suggested 
by  Sir  William  Berkeley.     When  his  death  was  known,  and  he  was  no 
longer  an  object  of  flattery  or  of  fear,  the  provincial  assembly  recorded  the 
sentiments  which  the  colony  entertained  of  his  conduct  in  the  grateful  dec- 
laration, "  that  he  had  been  an  excellent  and  well  deserving  governor  "  ; 
and  earnestly  recommended  his  widow  to  the  justice  and  generosity  of  the 
king.i    The  bosom  of  the  king,  however,  was  little  accessible  to  such  senti- 
ments ;  and  his  reign  was  calculated  to  dispel,  instead  of  confirming,  the 
impressions  of  cavalier  loyalty. 

The  most  remarkable  event  that  distinguished  the  government  of  Colonel 
.TefTreys  was  the  conclusion  of  the  Indian  war,  which  had  raged  so  long, 
and  contributed,  with  other  causes,  to  the  production  of  the  late  rebellion, 
by  a  treaty  which  gave  universal  satisfaction.  This,  too,  was  the  only  act 
of^liis  administration  that  was  attended  with  consequences   so  agreeable. 

»  Chnlraeri.     Preface  to  MorjsoirB  edition  of  the  Law  fof^  Virginia.     £»/e  of  Sir  IViHiam 

tfvrn  vt€V, 


CHAP.  Ill]    COMMISSIONERS  FOR  INVESTIGATING  THE  REBELLION.     105 


f  Sir  lyuiiam 


Jeffreys,  Sir  John  Berry,  and  Colonel  Moryson  were  appointed  commis- 
sioners to  investigate  and  report  the  causes  of  Bacon's  rebellion.  They 
commenced  their  inquiries  with  an  avowed  prepossession  in  favor  of  the 
insurgents,  and  conducted  them  with  the  most  indecent  partiality  The 
temptation  which  their  office  presented  to  magnify  the  importance  of  their 
labors  by  new  and  unexpected  discoveries,  and  to  prove,  by  arraignment  of 
the  late  administration,  that  they  had  not  been  appointed  its  censors  in  vain, 
contributed,  no  doubt,  to  inspire  the  malevolence  and  injustice  which  they 
displayed  in  a  degree  that  would  otherwise  seem  quite  unaccountable.  In- 
stead of  indemnifying,  or  even  applauding,  they  discountenanced  the  loyalists 
who  had  raUied  in  the  time  of  danger  around  the  provincial  government ;  and 
having  invited  all  persons  who  were  engaged  in  the  insurrection  to  come  for- 
ward and  state  their  grievances  without  fear,  and  unequivocally  demonstrated 
the  favorable  acceptance  which  such  representations  might  expect,  they 
succeeded  in  collecting  a  mass  of  confused  and  passionate  complaints,  which 
they  digested  into  a  report  fraught  with  crimination  of  Sir  William  Berkeley 
and  his  council,  and  with  insinuations  against  the  honesty  and  the  courage 
of  all  the  planters  who  had  united  with  the  governor  in  withstanding  the 
rebels.'  While  their  folly  or  malignity  thus  tended  to  rekindle  the  dissen- 
sions of  the  colonists,  their  intemperance  involved  them  in  a  dispute  that 
united  all  parties  against  themselves.  Finding  that  the  assembly  hesitated 
to  comply  with  a  requisition  they  addressed  to  it,  that  all  its  books  and 
journals  should  be  submitted  to  their  inspection,  they  seized  these  records 
by  force,  and  withdrew  them  from  the  clerk  who  was  intrusted  with  their 
custody.  Incensed  at  this  insult,  the  assembly  demanded  satisfaction  from 
Jeffreys  ;  and  when  he  appealed  to  the  authority  of  the  great  seal  of  Eng- 
land, under  which  the  commissioners  acted,  they  replied  to  him,  in  language 
worthy  of  the  descendants  of  Englishmen  and  the  parents  of  Americans, 
"  that  such  a  breach  of  privilege  could  not  be  commanded  under  the  great 
seal,  because  they  could  not  find  that  any  king  of  England  had  ever  done 
30  in  former  times."  The  spirit  thus  displayed  by  the  assembly  appears 
the  more  deserving  of  applause,  when  we  consider  that  a  body  of  regular 
troops,  the  first  ever  sent  to  Virginia,  were  now  stationed  in  the  colony, 
under  the  command  of  Sir  John  Berry.  Informed  of  this  proceeding,  the 
king,  in  strains  that  rival  the  arrogance  of  his  father  and  grandfather,  com- 
manded the  governor  "  to  signify  his  Majesty's  indignation  at  language  so 
seditious,  and  to  give  the  leaders  marks  of  the  royal  displeasure."  Berry 
and  Moryson  soon  after  returned  to  England,  leaving  the  colony  in  a  state 
of  ferment,  and  all  parties  disgusted  and  disappointed. 

'  The  memory  of  Sir  William  Berkeley  was  defended  against  the  misrepresentations  of  the 
commissioners  by  hia  brother,  Lord  Berkeley,  (Chalmers,)  and  his  fame  suffered  no  diminu 
lion  from  their  report.  Burk,  who  has  evidently  conceived  a  strong  prejudice  against  Berke 
ley,  expresses  a  different  opinion.  He  asserts,  tliat  Berkeley,  on  his  return  to  England,  founc 
tliat  his  conduct  was  disapproved  by  the  king.  But  Oldmixon,  whose  authority  on  a  poin 
like  this  is  entitled  to  the  highest  respect,  declares  that  Berkeley  before  his  death  received  aL 
DSEiirancc  of  the  esteem  and  approbation  of  his  sovereign. 

During  the  disputes  that  preceded  the  war  of  independence,  it  was  common  for  the  writers 
who  espoused  the  cause  of^  America  to  aggravate  the  blame  of  the  British  government  bj 
tixaggcrating  the  previous  loyalty  of  the  Americans.  But  this  representation  has  ceased  to 
please  in  America ;  and  some  of  her  late  writers  have  preferably  devoted  their  labor  and  in 
gonuity  to  the  illustration  of  the  antiquity  of  her  republii-an  spirit.  Burk,  in  particular,  has 
iiiaf^nined  beyond  their  due  importance  the  first  manifestations  of  discontent  ana  democratical 
ti't'ling  in  Virginia ;  and,  for  the  credit  both  of  his  representations  and  of  his  countrymen,  has 
rngcrly  adopted  every  fitctious  charge  and  injurious  supposition  with  respect  to  Sir  William 
Berkeley. 

VOL,   I.  14 


106 


HISTORY  OP  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I 


To  the  other  causes  of  discontent  v.  as  added  the  burden  of  supporting 
the  soldiery,  who,  receiving  no  remittances  of  pay  from  England,  indemni- 
fied themselves  by  their  exactions  from  the  planters.  The  impatience  created 
by  this  treatment,  however,  was  mitigated  by  the  mild  and  prudent  conduct 
of  an  aged  officer  and  venerable  man.  Sir  Henry  Chicheley,  to  whom,  as 
lieutenant-governor,  the  administration  devolved,  on  the  death  of  Jeffreys 
[1678]  ;  and  as,  (flying  his  presidency,  some  of  the  large  and  improvident 
donations  of  land  by  Uie  crovm,  that  had  been  so  much  complained  of, 
were  revoked,  and  certain  other  grievances  corrected,  a  short  gleam  of 
prosperity  was  shed  on  the  colony,  and  an  interval  of  comparative  repose 
gave  the  people  time  to  breathe,  before  the  resumption  of  tyranny  with  a 
violence  which  was  to  endure  till  the  British  Revolution.^ 

It  was  not  to  royal  generosity  or  benevolence  that  the  colonists  were  in- 
debted for  the  lenient  administration  of  Sir  Henry  Chicheley.  Charles  had 
some  time  before  conferred  the  government  of  the  province  on  Lord  Cul- 
pepper, who,  though  very  willing  to  accept  this  important  office,  showed 
so  little  readiness  to  perform  the  duties  of  it,  that  it  was  not  till  he  had  been 
reprimanded  by  the  king  for  his  neglect  that  he  made  his  voyage  to  Vir- 
ginia. [May,  1680.]  His  administration  was  conducted  with  the  same  arbi- 
trary spirit  that  the  royal  government  had  now  begun  to  indulge  without  con- 
trol in  the  mother  country.  Having  vn-ested  from  the  assembly  the  nomi- 
nation of  its  own  most  confidential  officer,  the  secretary  who  composejl  its 
journals  ;  having  abolished  the  power  it  had  hitherto  exercised  of  entertaming 
appeals  from  the  decisions  of  the  provincial  judicatories  ;  having  accumulated 
a  considerable  sum  of  money  by  official  pillage  ;  and  having  guarded  his  ty- 
ranny from  complaint  by  a  proclamation,  that  interdicted,  under  the  severest 
penalties,  all  disrespectful  speeches  against  the  governor  or  his  administra- 
tion,—he  returned  [Aug.  1680],  after  a  very  short  stay  in  Virginia,  to  dis- 
sipate the  spoils  of  the  province  in  the  luxury  of  England.  Yet  on  this 
ignoble  lord  did  the  king  confer  the  commission  of  governor  for  life,  and  a 
salary  twice  as  large  as  the  emoluments  of  Sir  William  Berkeley. 

The  irritation  created  by  these  proceedings  sharpened  the  sense  of  the 
hardships  which  the  colonists  were  now  enduring  from  the  depressed  price 
of  tobacco ;  and  the  public  impatience  exploded  in  a  tumultuary  attempt  to 
destroy  all  the  new  tobacco  plantations  that  threatened  to  increase  the  de- 
pression of  price  by  multiplying  still  farther  the  quantities  of  produce. 
[May,  1682.]  The  insurrection  might  have  proceeded  to  very  serious  ex- 
tremities, if  the  prudence  and  activity  of  Sir  Henry  Chicheley  had  not  again 
been  exerted  to  compose  the  pubHc  discontent,  and  restore  the  peace  of 
the  colony.  To  any  mind  influenced  by  liberal  Justice,  or  susceptible  of 
humane  impressions,  this  slight  and  short-lived  msurrection  was  strongly 
recommended  to  indulgent  consideration.  It  was  but  a  momentary  expres- 
sion of  popular  impatience  created  by  extreme  suffering  ;  and  the  earnest, 
tliough  ineffectual,  addresses  by  which  the  assembly  had  recently  solicited 
from  the  king  a  prohibition  of  the  increase  of  tobacco  plantations  both 
suggested  and  seemed  to  sanction  the  object  to  which  the  violence  of  the 
rioters  was  directed.  But  to  the  king  it  appeared  in  the  light  of  an  outrage 
to  his  dignity,  which  imperiously  demanded  a  severe,  vindictive  retribution ; 
and  Lord  Culpepper,  again  obeying  the  royal  mandate  to  repair  to  Virginia, 
caused  a  number  of  the  insursents  to  be  tried  for  high  treason  :  and  by  a 

'  ClialinerH. 


CHAP.  Itt  ]         TYRANNY  AND  RAPACITY  OF  ErFlNGHAM. 


lot 


series  of  bloody  executions  impressed  that  tnute  terror  which  tyrants  de- 
nominate tranquillity.  Having  thus  enforced  a  submission  not  more  pro- 
pitious to  the  colony  than  the  ferment  uhich  attended  his  former  departure, 
Lord  Culpepper  again  set  sail  for  l^ngland,  where  he  was  immediately  put 
in  confinement  for  returning  without  leave  ;  and,  on  a  charge  of  misappro- 
priating the  provincial  revenues,  was  shortly  after  arraigned  before  a  jury, 
and  in  consequence  of  their  verdict  deprived  of  his  commission.* 

In  displacing  this  nobleman,  it  was  the  injury  done  to  himself,  and  not 
the  wrongs  of  the  colony,  that  Charles  intended  to  redress.  The  last  ex- 
ertion of  his  royal  authority,  which  Virginia  experienced,  was  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  successor  to  Culpeppdr,  in  Lord  Effingham  [Aug.  1683],  whose 
character  was  very  little  if  at  all  superior,  and  whom,  amon^  other  instruc- 
tions, the  king  expressly  commanded  to  suffer  no  person  within  the  colony 
to  employ  a  printing-press  on  any  occasion  or  pretence  whatsoever.  Along 
with  the  new  governor  was  sent  a  frigate,  which  was  appointed  to  be  sta- 
tioned on  the  coast  with  the  view  of  compelling  a  stricter  execution  of  the 
Navigation  Act  than  this  obnoxious  measure  had  yet  been  able  to  obtain.* 

On  the  death  of  Charles  the  Second,  his  successor,  James,  was  pro- 
claimed [Feb.  1685]  in  Virginia  with  demonstrations  of  joy,  indicating  less 
the  attachment  of  the  colonists  to  the  person  of  their  new  sovereign,  than 
that  impatient  desire  with  which  men,  under  the  pressure  of  hardship  and 
annoyance,  are  ready  to  hail  any  change  in  their  prospects  or  situation. 
Acclamation  far  more  warmly  expressive  of  gladness  and  hope  had  attended 
the  commencement  of  the  preceding  reign  ;  and  if  the  hopes  that  were  now 
awakened  were  more  moderate,  they  were  not  on  that  account  the  less 
faUacious.  The  colonists  soon  learned  with  regret,  that,  in  his  first  parlia- 
ment, James  had  procured  the  imposition  of  a  tax  on  tlie  consumption  of 
tobacco  in  England  ;  and  in  imploring  the  suspension  of  this  tax,  which 
threatened  still  farther  to  obstruct  the  sale  of  the  only  vendible  production 
of  their  soil,  they  descended  to  an  abjectness  of  entreaty  which  produced 
no  other  effect  than  to  embitter  their  disappointment  with  the  consciousness 
of  humiliatmg  and  yet  fruitless  prostration.  Though  the  assembly  judged  it 
expedient  to  present  an  address  of  felicitation  to  the  king  on  the  defeat  of 
Monmouth's  invasion  of  England,  the  colonists  found  an  opportunity  of  in- 
dulging very  different  sentiments  on  that  occasion,  in  the  kindness  with  which 
they  treated  some  of  the  insurgents,  whom  James,  from  a  satiety  of  blood- 
shed, which  he  termed  the  plenitude  of  royal  mercy,  appointed  to  be  trans- 
ported to  the  American  plantations  ;  and  even  the  assembly  paid  no  regard 
to  the  signification  of  the  royal  desire  that  they  should  frame  a  law  to  pre- 
vent these  unfortunate  persons  from  redeeming  themselves  from  the  servi- 
tude to  which  they  were  consigned.  This  conduct,  however,  of  the  colo- 
nists and  their  assembly,  in  so  far  as  it  was  not  prompted  by  simple  hu- 
manity, expressed  merely  their  dissatisfaction  with  the  king's  treatment  of 
themselves,  and  denoted  no  participation  of  their  wishes  or  views  in  the 
designs  of  Monmouth.  The  general  discontent  was  increased  by  the  per- 
sonal character  of  the  governor,  through  whom  the  rays  of  royal  influence 
were  transmitted.  Lord  Effingham,  like  his  predecessor,  ingrafted  the  base- 
ness of  a  sordid  disposition  on  the  severity  of  an  arbitrary  and  despotic 
administration.  He  refused  to  convoke  the  provincial  assembly.  He  insti- 
tutcu  u  court  oi  Cuancery,  in  Wnicii  he  nimsGii  prcssoeci  89  judge  ,  ann, 

»  Chalmers. 


Beverly.      Chalmers. 


108 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I, 


besides  multiplying  and  enhancing  the  fees  attached  to  his  own  peculiar 
functions,  he  condescended  to  share  with  clerks  the  meaner  perquisites  of 
subordinate  office.  For  some  time  he  contrived  to  stifle  the  remonstrances 
which  his  extortions  produced,  by  the  infliction  of  arbitrary  imprisonment 
nud  <  ther  tyrannical  severities  ;  but  at  length  the  public  displeasure  became 
so  general  and  uncontrollable,  that  he  found  it  impossible  to  prevent  the 
complaints  of  the  colony  from  being  carried  to  England,  —  for  which  country 
lie  in  consequence  resolved  himself  to  embark,  in  order  to  be  present  at  his 
own  arraignment.  [1688.]  He  was  accompanied  by  Colonel  Ludwell, 
wiiom  the  assembly  appointed  their  agent  to  advocate  the  complaints  of  his 
conduct  and  urge  his  removal  from  office.' 

But  before  the  governor  and  his  accuser  arrived  in  England,  the  Revolu- 
tion, which  the  tyranny  of  James  provoked  in  that  country,  had  transferred 
the  allegiance  of  all  parties  to  new  sovereigns.  The  Virginians,  though 
they  readily  acquiesced  in  the  fliange,  appear  to  have  surveyed  with  very 
little  emotion  an  event  which  coincided  with  none  of  their  anticipations,  and 
to  the  production  of  which  their  concurrence  had  not  been  demanded. 
Whatever  might  be  its  remoter  consequences,  its  immediate  effect  was  for- 
cibly to  remind  them  of  their  own  insignificance,  as  the  appendage  of  a  dis- 
tant empire,  whose  political  changes  tliey  were  fated  to  follow,  but  unable 
to  control.  The  most  deep-seated  and  lasting  grievances  under  which  they 
labored,  having  proceeded  from  the  English  nation  and  parliament,  were 
such  as  the  present  event  gave  no  promise  of  alleviating.  Their  immediate 
complaints  were  to  be  submitted  to  sovereigns  of  whom  they  knew  abso- 
lutely nothing  ;  and  their  late  experience  had  diminished  their  trust  in 
princes,  and  discouraged  hopes  of  advantage  from  changes  of  royalty.  The 
coolness,  then,  with  which  the  Virginians  are  said  to  have  regarded  the 
great  event  of  th?  British  Revolution  [1688],  so  far  from  implying  that  their 
minds  were  not  touched  with  a  concern  for  freedom,  may,  with  much  greater 
probability,  be  referred  to  the  ardor  with  which  they  cherished  this  generous 
principle,  and  the  deliberate  reflection  which  they  combined  with  it.*  In 
some  respects,  too,  the  policy  of  die  new  government  that  arose  in  the 
parent  state  was  but  ill  formed  to  convey  to  them  more  satisfactory  impres- 
sions of  the  change  that  had  taken  place,  or  to  invite  their  sympathy  with 
the  feelings  of  that  portion  of  their  fellow-subjects  by  whose  exertions  it 
was  accomplished. 

Notwithstanding  the  representations  of  Colonel  Ludwell  (who  himself  was 
gratified  with  the  appointment  of  governor  of  Carolina) ,  King  William,  disin- 
clined and  perhaps  unable  to  dismiss  those  officers  of  his  predecessor  who 
were  willing  to  transfer  their  personal  adherence  and  official  service  to  him- 
self, retained  Lord  Effingham  in  the  government  of  Virginia.  This  noble- 
man, however,  did  not  again  return  to  the  province  ;  and  as  long  as  his 
commission  was  sufl^ered  to  endure,  the  administration  was  conducted  by  a 
deputy  governor.  He  was  removed  in  the  year  1692,  and  replaced  by 
a  successor  still  more  obnoxious  to  the  colonists.  Sir  Edmund  Andros, 
whose  tyrannical  conduct,  prior  to  the  Revolution,  in  the  government  of 
other  American  provinces,  more  justly  merited  the  brand  of  legal  punish- 
ment and  disgrace  than  continuance  of  official  trust  and  dignity.     If  such 

'  Beverly.      Oldmixon.    Chalmers. 

*  Colonel  Quarry 's.VeTTwriVi/  to  the  f^/rds  of  Trade,  in  the  year  1703,  on  the  state  of  the 
Amorican  provinces,  rcproscnts  the  Virginian  piantors  as  a  numerous  and  wcaJUiy  ruee,  deeply 
uiftcted  with  "  republican  notions  and  principloi." 


CHAP,  ni] 


EFFECTS  OF  THE   BRITISH   REVOLUTION. 


109 


apnointmcnts  remind  us  that  the  English  ministry  was  still  composed  of 
many  of  the  persons  who  had  dispensed  patronage  in  the  preceding  reigns, 
tiiey  may  also  in  part  be  accounted  for  by  other  considerations.  Of  the 
oincers  who  were  thus  undeservcdlv  retained,  some  pretended  to  great  local 
experience  and  official  ability.  This  was  particularly  the  case  of  Sir  Ed- 
mund Andros,  whose  administration  eventually  proved  highly  beneficial  to 
Virginia.  And  they  excused  the  arbitrary  proceedings  which  they  had  con- 
ducted in  the  former  reigns,  by  pleading  the  authority  of  the  sovereign  whose 
commands  they  had  obeyed,  —  a  plea  which  always  finds  favor  with  a  king, 
when  not  opposed  to  wrongs  which  he  deems  personal  to  himself.  More- 
over, the  complaints  of  the  colonists  were  not  always  accurate  ;  for  anger 
is  a  more  copious  than  discriminating  accuser.  Justice  suffered,  as  usual, 
Irom  the  defect  of  temper  and  moderation  with  which  it  was  invoked  ;  and 
the  guilty  artfully  availed  themselves  of  the  inconsiderate  passion  by  which 
their  accusers  were  transported,  in  order  to  defeat  or  discredit  the  charges 
which  they  preferred.  The  insolence  and  severity,  for  example,  that  per- 
vaded the  whole  of  Lord  Effingham's  government,  had  elicited  many  com- 
plaints, in  which  the  accusers  either  neglected  or  were  unable  to  discrimi- 
nate between  the  legality  of  official  acts  and  the  tyrannical  demeanour  or 
malignant  motives  of  the  party  by  whom  they  were  performed.  Accord- 
ingly, while  some  of  the  remonstrances  which  the  Virginians  transmitted  to 
England  by  Colonel  Ludwell  were  favorably  received  and  approved  by  the 
British  government,  there  were  others  that  produced  only  explanations,  by 
which  the  assembly  was  given  to  understand  that  it  had  mistaken  certain 
points  of  English  constitutional  law.^  In  the  infancy  of  a  free  state,  collis- 
ions and  disputes  not  unfrequently  arise  from  conflicting  pretensions  of  dif- 
ferent, but  coordinate,  branches  of  its  municipal  constitution,  before  time 
has  given  consistence  to  the  whole  structure,  and  those  relative  limits,  which 
abstract  reason  finds  it  difficult  to  prescribe  to  the  respective  parts,  have 
been  determined  by  the  convenience  of  practice  and  the  authority  of 
precedent. 

The  revolution  of  the  British  government,  both  in  its  immediate  and  its 
remote  operation,  was  attended  with  consequences  highly  beneficial  to  Vir- 
ginia, in  common  with  all  the  existing  provinces  of  America.  Under  the 
patronage  and  by  the  pecuniary  aid  of  W'illiam  and  Mary,  the  college  which 
had  been  projected  in  tlie  reign  of  James  the  First  was  established.^  The 
political  institutions,  under  which  the  manly  character  of  Englishmen  is 
formed,  were  already  planted  in  the  soil  to  which  so  large  a  portion  of  their 
race  had  migrated  ;  the  literary  and  religious  institutions,  by  which  that 
character  is  refined  and  elevated,  were  now,  m  like  manner,  transported  to 
Virginia  ;  and  a  fountain  opened  within  her  own  territory,  which  promised 

'  Beverly.  Chalmers.  One  of  the  grievances  complained  of  by  the  assembly  of  Virginia 
was,  that  Lord  Effingham,  having  by  a  proclamation  declared  the  royal  dissent  to  an  act  of 
assembly  which  repealed  a  former  law,  gave  notice  that  this  law  was  now  in  force.  This  was 
tirroneously  deemed  by  the  asseftibly  an  act  of  legislation. 

'  Beverly.  Seymour,  the  English  attorney-general,  having  received  the  royal  commands 
to  prepare  the  charter  of  the  college,  which  was  to  be  accompanied  with  a  grant  of  two  thousand 
pounnB,  remonstrated  against  this  liberality,  protesting  that  the  nation  was  engaged  in  an  ex- 


pensive war,  that  the  money  was  wanted  for  more  important  purposes,  and  that  he  did  not 
see  the  slightest  occasion  for  a  college  in  Virginia.  Blair,  the  commissary  for  the  Bishop  of 
London  in  Virginia,  represented  to  nim  that  the  object  of  the  institution  was  to  educate  and 


qualify  young  men  to  be  ministers  of  the  gospel,  and  begzed  Mr.  Attorney  would  consider  that 
ing  nonnto  G!  Vififiift  Hsid  souls  to  bs  suvfid  Hs  wfil!  HH  tse  ^co^ls  of  Enffland.  '*  So^ilsf  '  ssmti 
be;  ^^ damn  your  souls !  make  tobacco."      Franklin's  Corrupondence. 


no 


HISTORY   or  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


to  dispense  to  her  children  the  streams  of  science,  physical,  moral,  and 
religious. 

6iU  the  most  important  and  decisive  influence  which  the  British  Revolu- 
lion  exercised  on  the  condition  of  the  colonics,  consisted  in  tlie  abridgnieni 
and  almost  entire  abolition  of  their  dependence  on  the  personal  character 
of  the  king.  A  conservative  principle  was  infused  by  that  great  event  into 
the  main  trunk  of  the  British  constitution  in  England,  and  into  all  the  djial 
shoots  that  had  issued  from  the  parent  stem,  and  germinated  in  the  settle- 
inents  abroad.  The  continuity  of  existence  and  supremacy  of  power,  wliich 
the  parliament  acquired  in  Britain,  extended  the  constitutional  superinten- 
dence of  this  national  assembly  to  every  subordinate  organ  of  popular  rights , 
and  if  it  oppressed  the  trade,  it  protected  the  chartered  liberties,  of  the 
provinces  of  America.  The  king  still  continued  to  appoint  the  governors 
of  Virginia  and  of  some  of  the  otlier  settlements  ;  and  men  of  sordid  dispo- 
sitions and  of  feeble  or  profligate  character  were  frequently  the  objects  of 
this  branch  of  the  royal  patronage.  But  the  powers  of  these  officers  were 
in  general  circumscribed  and  distinctly  defined  ;  and  the  authority  of  the 
provincial  assemblies  was  able  to  restrain,  and  even  overawe,  the  most 
vigorous  administration  of  the  executive  functionaries.  Whatever  evil  influ- 
ence a  wicked  or  artful  governor  might  exert  on  the  domestic  harmony  of 
the  people,  or  on  their  opinions  of  the  royal  prerogative  which  he  admin- 
istered, he  could  "nmmit  no  serious  inroad  on  the  constitution  of  the  prc/ince 
over  which  he  presided.  From  this  period  a  tolerably  equal  and  impartial 
policy  distinguished  the  British  dominion  over  the  American  provinces  ;  the 
diminution  of  the  personal  influence  of  the  sovereign  eflaced  in  a  great  de- 
gree the  inequahties  of  treatment  previously  occasioned  by  the  difTerent 
degrees  of  favor  with  which  he  might  happen  to  regard  the  religious  or 
political  sentiments  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  respective  states  ;  and  conse- 
quently extinguished,  or  at  least  greatly  abated,  the  jealousies  which  the 
several  colonial  communities  had  hitherto  entertained  of  each  other.  A 
farther  abatement  of  these  mutual  jealousies  was  produced  by  the  religious 
toleration  which  the  provincial  governments  were  henceforward  compelled 
to  observe.  Even  when  intolerant  statutes  were  permitted  to  subsist,  their 
execution  was  generally  disallowed  ;  and  the  principles  cherished  in  one 
province  were  no  longer  exposed  to  persecution  in  another. 

We  must  now  transfer  our  inquiry  to  the  rise  of  the  other  colonies  in 
North  America  which  were  founded  antecedently  to  the  British  Revolution, 
and  trace  their  separate  progress  till  that  era.  But  before  our  undivided 
attention  be  withdrawn  from  this,  the  earliest  of  the  settlements,  it  seems 
proper  to  subjoin  a  few  particulars  of  its  civil  and  domestic  condition  at  the 
period  at  which  we  have  now  arrived. 

Notwithstanding  the  unfavorable  circumstances  to  which  the  colony  was 
exposed  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  ever  since  the  Restoration,  the  number 
of  its  inhabitants  had  continued  to  increase.  The  deputies  to  Charles  the 
Second,  in  1675,  represented  the  population  as  amounting,  at  that  time, 
to  50,000  persons.'  If  their  statement  were  not  exaggerated  (as  it  prob- 
ably was),  we  must  suppose  that  Bacon's  Rebellion  and  the  subsequent 
tyranny  gave  a  very  severe  check  to  this  rapid  increase  ;  for  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  tlie  colony  contained  a  much  greater  number  than 
60,000  at  the  Revolution  of  1688.     From  a  table  appended  to  the  first 

'  ClwkH>ra- 


CHAP-  »"  ]        CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  VIRGINIA. 


Ill 


edition  of  Beverly's  History,  it  appears,  that,  in  1703,  the  population  of 
Virginia  (exclusive  of  800  French  refugees  conveyed  thither  by  King 
William)  amounted  to  60,606  souls.  Of  this  number,  20,023  were  tithabUa 
(a  denomination  implying  liability  to  a  poll  tax,  and  embracing  all  wliite  n»en 
above  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  all  negro  slaves,  male  and  female,  above  that 
lige),  and  35,583  were  children  of  both  races,  and  white  women.  The  most 
intelligent  and  accomplished  of  the  modern  historians  of  Virginia  has  con- 
jectured, that,  at  the  period  of  the  British  Revolution,  one  half  of  the  popu- 
lation of  tlie  province  consisted  of  slaves.*  Many  circumstances  contriouted 
to  give  free  scope  to  the  increase  of  the  provincial  population,  and  to 
counterbalance  the  influence  of  commercial  restraint  and  despotic  govern- 
ment. The  healtlifulness  of  the  country  had  greatly  improved  ;  and  the 
diminution  of  disease  not  only  closed  a  drain  from  which  the  population  had 
severely  suffered,  but  rendered  the  general  strength  more  available  to  the 
general  support.  The  use  of  tobacco  now  prevailed  extensively  in  Europe  ; 
and  the  diminution  of  its  price  was  compensated  by  the  increased  demrncj 
lor  the  commodity.  In  1671,  it  was  computed,  that,  on  an  average,  eighty 
vessels  came  annually  from  England  and  Ireland  to  Virginia  for  tobacco. 
In  1675,  there  were  exported  from  Virginia  above  23,000  hogsheads  of  to- 
bacco, and  in  the  following  year  upwards  of  25,000.  In  this  latter  year, 
the  customs  on  tobacco  from  Virginia  and  Maryland,  collected  in  England, 
amounted  to  JE  135,000."  Sir  Vvilliam  Berkeley  rates  the  number  of  the 
militia,  in  the  year  1671,  at  nearly  8,000,  and  adds,  that  the  people  were 
too  poor  to  afford  the  equipment  of  cavalry.  In  the  year  1680,  the  militia 
amounted  to  8568,  of  whom  1300  served  as  cavalry.'  Our  estimate,  how- 
ever, of  the  increased  wealth  which  the  cavalry  establishment  seems  to  indi- 
cate, must  be  abated  by  the  consideration  of  the  increased  exertions  which 
the  Indian  war  and  Bacon's  Rebellion  had  rendered  necessary.  In  the 
year  1703,  we  learn  from  Beverly  that  the  militia  amounted  to  9522,  of 
whom  2363  were  light  horse,  and  the  remainder  foot  and  dragoons  ;  and 
that,  as  few  of  the  planters  were  then  destitute  of  horses,  it  was  judged  that 
the  greater  part  of  them  might,  if  necessary,  be  converted  into  dragoons.* 
Every  freeman  (a  denomination  embracing  all  the  inhabitants,  except  the 
slaves  and  the  indented  servants),  from  sixteen  to  sixty  years  of  age,  was 
enrolled  in  the  militia  ;  and  as  the  people  were  much  accustomed  to  shoot 
ill  the  woods,  they  were  universally  expert  in  the  use  of  firearms."  The 
militia  was  commanded  by  the  governor,  whose  salary  was  £  1000  a  year, 
till  the  appointment  of  Lord  Culpepper,  who,  on  the  plea  of  peerage,  pro- 
cured it  to  be  doubled.' 

The  twelve  provincial  counsellors,  as  well  as  the  governor,  were  ap- 
pointed by  the  king  ;  and  a  salary  of  £  350,  assigned  to  the  council,  was 
divided  in  proportion  to  the  official  services  which  the  members  respectively 
performed.  In  all  matters  of  importance,  the  concurrence  of  the  council 
widi  the  governor  was  indispensably  requisite.  The  provincial  assembly  was 
composed  of  the  counsellors,  who  termed  themselves  the  Upper  House,  and 
claimed  privileges  correspondent  with  those  exercised  by  the  English  House 
of  Lords  ;  and  the  burgesses,  who  were  elected  by  the  freemen  of  the 
respective  counties,  and  performed  the  functions  of  the  House  of  Commons, 

*  Beverly.      Biirk. 

*  Chalmera.    In  the  year  1604,  the  whole  customs  of  Ensland  amounted  only  to  £127,000, 
of  which  £110,000  was  collected  in  the  port  of  London.      Hume. 

'     »  Chalmers.  «  Beverly.  "    *  Bevfrly    (edit.  175J2).  •  Beverly. 


112 


History  of  north  America. 


[BOOK  I. 


receivine  waees  proportioned  to  their  services,  and  derived,  like  all  the 
other  provincial  salaries,  from  provincial  taxation.  A  poll  tax  long  continued 
to  be  the  only  domestic  tribute  imposed  on  the  Virgmians  ;  and  subjection 
to  this  tax  inferred  the  qualification  of  a  freeman.  The  poorer  classes  were 
reconciled  to  the  poll  tax  by  this  identification  of  its  burden  with  the  enjoy- 
ment  of  the  political  franchise,  and  by  the  specious  apphcation  of  a  maxim 
which  became  current  in  the  colony,  that  the  lives  and  industry  of  the  cxtU 
-ens  were  objects  of  greater  value  than  lands  and  houses.  Until  the  year 
1680,  the  several  branches  of  the  assembly  had  collectively  formed  one 
deliberative  body  ;  but  in  that  year  the  counsellors  separated  themselves 
from  the  burgesses,  and  assumed  a  distinct  political  existence.  In  con- 
junction with  the  governor,  the  counsellors  formed  the  supreme  tnbunal  of 
the  province  ;  from  whose  judgments,  however,  in  all  cases  involving  more 
than  £  300,  an  appeal  was  permitted  to  the  king  and  privy  council  of  Eng- 
land. In  1681,  the  province  contained  twenty  counties  ;  in  1703,  it  con- 
tained twenty-five.  A  quitrent  of  two  shillings  for  every  hundred  acres  of 
land  was  paid  by  the  planters  to  the  crown.^ 

In  the  year  1688,  the  province  contained  forty-eight  parishes,  embracing 
upwards  of  200,000  acres  of  appropriated  land.  A  church  was  built  in 
every  parish,  and  a  house  and  glebe  assigned  to  the  clergyman,  along  with 
a  stipend,  which  was  fixed  by  law  at  16,000  pounds  of  tobacco.  1  his 
mode  of  remuneretion  obviously  tends  to  give  a  secular  cast  to  the  lifd  and 
character  of  the  ministers,  and  to  entangle  them  with  concerns  remote  from 
their  spiritual  duties.  The  equalization  which  it  proposes  is  deceptive  ;  the 
different  degrees  of  fertility  of  different  parishes  rendenng  the  burden  un- 
equal  to  the  people,  and  the  varying  quality  of  the  tobacco  produced  in 
various  soils  making  the  remuneration  unequal  to  the  clergymen.  1  he 
privilege  of  collating  to  ecclesiastical  benefices,  prior  to  the  British  Revo- 
lution, belonged  to  the  governor,  but  was  generally  usurped  or  controlled  by 
the  parishioners.  After  the  British  Revolution,  it  ^vas  grasped  by  the  hands 
of  parochial  vestries,  which,  though  originally  elected  by  the  people,  came, 
in  process  of  time,  to  exercise  the  power  of  supplying  vacancies  m  their 
numbers  by  their  own  appointment.  The  bishop  of  London  was  accounted 
the  diocesan  of  the  province  ;  and  a  resident  commissary  (genera  ly  a  mem- 
ber of  the  council),  appointed  by  that  prelate,  presided  over  the  clergy,  with 
the  power  of  convoking,  censuring,  and  even  suspending  them  from  the  ex- 
ercise of  their  ministry.  The  doctrines  and  rites  of  the  church  of  l.ngland 
were  established  by  law  ;  attendance  at  divine  worship  in  the  parochial 
churches,  and  participation  in  the  sacraments  of  the  church,  were  enjoined 
under  heavy  penalties  ;  the  preaching  of  dissenters,  and  participation  in  the 
rites  and  worship  of  dissenting  congregations,  were  prohibited,  and  subjected 
to  various  degrees  of  punishment.  There  was  one  bloody  statute,  which 
menaced  Quakers  returning  from  banishment  with  the  punishment  of  death ; 
but  no  execution  ever  took  place  in  consequence  of  this  law,  and  it  was 
repealed  soon  after  the  Revolution  of  1688.  The  other  intolerant  laws  were 
not  then  abolished,  but  they  were  no  longer  strictly  or  generally  executed ; 
and  though  the  statute-book  continued  to  forbid  the  promulgation  of  tenets 
and  performance  of  worship  dissent'-.g  from  the  established  model,  the  pro- 
hibition was  little  regarded,  and  a  practical  liberty  of  conscience  was  con- 
siderabiy  realized,  in  1688,  a  great  n^jority  oi  the  people  belongc-u  to 
~"  ~  I  Chalmera.    Burli. 


CHAP.  Ill]        CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  VIRGINIA. 


113 


;ience  was  con- 


the  established  church.  Other  opinions  and  practices,  however,  began  to 
arise,  and  were  doubtless  promoted  by  the  influence  of  the  free  schools,  of 
which  a  great  many  were  founded  and  endowed  soon  after  that  period  ;  and 
the  provincial  government,  being  restrained  from  executing  the  intolerant 
laws  against  dissenters,  endeavoured  to  cherish  the  ecclesiastical  establish- 
ment by  heaping  temporal  advantages  upon  its  ministers.  This  policy  pro- 
duced its  usual  fruits,  and  generated  in  the  state  clergy  a  spirit  and  character 
so  odiously  contrasted,  and  so  inadequate  to  cope,  with  the  zeal  and  dili- 
gence of  dissenting  teachers  stimulated  by  the  most  powerful  motives  both 
temporal  and  spiritual,  that  at  the  era  of  the  American  Revolution  two  thirds 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Virginia  had  become  dissenters  from  the  episcojial 
rhurch,  and  were  obnoxious,  on  that  account,  to  the  ban  of  their  own  muni- 
cipal law.' 

Of  every  just  and  humane  system  of  laws  one  main  object  should  be  to 
protect  the  weak  against  the  strong,  and  to  temper  and  correct,  instead  of 
promoting  and  perpetuating,  the  inequalities  of  social  condition  created  from 
lime  to  time  by  inequalities  of  human  strength,  skill,  success,  or  industry. 
This  wise  and  benevolent  principle  must  be  sacrificed,  to  a  considerable 
extent,  in  the  code  of  every  country  where  slavery  is  admitted.  By  the 
laws  of  Virginia,  all  persons  arriving  voluntarily  or  involuntarily  in  the  colo- 
ny by  sea  or  land,  not  having  been  Christians  in  their  native  country,  were 
subjected  to  slavery,  even  though  they  might  be  converted  to  Christianity 
after  their  arrival.  A  slave  accused  of  a  capital  crime  was  remitted  to  the 
judgment  of  commissioners  named  by  the  governor,  without  the  interyention 
of  a  jury  ;  and  if  the  punishment  of  death  were  inflicted,  indemnification  to 
the  extent  of  the  pecuniary  value  of  the  slave  was  awarded  from  the  provin- 
cial treasury  to  the  master.  This  last  regulation  has  prevailed  in  every  State 
into  which  negro  slavery  has  gained  admission  ;  notwithstanding  its  manifest 
tendency  to  injure  the  public  by  relaxing  the  domestic  vigilance  of  masters, 
and  its  injustice  to  the  slaves  in  weakening  the  slight  but  sole  security  of 
humane  treatment  which  they  derive  from  the  pecuniary  interest  of  their 
owners  in  the  preservation  of  their  lives.  In  the  year  1669,  it  was  enacted 
that  the  death  of  a  slave  occasioned  by  the  correction  of  a  master  should 
not  be  accounted  felony  ;  "  since  it  cannot  be  presumed,"  says  the  act, 
"  that  prepensed  malice,  which  alone  makes  murder  felony,  should  induce 
any  man  to  destroy  his  own  estate."  But  reason  and  experience  alike 
refute  this  pernicious  sophistry,  which  ascribes  to  absolute  power  a  tendency 
to  repress  human  irascibility,  and  accounts  avarice  and  selfishness  suflicient 
motives  and  pledges  of  justice,  humanity,  and  moderation.  Neither  infidels 
nor  negroes,  mulattoes  nor  Indians,  were  allowed  to  purchase  Christian 
white  servants  ;  and  if  any  person,  having  Christian  white  servants,  should 
marry  an  infidel,  or  a  negro,  mulatto,  or  Indian,  all  such  servants  were 
made  free.  Any  free  white  person  intermarrying  with  a  negro  or  mulatto, 
and  any  minister  celebrating  such  marriage,  were  punished  with  fine  and 
imprisonment. 

'  Abridgment  of  the  Imws  of  Virginia.  Beverly.  Bumaby's  fravela  thrmigh  the.  Middi* 
SfUlement^  of  America.  Chnlmcrs.  Jcfforson's  J^ote.s  on  Virginia.  From  the  Journa/ of  Thomas 
Chalkley,  the  Quaker,  it  nppcars  that  many  of  his  fellow-sectarieB  were  peaceably  and  hap- 
pily established  in  Virginia  before  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Among  these,  he 
mentions  one  Porter,  who  (in  the  year  1698^,  at  the  age  of  ninety-two,  had  a  daughter  two 


r,]A 


Bt  ih.; 


Porter  died       

leaving  seventy  deacendanta  in  the  province. 
VOL.    I.  15 


i J> 


114 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


It  will  excite  the  merriment  of  a  satirist,  the  disgust  of  a  philosopher, 
and  the  indignant  concern  of  a  Christian,  to  see,  combined  with  such  inhu- 
man and  tyramiical  laws,  the  strictest  injunctions  of  the  worship  of  that 
great  Teacher  of  charity  and  humility  who  commanded  his  worshippers  to 
honor  all  men  ;  together  with  many  solemn  denunciations  and  penal  enact- 
ments against  travelling  on  Sunday,  profane  cursing,  and  profanely  getting 
drunk      Justices  of  the  peace  were  commanded  to  hear  and  determine  th« 
comptos  of  all  servants,  except  slaves,  against  their  masters.  Various  regu- 
lations were  established  for  securing  mild  and  equitable  treatment  to  indented 
servants  ;  at  the  close  of  their  indentures,  they  received  from  their  masters 
each  a  musket,  a  small  sum  of  money,  and  a  quantity  of  corn  ;  but  it,  dur- 
ing the  currency  of  their  term  of  service,  they  presumed  to  marry  without 
consent  of  their  master  or  mistress,  they  were  punished  with  an  additional 
year  of  servitude.     To  divert  the  planters  from  employing  female  indented 
servants  in  agricultural  labor,  it  was  decreed  that  all  white  women  ex- 
empted from  such  labor  should  be  also  exempted  from  poll  tax,  but  that 
any  of  them  who  might  be  employed  in  rustic  toil  should  forthwith  be  en- 
rolled  in  the  list  of  tithables.    All  persons  riotously  assembhng,  to  the  num- 
ber  of  eight  or  more,  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  tobacco,  incurred  the 
guilt  of  treason.     Every  person,  not  being  a  servant  or  slave,  committing 
adultery  or  fornication,  was  for  the  greater  offence  fined  one  thousand  and 
for  the  lesser,  five  hundred,  pounds  of  tobacco.     Women  convictefl  of 
slander  were  adjudged  to  be  ducked,  in  default  of  their  husbands  consetiung 
to  redeem  them  from  the  penal  immersion  at  the  cost  of  a  pecuniary  mulct. 
There  bein-  no  inns  in  the  country,  strangers  were  entertained  at  the  houses 
of  the  inhabitants,  and  were  frequently  involved  in  lawsuits  by  the  exorbitant 
claims  of  their  hosts  for  indemnification  of  the  expenses  of  their  mercenary 
hospitality  ;  for  remedy  whereof,  it  was  ordained,  that  an  mhabitant,  neg- 
lectmg  in  such  circumstances  to  forewarn  his  guest  and  to  make  an  express 
compact  with  him,  should  be  reputed  to  have  entertained  him  from  mere 
courtesy  and  benevolence.^     All  the  foregoing  laws  continued  m  force  long 
after  the  British  Revolution.  .  .1     , 

It  appears  from  the  first  of  these  statutes,  that  Indians  visiting  the  terri- 
tories of  the  State  were  liable  to  be  enslaved  by  the  colonists  ;  and  in 
Jefferson's  statistical  account  of  Virginia,  it  is  admitted  that  the  practice  of 
subiecting  those  savages  to  slavery  did  at  one  time  actually  prevail.  But 
with  the  Indian  tribes  situated  in  their  immediate  vicmity,  and  comprehended 
in  the  pacification  negotiated  by  Colonel  Jeffreys,  the  colonists  rnamtained 
relations  more  approaching  to  friendship  and  equality.  The  Indians  paid, 
indeed,  in  conformity  with  the  treatv  of  peace,  an  annual  tribute  of  beaver- 
skins  to  the  provincial  government.^  But  their  territories  were  ascertaine.l 
by  the  treaty,  and  secured  to  them  by  the  guaranty  of  the  provincial  laws ; 
and  every  wrong  they  might  sustain  at  the  hands  of  any  of  the  colonists 
was  punished  in  the  same  manner  as  if  it  had  been  done  to  an  Lng  ishman. 
By  the  aid  of  a  donation   from  that  distinguished  religious  philosopher, 

"  i  Mridgment  of  the  Latct  of  Virginia.    Beverly.      Burk.  ^  geverly 

the  Indians  bv  conquoit  is  not  «o  general  a  truth  as  I8  suppoHcd.  I  find,  in  our  historians  anil 
locordsrooeaLd  proof,  of  purchases  which  cover  a  cons'uierable  pari  of  the  lower  country, 
r;±'„vToro  wL^d  doubflcss  be  found  on  farther  search.  The  upper  country  we  kno«, 
ha.  been  acquired  altogetiier  by  purchase.  nmd«  lu  the  rao«  unexccpuonauic  lurm.  .-v,,. 
on  Virginia. 


ftf-l 


CHAP  ni]       CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STAT      OF  VIRGINIA. 


116 


Hobert  Boyle,  an  attempt  was  made  to  render  the  institution,  which,  from 
its  founders,  has  been  called  William  and  Mary  College,  subservient  to  the 
instruction  of  the  Indians.  Some  young  persons,  belonging  to  the  friendly 
tribes,  received  at  this  seminary  the  rudiments  of  civil  and  religious  educa- 
tion ;  and  the  colonists,  sensible  of  the  advantages  they  derived  from  pos- 
sessing in  the  persons  of  such  pupils  the  most  valuable  hostages  of  the  pacific 
demeanour  of  their  parents,  prevailed  with  some  of  the  more  remote  "nations 
of  the  Indians  to  send  a  few  of  their  children  to  drink  of  the  same  fountain 
of  knowledge.  But  as  the  pupils  were  restored  to  their  parent  tribes,  when 
they  attained  the  age  that  fitted  them  for  hunting  and  warlike  exercises,  it  is 
not  likely  that  the  course  of  collegiate  instruction  which  they  pursued  pro- 
duced any  wide  or  permanent  impression  on  the  character  of  the  Indians, 
or  made  any  adequate  compensation  for  the  destructive  vices  and  diseases 
which  the  Europeans  were  unhappily  much  more  successful  in  imparting.  * 

Attempts  to  convert  barbarians  V3ry  frequently  disappoint  their  promoters  ; 
and  not  those  persons  only  who  have  assisted  the  undertaking  from  merely 
secular  ends,  but  those  also,  who,  truly  regarding  the  divine  glory  in  the  end, 
disregard,  at  least  in  some  measure,  the  divine  agency  in  the  means.  As 
an  instrument  of  temporal  improvement  merely,  and  civilization,  the  preach- 
ing of  the  gospel  will  ever  be  found  to  disappoint  all  those  who  have  no 
higher  or  ulterior  views.  In  a  civihzed  and  Christian  land,  the  great  bulk  of 
the  people  are  Christians  merely  in  name  ;  reputation,  convenience,  and 
habit  are  the  sources  of  their  religious  denomination  ;  an  early  and  habitual 
familiarity  with  mysterious  doctrine  evades  the  difficulty  of  reasonable  assent 
to  it ;  vices  are  so  disguised,  that  the  testimonies  of  Christian  preachers 
against  them  often  miss  their  aim  ;  and  a  professed  devotedness  to  the  ser- 
vice of  piety  and  the  pursuit  of  spiritual  good  is  easily  reconciled  with,  and 
esteemed  a  decent  livery  of,  more  real  and  substantial  devotion  to  all  that  is 
worldly,  selfish,  and  sensual.  But  among  heathens  and  savages,  a  convert 
to  Christianity  must  change  his  style  of  life,  overcome  his  habits,  renounce 
his  opinions,  and  forfeit  his  reputation  ;  and  none,  or  at  least  very  few,  be- 
come professors,  except  from  the  influence  of  real  conviction,  more  or  less 
lasting  and  profound.  Those  who  remain  unconverted,  if  they  be  honestly 
addressed  by  the  missionary  preachers,  are  incensed  at  the  testimony  against 
their  evil  deeds  and  sullied  nature  ;  and  the  conduct  of  many  professing 
Christians  among  their  civilized  neighbours  too  often  contributes  to  mislead 
and  confirm  them  in  error.  But  this  topic  will  derive  an  ampler  illustration 
from  occurrences  that  relate  to  others  of  the  North  American  States,  than 
the  early  history  of  Virginia  is  fitted  to  supply. 

Literature  was  but  very  slightly  cultivated  in  Virginia.  There  was  not  at 
this  period,  nor  for  many  years  after,  a  single  bookseller's  shop  in  the  colony. ** 
Yet  a  history  of  Virginia  was  written  some  years  after  by  Beverly,  a  native 
of  the  province,  who  had  taken  an  active  part  in  public  affairs  prior  to  the 
Revolution  of  1688.  The  first  edition  of  this  work  in  1705,  and  a  later 
edition  in  1722,  were  published  in  England.    Beverly    is  a  brief  and  some- 

'  Beverly  (edit.  1722).  In  citing  this  author,  it  is  the  edition  of  1705  that  I  refer  to,  when 
tlic  other  is  not  expressly  named. 

'  The  literature  of  North  America  was  at  this  time  monopolized  almost  entirely  by  New 
England.  In  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  Boston  contained  five  prmting- 
nfliccs  and  many  booksellers'  shops,  tliere  was  but  one  bookseller's  shop  in  New  York,  and 
not  one  in  Virgmia,  Maryland,  or  Carolina.  Neal's  History  of  Jfeie  England.  Even  in  tho 
provincial  towns  ol  tho  parent  state  booksoliors'  shops  were  very  rare  at  this  period.  Boi 
well's  Lift  of  Johnson^  , 


116 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  1. 


what  agreeable  annalist,  and  has  appended  to  his  narrative  of  events  an  ac- 
count of  the  institutions  of  the  province,  and  of  the  manners  of  the  colonial 
and  aboriginal  inhabitants.  He  is  chargeable  with  great  ignorance  and  in- 
correctness in  those  parts  of  his  story  that  embrace  events  occurring  in 
England,  or  elsewhere  beyond  the  immediate  precincts  of  Virginia.  Only 
the  initial  letters  of  his  name  appear  on  the  title-page  of  his  book,  —  whence 
Oldmixon  was  led  into  the  mistake  of  supposing  his  name  to  have  been 
Bullock ;  and  in  some  of  the  critical  catalogues  of  Germany  he  has  received 
the  erroneous  appellation  of  Bird.^  A  much  more  enlarged  and  elaborate 
liistory  of  Virginia  (but,  unfortunately,  carried  no  further  down  than  the 
year  1624)  was  written  at  a  later  period  by  Stith,  also  a  native  of  the  prov- 
ince, and  one  of  the  governors  of  William  and  Mary  College.  Stith  is  a 
candid,  accurate  historian,  and  accomplished  scholar;  tediously  minute  in 
relating  the  debates  in  the  Court  of  Proprietors  of  the  Virginia  Company, 
and  tlieir  disputes  with  the  king  ;  but  generally  impressive  and  interesting. 
A  manly  and  liberal  spirit  pervades  every  page  of  his  work,  which  was  first 
published  at  Williamsburg  in  1747. 

Beverly  warmly  extols  the  hospitality  of  his  countrymen  ;  a  commen- 
dation which  the  peculiarity  of  their  condition  renders  sufficiently  credible, 
though  the  preamble  of  one  of  their  laws,  which  we  have  already  noticed, 
demonstrates  that  its  application  was  by  no  means  universal.  He  reproaches 
them  with  indolence,  which  he  ascribes  to  their  residence  in  scattered 
dwellings,  and  their  destitution  of  that  collected  life  which  promotes  mutual 
cooperation  and  competition,  invigorates  industry,  and  nourishes  the  spirit 
of  adventurous  enterprise.  It  may  be  ascribed,  also,  to  the  influence  of 
slavery  in  fostering  pride  and  discrediting  labor.  A  life  like  that  of  the  first 
Virginian  colonists,  remote  from  crowded  haunt,  unoccupied  by  a  multitude 
and  variety  of  objects  and  purposes,  sequestered  from  the  intelligence  of 
passing  events,  and  yet  connected,  by  origin,  remembrance,  and  interest, 
with  a  distant  and  distinguished  realm,  is  the  life  of  those  to  whom  the  com- 
pany of  strangers  is  peculiarly  acceptable.  All  the  other  circumstances  of 
such  a  lot  contribute  to  the  promotion  of  hospitable  habits.  As  for  many 
of  their  hours  the  inhabitants  can  find  no  more  interesting  occupation,  so  of 
much  of  their  superfluous  produce  they  can  find  no  more  profitable  use,  than 
the  entertainment  of  visitors.' 

It  was  the  remarkable  and  fortunate  peculiarity  of  their  local  situation, 
that  prevented  a  people  so  early  devoted  to  commerce  as  the  Virginians 
from  congregating  in  large  towns  and  forming  marts  of  trade.  The  same 
peculiarity  characterized  that  portion  of  their  original  territory  which  was 
subsequently  formed  into  the  separate  province  of  Maryland  ;  and  thero, 
too,  it  was  attended  with  similar  effects.  The  whole  of  that  vast  region  is 
pervaded  by  numerous  streams,  that  impart  fertility  to  the  land,  and  carry 
the  produce  they  have  promoted  to  the  great  highway  of  nations.  From  the 
Bay  of  Chesapeake,  where  all  those  streams  unite,  the  greater  number  of 

'  Warden,  a  late  Amoricnn  writer,  has  repeated  this  error,  and  described  ns  the  production 
of  Bird  what  in  reality  was  the  first  edition  of  Beverly's  work.  There  really  was  a  history 
of  Virginia  written  and  published  by  a  Colonel  Bird,  m  the  be§innii:g  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury ;  but  1  liavo  never  Leon  able  to  meet  with  it.  Oldmixon,  in  his  Preface,  gives  some  ac- 
count of  the  auUiur,  and  refers  to  his  work  among  the  other  materials  which  he  himself  had 
madt)  use  of 

*  "  Mr.  JefTi-rson  told  mo,  that  in  his  father's  lime  it  was  no  uncommon  thing  for  gentlemen 
to  post  their  scr.'ant»  on  the  :i3ain  road  ibr  the  purpd.<sc  of  aniieab"?  waylaying  and  bringing  !•"- 
tlieir  iiouses  any  traveller,  who  might  chance  to  pass."  Hall  ■  Travelt  in  Cajtaia  and  tht 
ViiiU-3  ''tales . 


CHAP.  HI  ]        CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  VIRGINIA. 


117 


them  afford  an  extensive  navigation  into  the  interior  of  the  country ;  and  the 
colonists,  perceiving  that  in  order  to  embark  the  produce  of  their  land  they 
needed  not  to  quit  their  plantations,  but  might  load  the  merchant  ships  at 
the  doors  of  their  country  warehouses,  dispersed  tlieraselves  >  along  the  banks 
of  tlie  rivers,  and  united  the  healthful  felicity  of  rural  life  with  the  advantages 
of  commerce.     Except  the  small  towns  of  Williamsburg,  which  succeeded 
Jamestown  as  the  capital  of  Virginia,  and  Annapolis,  the  capital  of  Mary- 
land, no  cities  grew  up  for  a  very  long  period  in  either  of  these  provinces. 
This  social  condition  proved  highly  favorable  to  those  two  great  sources  of 
national  happiness,  —  good  morals,  and  the  facility  of  gaining  by  industry  a 
moderate  competence  and  a  respectable  station  in  society.     The  convicts 
who  were  transported  to  the  colony,  finding  none  of  the  opportunities  of 
confederacy,  pillage,  and  concealment,  that  large  towns  afford,  either  re- 
turned to  Europe  at  the  expiration  of  their  periods  of  service,  or,  impressed 
with  the  advantages  which  the  country  so  liberally  tendered  to  honest  toil 
and  sobriety  of  manners,  they  melted  into  the  mass  of  humble  and  respec- 
table free  laborers.     To  this  important  class  of  society  the  virtues  of  indus- 
try and  economy  were  recommended  by  prizes  both  greater  and  nearer  than 
any  other  social  community  ever  before  presented.     Labor  was  so  valuable, 
and  land  so  cheap,  that  a  very  few  years  of  diligent  exertion  could  promote 
die  laborer  to  the  condition  of  a  land -owner  ;*»  no  one  needed  to  despair  of 
a  competence  ;  and  none  found  it  practicable  to  amass  enormous  wealth. 
Manual  work,  no  longer  the  badge  of  hopeless  poverty,  was  respected  as 
the  certain  passport  to  independence  ;  nor  was  there  among  the  free  popu- 
lation any  distinction  of  rank  which  industry  and  virtue  were  unable  to  sur- 
mount.  A  constant  and  general  progression,  accomplished  without  scramble 
or  peril,  gave  a  quiet  ahcrity  to  life  ;  and  fellow-feeling  was  not  obstructed, 
nor  insolence  and  servility  engendered,  by  numerous  instances  of  a  wide 
inequality  of  condition.   They  were,  and  are,  undoubtedly,  a  happy  people. 
Two  causes,  however,  have  contributed,  in  this  and  others  of  the  Ameri- 
can provinces,  to  impede  the  operation  and  abridge  the  influence  of  circum- 
stances so  favorable  to  happiness  and  virtue.     Of  these,  by  far  the  most 
important  is  the  institution  of  domestic  slavery  ;  a  practice  fraught  with  in- 
calculable evil  to  the  morals,  manners,  and  felicity  of  every  country  into 
which  It  has  gained  admission.    The  slaves  are  reduced  to  a  state  of  misery 
and  degradation  ;  to  a  state  which  experience  has  pronounced  so  destructive 
to  virtue,  that,  in  many  languages,  the  condition  of  a  slave  and  the  character 
of  a  thief  are  expressed  by  the  same  word.     The  experience  of  every  age 
has  confirmed  the  maxim  of  Homer,  that  the  day  which  makes  man  a  slave 
takes  half  his  worth  away.     The  masters  are  justly  loaded  with  the  guilt  of 
all  the  wretchedness  anM  worthlessness  which  the  condition  of  slavery  in- 
evitably infers  ;  every  mind  is  tainted  with  the  evil  which  it  engenders  and 
displays,  and  sustains  an  abatement  either  of  happiness  or  virtue.     Every 
master  of  a  slave,  whether  he  term  himself  citizen  or  subject,  is  a  monarch 
endowed  with  more  uncontrolled  authority  than  any  sovereign  in  Europe 
enjoys  ;  end  every  country  where  slavery  is  admitted,  whether  it  call  itself 

'  "But,  as  the  bees  which  have  no  hive  collect  no  honey,  the  commerce  which  was  thuH 
dispersed  accumulated  no  wealth."      Tucker's  Life  of  Jefferson. 

"  '.remember  the  time  when  five  pounds  were  loft  by  a  charitable  testator  to  the  poor  of 
me  parish  he  lived  m  ;  and  it  lay  nine  years  before  the  executors  could  find  one  poor  enough 

to  tie  entitled  to  nnv  nnrt  nF  iliia  loompv  •  nr.>1  ..♦  I..<  :»  ,..--  -ii  ~:..~-  » -u  -..-  » 

k.t  .I,-    _       ■     ^     -1  ""i —  " r  'ra~'j  7  "»  "   •^""  ">•  giren  iw  tmu  oju  woman,     co 

Jiat  Uiu  may  in  truth  be  termed  the  best  poor  man's  country  in  the  world."       Beverly. 


118 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


kingdom  or  republic,  is  a  country  subject  to  the  dominion  of  tyrants.    Nay, 
the  more  liberal  its  political  constitution,  the  more  severe  in  general  is  its 
system  of  domestic  tyranny  ;  and  the  experience  of  every  age  has  verified 
the  Grecian  proverb,  that  none  are  so  completely  enslaved  as  the  slaves  of 
the  free.    Human  character  is  as  much  corrupted  and  depraved  by  the  arro- 
eance  of  domination  as  by  the  depression  of  servitude  ;  and  slavery  is  a 
state  wherein  one  man  ruleth  over  another  to  his  oien  hurt.    The  same  wis- 
dom which  assigned  to  man  his  duties  adapted  them  to  the  development  of 
his  understanding  and  the  refinement  of  his  sensibility.     This  adaptation  is 
particularly  visible  in  the  duties  that  regulate  the  mutual  intercourse  of  men. 
To  violate  therein  the  law  of  kindness  and  the  principles  of  equity  is  to 
warp  the  understanding,^  as  well  as  to  corrupt  the  heart ;  to  lower  the  dig- 
nity  of  rational,  and  the  happiness  of  sensible  beings.     There  is  a  perpetual 
reciprocation  of  evil  between  a  master  and  his  slaves.     His  injustice  con- 
signs them  to  their  servile  state  ;  and  the  evil  qualities  that  this  condition 
engenders  in  them  tend  continually  to  provoke  his  irascibility.     His  power 
inflicts  their  degradation  ;  and  their  degradation  at  once  provokes  and  facil- 
itates the  excesses  of  his  power.     In  proportion  to  the  rigor  of  their  treat- 
ment is  the  hatred  which  he  inspires  in  them,  and  which,  reacting  on  its  own 
dire  cause,  imparts  a  wider  scope  and  keener  edge  to  his  cruelty.     Hence 
the  commerce  between  master  and  slave  tends  to  stimulate  and  exhibit  all 
that  is  odious  and  revolting  in  human  passion  and  conduct.     The  delicate 
susceptibility  of  women  is  exposed  to  the  impression  of  this  spectacle,  and 
the  imitative  disposition  of  children  exercised  amidst  its  continual  display. 
In  the  picture  that  Juvenal  has  drawn  of  the  toilet  of  a  Roman  lady  we  be- 
hold a  striking  illustration  of  the  influence  of  domestic  slavery  in  corrupting 
even  the  gentler  sex  with  the  direst  cruelty  ;  and  that  the  picture  was  far 
from  being  overcharged  may  unhappily  be  deduced  from  the  delineations, 
still  more  odious,  that  present  themselves  in  the  pages  of  modern  travellers 
in  North  America  and  the  West  Indies.     Female  slaves,  regarding  the 
freemen  as  a  superior  race  of  beings,  lose  alike  the  virtues  and  the  rights 
of  women  in  their  intercourse  with  thenri,  and  introduce  into  rural  life  modes 
of  vice  even  more  disgraceful  and  corruptive  than  those  which  are  generated 
by  the  temptations  of  profligate  cities.    The  freemen,  habituated  to  consider 
the  great  majority  of  the  females  with  whom  they  associate  as  an  inferior 
race,  are  consequently  exposed  to  an  influence  hostile  to  those  sentiments 
and  manners  which  constitute  the  moral  grace  and  symbol  of  civilized  life ; 
and  proportionally  descend  to  the  level  of  that  barbarous  state  in  which 
women  are  regarded  merely  as  instruments  of  drudgery  or  ministers  of 
voluptuousness.     Every  description  of  work  that  is  committed  to  slaves  is 
performed  with  as  much  neglect  and  indolence  as  they  dare  to  indulge,  and 
is  so  degraded  in  common  estimation,  that  the  poorest  freenian  disdains  to 
undertake  it  except  when  he  is  working  for  himself.     White  servants  in 
America  have  been  always  distinguished  for  a  jealous  impatience  of  their 
position,  and  a  reluctant  and  imperfect  regard  to  the  will  of  their  masters. 
As  the  numbers  of  the  slaves  are  multiplied,  the  industry  of  the  free  is  thus 
repressed  by  the  extension  of  slave  labor  ;   and  the  safety  of  the  state  is 
endangered  by  the  strength  of  a  body  of  internal  enemies  ready  to  conspire 
against  its  tranquillity  or  to  join  its  first  invader."  The  number  of  the  slaves 

'  See  Note  iV.,  ftl  Ui«  end  of  the  volume. 

»  "  I  tremble  for  my  country,"  says  Jefferson,  in  his  obrorvations  on  the  slave  populsUon 


CHAP.  HI]        CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  VIRGINIA. 


119 


le  slave  population 


1111(1  gladiators  contributed  to  the  downfall  of  Rome  ;  and,  indeed,  every  body 
politic,  compounded  of  parts  so  heterogeneous  as  freemen  and  slaves,  plain- 
ly contains  within  itselt  a  principle  of  progressive  disease  and  corruption. 
Siicli  a  mixture  tends  also  to  pervert  and  confound  the  moral  sentimeiits 
of  all  mankind,  and  to  degrade  the  value  of  those  free  institutions  which  are 
seen  to  form  a  canopy  for  the  shelter  of  domestic  tyranny,'  to  mock  one 
portion  of  the  people  with  such  liberty  and  dignity  as  jailers  enjoy,  and  to 
load  all  the  rest  with  such  fetters  as  only  felons  should  wear. 

or  all  the  forms  under  which  slavery  has  ever  appeared  in  the  world,  ne- 
gro slavery  is  the  most  odious  and  mischievous.     The  difference  of  color 
i)o-gravates  the  distinction  of  condition  between  the  master  and  the  slave  ; 
and  the  mutual  hatred  and  fear  generated  between  individuals  by  this  acci- 
dental relation  are  extended  to  natural  distinctions  of  bodily  feature,  and 
perpetuated  between  whole  races  of  men.     Long  as  well  as  grievous  are  the 
consequences  of  guilt  and  injustice.     The  first  introduction  of  slavery  into  a 
country  plants  a  canker,  of  which  the  entire  malignity  is  not  perceived  till  in 
an  after  age,  when  it  has  attained  an  extent,  which,  concurring  with  the  at- 
tendant train  of  prejudices  and  antipathies,  renders  its  extirpation  exceeding- 
ly difficult.     This  consideration,  without  lending  to  diminish  our  abhorrence 
of  a  system  so  fraught  with  mischief  and  danger,  mitigates  the  severity  of  our 
censure  on  those  to  whom  the  system,  already  matured  by  long  continuance 
and  fortified  by  inveterate  prejudice,  has  unhappily  descended.     And  even 
with  regard  to  the  race  who  first  introduced  it  we  shall  not  fulfil  the  duty  of 
fellow-men,  if  we  omit  to  consider  the  apologies  which  may  reasonably  be 
supposed  to  have  deluded  their  conscience  and  understanding,  and  veiled  from 
their  view  the  wickedness  they  committed  and  the  misery  they  prepared.   The 
negroes  first  brought  to  Virginia  were  enslaved  before  they  came  there,  and 
by  the  purchase  of  the  colonists  were  delivered  from  the  hold  of  a  slave-ship 
and  the  peculiar  and  notorious  cruelty  of  the  Dutch.     Some  little  good  might 
thus  at  first  seem  to  result  from  the  commission  of  evil.     When  the  slaves 
were  few  in  number,  and  consequently  incapable  of  awakening  public  jealousy 
and  alarm,  they  appear  to  have  been  kindly  treated  ;-  and  their  masters  per- 
haps intended  to  emancipate  them  at  that  convenient  season  for  adjusting  the 
accounts  of  interest  and  conscience,  which  every  added  year  and  every  ad- 
dition to  their  numbers  tended  still  farther  to  postpone.     Even  at  a  later  pe- 
nt'this  province,  "  when  I  reflect  that  God  ia  just ;  that  his  justice  cannot  sleep  for  ever  ;  that, 
cunsidcring  numbers,  nature,  and  natural  means  only,  a  revolution  of  the  wheel  of  fortune,  a:, 
(exchange  of  situntion,  is  among  possible  events;  that  it  may  become  probable  hy  supernatural 
interference  !  The  Almighty  has  no  attribute  which  can  take  side  with  us  in  such  a  contest.' 
.Votfs  on  Virginia.    So  early  as  the  year  1687,  we  are  told  that '  a  plan  of  insurrection  of  the 
l)lanks  was  at  this  time  discovered  in  the  Northern  Neck,  just  in  time  to  prevent  its  explosion." 
Hencca  relates  that  it  was  once  proposed  at  Rome  to  discriminate  the  slaves  by  a  peculiar  drcsf  , 
but  it  was  justly  apprehenr'dd  tiint  there  might  bo  some  danger  in  acquainting  them  with  ;!ieir 
own  numbers.     Tnis  information  is  conveyed  to  the  negroes  by  their  color  ;  and  this  color  bi-- 
ing  always  a  mark  of  contempt,  even  those  negroes,  who  become  free  in  countries  where  their 
nice  is  generally  enslaved,  continue  allied,  both  by  the  most  irritating  feelings,  and  by  the  sym- 
pathy tliey  must  entertain  for  men  of  the  same  complexion,  with  all  those  who  remain  in  a 
»tiite  of  bondage. 

'  To  dream  of  frerdinn  in  hln  slave's  cmhraer  —  is  represented  with  bitter  satire  and  melun- 
cholv  truth  by  the  Irish  bard,  Moore,  as  the  felicity  of  many  an  American  planter. 

'-'  The  treatment  of  slaves  at  lioriie,  latterly  distinguished  liy  the  most  enormous  cruelty,  was 
originally  kind  and  humane.  Plutarch,  Life  of  Coriolanus.  In  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Clau- 
dius, it  was  foimd  necessary  to  pass  a  law  forbidding  masters  to  kill  their  slaves  on  account  of 
age  or  infirmity.  The  original  admission  of  the  Hebrews  into  Egypt  was  an  act  of  benevo- 
lence ;  and  it  was  only  when  they  had  waxed  numerically  strong  that  they  experienced  the 
rii;ors  of  bondage. 


120 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  I. 


riod  and  in  altered  ciiciimslances,  numerous  instances  have  been  known  of 
what  is  most  inappropriately  termed  the  humane  treatment  of  negro  slaves 
by  masters,  who,  freely  dispensing  physical  comforts  and  indulgences  to 
them,  and  carelully  barring  tliem  from  the  knowledge  that  would  waken 
aspiration  for  a  higher  moral  condition,  appeal  to  their  unmanly  content- 
ment with  degradation  as  a  proof  that  slavery  may  be  a  nappy  state. • 

Negro  slavery  lingered  long  in  the  settlements  of  the  Puritans  in  New 
England,  and  of  the  Quakers  in  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania  ;  although  in 
none  of  these  States  did  the  climate,  or  the  soil  and  its  appropriate  culture, 
suggest  the  same  temptations  to  this  inhumanity  which  presented  themselves 
in  the  southern  quarters  of  America.  Las  Casas,  so  distinguished  by  the 
warmth  of  his  philanthropy,  first  suggested  its  introduction  into  Mexico  and 
Peru  ;  George  Fox,  the  most  intrepid  and  enthusiastic  of  reformers,  de- 
manded no  more  of  his  followers  than  a  mitigation  of  its  rigor  in  Bar- 
badoes  ;  and  the  illustrious  philosopher,  John  Locke,  renowned  also  as  the 
champion  of  religious  and  political  freedom,  introduced  an  express  sanction 
of  it  into  the  fundamental  constitutions  of  Carolina.  Georgia  is  the  only 
one  of  the  North  American  States  in  which  slavery  was  expressly  disal- 
lowed by  the  fundamental  laws  ;  but  these  laws  were  soon  repealed  ;  and 
in  none  of  the  other  States  has  slavery  proved  a  more  rigorous  and  op- 
pressive yoke  than  in  Georgia.  Considerations  such  as  these  are  calculated 
to  increase  at  once  our  indulgence  for  mankind,  and  our  abhorrence  of  \hm 
insidious  and  formidable  mischief  which  has  so  signally  baffled  the  penetra- 
tion of  the  wise,  and  triumphed  over  the  benevolence  of  the  humane. 

The  other  cause  which  has  been  alluded  to,  as  operating  unfavorably  on 
the  prosperity  of  Virginia,  is  the  inordinate  cultivation  of  tobacco.  As 
long  as  Virginia  and  Maryland  were  the  only  provinces  of  North  America 
where  this  commodity  was  produced,  their  inhabitants  devoted  themselves 
almost  exclusively  to  a  culture  which  is  attended  with  much  inconvenience 
lo  the  persons  engaged  in  it,  and  no  small  disadvantage  to  their  country 
even  when  moderately  pursued.  It  requires  extremely  fatiguing  labor  from 
the  cultivators,  and  exhausts  the  fertility  of  the  ground  ;  and,  as  little  food 
of  any  kind  is  raised  on  the  tobacco  plantations,  the  men  and  cattle  em- 
ployed on  ihem  are  badly  fed,  and  the  soil  is  progressively  impoverished.* 
This  disadvantage  was  long  experienced  in  Virginia  ;  but  h  13  been  dimin- 
ished jy  the  introduction  into  the  markets  of  Europe  of  the  tobacco  produce; 
of  territories  more  recently  subjected  to  cultivation.' 

'  One  of  the  best  pictures  I  have  ever  met  with  of  the  actual  operation  of  negro  slavtrv 


occurs  in  Pinckard's  Xotes  on  the  fVest  India. 
*  JeSferfion's  M'otts  on  Virginia 


'  Priest's  Travels  in  America.    Warden. 


BOOK  II. 


THE  NEW  ENGLAAD  STATES. 


CHAPTER    I. 

Attempts  of  the  Plvmouth  Company  to  colonize  the  northern  Coastx  of  America.  —  Pophain 
cstablislics  a  Colony  at  Fort  Saint  George.  —  Sufferings  and  Return  of  the  Colonists. — 
Captain  Smith's  Voyage  and  Survey  of  tne  Country  —  which  is  named  New  England.  — 
Hid  ineffectual  Attempt  to  conduct  a  Colony  thither. — The  Company  relinquish  the  Design 
of  colonizing  New  England.  —  History  and  Character  of  the  Puritans.  —  Rise  of  the  Brown- 
ists  or  Independents.  —  A  Congregation  of  Independents  retire  to  Holland — they  resolve 
to  settle  in  America  —  their  Negotiation  with  King  Junies —  they  arrive  in  Massachusetts 

and  found  New  Plymouth.  —  Hardships — and  Virtue  of  the  Colonists Their  civil 

Institutions.  —  Community  of  Property.  —  Increase  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  Tyranny  in 
Krigiand. —  Project  of  a  new  Colony  in  Massachusetts.  —  Salem  built.  —  Charter  of  Massa- 
(liiisetts  Bay  obtained  irom  Charles  the  First  by  an  Association  of  Puritans.  —  Embarkation 
of  the  Emigrants  —  Arrival  at  Salem.  —  Their  ecclesiastical  Institutions.  —  Two  Persons 
banished  from  the  Couny  for  Schism.  —  Intolerance  of  some  of  the  Puritans. 

When  James  the  First  of  England  gave  his  sanction  to  the  project  of 
colonizing  the  vast  district  of  North  America  which  was  comprehended  at 
that  time  [1606]  under  the  name  of  Virginia,  he  made  a  partition,  which 
we  have  already  remarked,  of  the  territory  between  two  trading  companies, 
and  established  the  residence  of  the  one  at  London,  and  of  the  other  at 
Plymouth.  If  the  object  of  this  partition  was  to  diminish  the  inconven- 
ience of  monopoly,  and  diffuse  the  benefit  of  colonial  relations  more  exten- 
sively in  England,  the  means  were  ill  adapted  to  the  end  ;  and  eventually 
the  operauon  of  this  act  of  policy  was  far  from  corresponding  with  its  design. 
The  resources  of  the  adventurers,  who  had  already  prepared  to  undertake 
the  enterprise  of  colonization,  were  divided  so  unequally,  and  yet  so  much 
to  the  disadvantage  of  all  parties,  that  even  the  more  powerful  company 
was  barely  enabled  to  maintain  a  feeble  and  precarious  settlement  in  Vir- 
ginia ;  while  the  weaker,  without  ability  i.o  accomplish  the  purpose  of  its 
institution,  obtained  little  more  than  the  privilege  of  debarring  the  rest  of 
the  world  from  attempting  it.  We  have  seen  that  the  southern  colony,  — 
though  promoted  by  a  corporation  which  reckoned  among  its  members 
some  of  the  richest  and  most  considerable  persons  in  the  realm,  and  en- 
joyed the  advantage  of  being  situated  in  a  town  then  engrossing  almost  all 
ihe  commercial  wealth  of  England,  —  even  with  the  aid  of  these  favorable 
circumstances,  made  but  slow  and  laborious  advances  to  a  secure  establish- 
ment. The  Plymouth  Company  possessing  much  narrower  resources  and 
a  less  advantageous  situation,  its  efforts  were  proportionally  more  feeble  and 
inadequate. 

The  most  conspicuous  members  of  the  Plymouth  Company  were  Sir 
•Tohn  Popham,  lord  chief  justice  of  England,  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges, 
governor  of  Plymouth  Fort,  and  Sir  John  Gilbert,  nephew  of  that  dis- 
tineuishod  adventurer  who  has  already  engaged  our  notice  as  the  first  ob- 
tainer  of  a  patent  of  colonization  from  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  the  earliesl 

VOL.   I.  16  K 


122 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


conductor  of  emigrants  to  America.     Animated  by  the  zeal  of  these  men, 
and  especially  of  Popham,  who  assumed  the  principal  direction  of  their 
measures,  the  Plymouth  Company,  shortly  after  their  association,  despatched 
a  small  vessel  to  inspect  their  territories  ;  but  soon  received  the  mortifying 
intelligence  of  its  capture  by  the  Spaniards,  who  still  pretended  right  to  ex- 
clude every  other  people  from  the  navigation  of  the  American  seas.     The 
chief  justice  and  his  friends,  however,  were  too  much  bent  on  the  prose- 
cution of  their  purpose  to  be  deterred  by  this  disaster.  At  his  own  expense, 
Popham  equipped  and  despatched  another  vessel  to  resume  the  survey  ; 
and  having  received  a  favorable  report  of  the  appearance  of  the  country, 
he  availed  himself  of  the  impression  produced  by  the  tidings  to  raise  a  suf- 
ficient supply  of  men  and  money  for  the  formation  of  a  colony.     [May, 
1607.]   Under  the  command  of  his  brother,  Henry  Popham,  and  of  Raleigh 
Gilbert,  brother  oi"  Sir  John,  a  hundred  emigrants,  embarking  in  two  ves- 
sels, repaired  to  the  territory  of  what  was  still  called  Northern  Virginia  ; 
and  took  possession  of  a  piece  of  ground  near  the  River  Sagadahoc,  where 
they  built  a  stronghold  and  named  it  Fort  Saint  George.  The  district  where 
they  established  themselves  was  rocky  and  barren  ;  and  their  provisions 
were  so  scanty,  that  they  were  obliged,  soon  after  their  arrival,  to  send  back 
to  England  all  but  forty-five  of  their  number.  The  winter  proved  extremely 
severe,  and  confined  this  small  remnant  to  their  miserable  dvvelling,  and  a 
helpless  contemplation  of  the  dreary  waste  that  surrounded  it.     Disease, 
the  offspring  of  scarcity  and  hardship,  augmented  the  general  gloom  ;  and 
before  the  return  of  spring,  several  of  the  adventurers,  and  among  others 
their  president,  Henry  Popham,  had  sunk  into  the  grave.     With  the  spring 
[1608],  arrived  a  vessel  laden  with  supplies  from  England  ;  but  the  intelli- 
gence that  accompanied  these  supplies  more  than  counterbalanced  the  satis- 
faction they  afforded  ;  for  the  colonists  were  now  informed  of  the  deaths  of 
Chief  Justice  Popham  and  Sir  John  Gilbert,  the  most  powerful  of  their 
patrons  and  most  active  of  their  benefactors.     Their  resolution  was  com- 
pletely subdued  by  so  many  misfortunes  ;  and,  imanimously  exclaiming 
against  longer  continuance  in  those  dismal  scenes,  they  forsook  the  settle- 
ment and  returned  to  their  native  land,  which  they  filled  with  the  most  dis- 
heartening accounts  of  the  soil  and  climate  of  Northern  Virginia.^     The 
American  historians  have  been  careful  to  note  that  this  disastrous  expedition 
originated  with  the  judge,  who  (odious  and  despicable  in  every  part  of  his 
professional  career)  had,  three  years  before,  presided  with  the  most  scan- 
dalous injustice  at  the  trial  of  Raleigh,  and  condemne     lo  the  death  of  a 
traitor  the  man  to  whom  both   England  and  America  were  so  greatly 
beholden. 

The  miscarriage  of  this  colonial  experiment,  and  the  evil  report  raised 
against  the  scene  where  it  had  been  attempted,  deterred  the  Plymouth 
Company  for  some  time  from  ^-^y  farther  exertion  to  plant  a  settlement  in 
Northern  Virginia,  and  produced  an  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  people 
of  England  very  unfavorable  to  emigration  to  that  territory.  For  several 
years,  the  operations  of  the  company  were  confined  to  a  few  fishing  voyages 
•o  Cape  Cod,  and  a  traffic  in  peltry  and  oil  witli  the  natives.  At  length 
their  prospects  were  cheered  by  a  gleam  of  better  fortune  ;  and  the  intro- 
duction of  Captain  Smith  —  already  known  to  us  by  his  guardianship  of  the 

I   a_:.!.'-  «.„»__.  «f  i/.v~,v.>    v-.»  Fn"lai>d   *"     Stiih'a  MijiUrru  of  Virainia.    Neal's  HiSr 
tory  of  Jftu)  England     Hutchinson's  History  of  Massachuaells. 


CHAP.  I  ] 


FUTILE  ATTEMPTS  AT  COLONIZATION. 


123 


ia.   Neal's  His- 


infant  province  of  Virginia  —  into  their  service,  seemed  to  betoken  more 
vigorous  and  successful  enterprise.  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  and  some  other 
leading  members  of  the  Plymouth  Company,  justly  appreciating  the  genius 
and  merit  of  this  man,  were  fain  to  engage  his  valuable  services,  which  the 
London  Company  had  unworthily  neglected.  [1614.]  Six  years  after  the 
abandonment  of  the  settlement  at  Sagadahoc,  two  vessels  were  despatched, 
under  the  command  of  Captain  Smith  and  Captain  Hunt,  on  a  voyage  of 
trade  and  discovery  to  the  Plymouth  Company's  territories.  Smith,  having 
(concluded  his  traffic  with  the  natives,  left  his  crew  engaged  in  fishing,  and, 
accompanied  by  only  eight  men,  travelled  into  the  interior  of  the  country, 
surveyed  its  condition,  explored  with  care  and  diligence  the  whole  coast 
from  Cape  Cod  to  Penobscot,  and  composed  a  map  in  which  its  features 
were  accurately  delineated.  On  his  return  to  England,  he  presented  his 
map,  with  an  account  of  his  travels  and  observations,  to  Prince  Charles, 
who  was  so  much  pleased  with  the  description  of  the  country,  that  he 
bestowed  on  it  the  name  of  New  England,  which  it  has  ever  since  re- 
tained. 

The  successful  voyage  of  Captain  Smith,  and  the  favorable  account  that 
he  gave  of  the  territory,  though  they  contributed  not  a  little  to  animate  the 
spirit  of  commercial  adventure,  could  not  overcome  the  general  reluctance 
to  a  permanent  settlement  in  this  region,  which  the  misfortunes  of  the  first 
colonists  had  created  in  England.    The  impediments  to  a  colonial  establish- 
ment In  this  quarter  of  America,  besides,  were  greatly  increased  by  the 
conduct  of  Hunt,  who  had  been  associated  with  Smith  in  the  late  voyage. 
That  sordid  and  profligate  man,  unwilling  that  the  benefit  of  the  existing 
narrow  traffic  with  the  company's  territories,  which  was  exclusively  shared 
by  himself  and  a  few  others  who  were  aware  of  its  advantages,  should  be 
more  generally  diffiised  by  the  formation  of  a  colony,  resolved  to  defeat  the 
design  by  embroiling  his  countrymen  with  the  natives  ;  and  for  this  purpose, 
having  enticed  a  number  of  these  people  on  board  his  ship,  he  set  sail  with 
them  for  Malaga,  where  he  had  been  ordered  to  touch  on  his  homeward 
voyage,  and  sold  them  for  slaves  to  the  Spaniards.   The  company,  indignant 
at  his  wickedness,  instantly  dismissed  him  from  their  service  ;  but  his  mis- 
chievous purpose  was  accomplished  ;  and  the  next  vessel  that  returned  from 
New  England  brought  intelligence  of  the  vindictive  hostilities  of  the  savages. 
Undismayed  by  all  these  difficulties  and  dangers,  Smith  determined  to  make 
an  effort  for  the  colonization  of  the  northern  territory  ;  and  having  commu- 
nicated a  portion  of  his  own  resolute  hope  and  spirit  to  some  of  the  leading 
patentees,  he  was  enabled,  by  their  assistance,  to  equip  a  small  squadron, 
and  set  sail  at  the  head  of  a  band  of  emigrants  for  New  England.     [1615.] 
Thus  far  could  energy  prevail  ;  but  in  a  struggle  with  fate,  farther  advance- 
ment was  impracticable  ;  and  Smith,  who  had  now  accomplished  all  that 
man  could  do,  was  destined  to  experience  that  all  was  unavailing.     The 
voyage  was  one  uninterrupted  scene  of  disaster.     After  encountering  a  vio- 
lent tempest  by  which  the  vessels  had  nearlj^  perished,  and  escaping  more 
than  once  from  the  attacks  of  pirates.   Smith  was  made  prisoner  by  the 
commander  of  a  French  fleet,  who  mistook  or  pretended  to  mistake  him  for 
Captain  Argal,  and  charged  him  with  the  guilt  of  the  piratical  enterprise 
which  Argal  had  conducted  in  the  preceding  year  against  Port  Royal. * 
On  this  unjust  charge.  Smith  was  separated  from  his  crew,  and  detained 

>  BooFl-VChapTlI.,  ante. 


124 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


long  in  captivity.  It  was  happy  for  himself  and  for  mankind  that  he  lived 
to  return  to  his  country  and  write  the  history  of  his  travels,  instead  of  reach- 
ing i\e\v  England,  where  his  blood  would  probably  have  stained  the  land 
wh'u'h  his  genius  and  virtue  have  contributed  to  illustrate.  Several  years 
alierwards  [1619],  the  Plymouth  Company,  having  discovered  that  an  In- 
dian, named  Squanto,  one  of  the  persons  kidnapped  by  Hunt,  had  escaped 
from  the  Spaniards,  and  found  his  way  to  Britain,  acquitted  themselves  to 
Ills  satisfaction  of  the  injury  he  had  suffered,  enriched  him  with  valuable 
gifts,  and  sent  hiin  back  to  New  England  along  with  a  small  expedition 
coinnianded  by  one  Dormer,  who  was  directed  to  avail  himself  of  Squanto's 
assistance  in  regaining  the  friendship  of  the  Indians.  But  although  Squanto 
earnestly  labored  to  pacify  his  abused  countrymen,  and  assured  them  that 
Hunt's  treachery  had  been  condemned  and  punished  in  England,  they  would 
hearken  to  no  suggestion  that  forbade  the  gratification  of  their  burning  re- 
\enge,  and,  watching  a  favorable  opportunity,  attacked  and  dangerously 
wounded  Dormer  and  several  of  his  party,  who,  escaping  with  difficulty 
from  the  hostile  region,  left  vSquanto  behind  to  urge  at  more  leisure  and  with 
better  success  his  topics  of  apology  and  conciliation.  Disgusted  by  so  many 
disappointments,  the  company  laid  aside  all  thoughts  of  establishing  colonies 
in  New  England.  An  insignificant  traffic  bounded  their  own  adventures ; 
and  they  exercised  no  farther  dominion  over  the  territory  than  the  distribu- 
tion of  small  portions  of  the  northern  quarter  of  it  to  private  adventurers, 
who  occupied  them  in  summer  as  mercantile  factories  or  victualling  statirtns 
for  the  use  of  vessels  resorting  thither  for  trade.' 

We  have  sufficient  assurance  that  the  course  of  this  world  is  not  gov- 
erned by  chance  ;  and  that  the  series  of  events  which  it  exhibits  is  regulated 
by  divine  ordinance,  and  adapted  to  purposes,  which,  from  their  tran- 
scendent wisdom  and  infinite  rai'ge,  often  elude  the  conceptive  grasp  of 
created  capacity.  As  it  could  not,  then,  be  without  high  design,  so  it  seems 
to  have  been  for  no  common  object,  that  discomfiture  was  thus  entailed  on 
the  counsels  of  princes,  the  schemes  of  the  wise,  and  the  efforts  of  the 
brave.  It  was  for  no  ordinary  people  that  the  land  was  reserved,  and  of  no 
common  qualities  or  vulgar  superiority  that  it  was  appointed  the  prize.  New 
England  was  the  destined  asylum  of  oppressed  piety  and  virtue ;  ^  and  its 
colonization,  denied  to  the  pretensions  of  greatness  and  the  efforts  of  might, 
^vas  reserved  for  persons  whom  the  great  and  mighty  despised  for  their  in- 
significance, and  persecuted  for  their  integrity.  The  recent  growth  of  the 
Virginian  colony,  and  the  repeated  attempts  to  form  a  settlement  in  New 
England,  naturally  attracted  to  this  quarter  the  eyes  of  men  who  felt  little 
reluctance  to  abandon  a  country,  where,  for  conscience's  sake,  they  had 
already  incurred  the  loss  of  temporal  ease  and  enjoyment  ;  whom  persecu- 
tion had  fortified  to  the  endurance  of  hardship,  and  piety  had  taught  to  de- 
spise it.  It  was  at  this  juncture  accordingly,  that  the  project  of  colonizing 
New  England  was  undertaken  by  the  Puritans  ;  a  class  of  men  of  whose  ori- 
gin, sentiments,  and  previous  history  it  is  proper  that  we  here  subjoin  some 
account. 

Of  all  the  national  churches  of  Europe,  which,  at  the  era  of  the  Refor- 
mation, renounced  the  doctrine  and  revolted  from  the  dominion  of  the  see 
of  Rome,  there  was  none  in  which  the  origin  of  the  separation  was  so  dis- 
creditable, or  the  proceedings  to  which  it  immediately  gave  rise  so  unrea- 
'  Smith.    Neal.  *  "Jupiter  iila  pise  8ccrcvitIitloragcnti."    Horace. 


CHAP   I] 


TIIF,   lUlFOllMATION   IN   ENGI-AND. 


125 


ponablo  and  inrquitablo,  as  (jjo  cluirrh  of  England.'  This  arose  partly  from 
the  c.ircunistaiKO  of  tho  alteralion  in  this  cliuich  having  mainly  originated 
with  the  tJMuporal  inagistrat«,  and  partly  from  thn  character  of  the  indi- 
vidiiiils  by  whom  the  interposition  of  magisterial  authority  was  exerted.  In 
the  I'alatinate,  in  Urandenburg,  Holland,  (ieneva,  and  Scotland,  where  tho 
reform  proceeded  from  the  general  conviction,  the  doctrine  and  constitution 
of  the  national  church  corresponded  with  the  religious  sentiments  of  the 
people.  The  Biblical  Christianity  taught  by  Calvin  and  Luther  (with  cir- 
cumstantial varieties,  occasioned  by  variety  of  human  capacity,  sensibility, 
and  attainment)  superseded  the  traditional  dogmas  of  the  church  of  Rome  ; 
and  the  primitive  simplicity  of  the  Presbyterian  administration  (with  pro- 
jjortioiiate  varieties,  of  similar  origin)  superseded  the  pageantry  of  her  cere- 
monial and  the  pomp  of  her  constitution.  In  England,  the  Reformation 
originating  from  a  different  source,  its  institutions  received  a  tincture  from 
qualities  proportionally  different.  The  same  haughty  and  imperious  dispo- 
sition, that  prompted  Henry  the  Eighth  to  abolish  the  authority  of  the  church 
of  Rome  in  his  dominions,  regulated  all  his  views  and  conduct  in  construct- 
ing a  substitute  for  the  abrogated  system.  Abetted  by  a  crew  of  servile 
dependents  and  sordid  nobles,  whom  he  enriched  with  the  spoils  of  the  plun- 
dered monasteries,  and  by  a  compliant  House  of  Commons,  whose  profes- 
sion of  faith  veered  about  with  every  variation  of  the  royal  creed,  he  neither 
felt  nor  affected  the  slightest  respect  for  the  sentiments  of  the  mass  of  the 
people,  a  portion  of  his  subjects  to  whose  petitions  he  once  answered,  by  a 
public  proclamation,  that  they  were  "  but  brutes  and  inexpert  folk,"  and  as 
unfit  to  advise  him  as  blind  men  were  to  judge  of  colors.**  His  object  was 
to  substitute  himself  and  his  successors  as  heads  of  the  church,  in  place  of 
the  pope  ;  and  for  the  maintenance  of  this  usurped  dominion,  he  retained, 
both  in  the  ceremonies  of  worship  and  in  the  constitution  of  the  clerical  or- 
der, a  great  deal  of  the  machinery  which  his  predecessor  in  the  supremacy 
had  found  useful.  The  unbridled  vehemence  of  his  temper  detracted  some- 
what from  the  poHcy  of  his  devices,  and  greatly  disguised  their  aspect  as  a 
politic  system  by  that  show  of  good  faith  and  sincerity  which  accompanied 
all  his  actions,  and  which  was  but  the  natural  result  of  sincere  and  impetuous 
selfishness,  and  of  a  presumptuous  and  undoubting  conviction  of  the  superi- 
ority of  his  own  understanding  and  the  infallibility  of  its  dictates.^  While  he 
rigidly  denied  the  right  of  private  judgment  to  his  subjects,  his  own  incessant 
and  imperious  exercise  of  this  right  continually  tempted  them,^to  partake  the 
satisfaction  it  seemed  to  afford  him  ;  and  the  frequent  variations  of  the 
creeds  he  promulgated  at  once  excited  a  spirit  of  speculation  akin  to  his  own, 
and  practically  refuted  the  only  pretence  that  could  recommend  or  entitle 
his  judgment  to  the  implicit  assent  of  fallible  men.  The  pope,  expressly 
maintaining,  that,  in  virtue  of  his  sacred  office,  he  could  never  be  in  the 

'  "  The  work,  which  had  been  begun  by  Henry,  tho  murderer  of  his  wives,  was  continued 
liy  Somerset,  the  murderer  of  his  brother,  and  completed  by  Elizabeth,  the  murderer  of  her 
jruost.  Sprung  from  brutal  passion,  nurtured  by  seifish  policy,  the  Reformation  in  England 
displaced  little  of  what  had  in  other  countries  distinguished  it,  unflinching  and  unsparing 
devotion,  boldness  of  speech,  and  singleness  of  eye."      Edinburgh  Revieio. 

*  Lord  Herbert's  Lije  of  Henry  ihe  Eighth. 

'  The  public  disputation  which  he  hela  with  one  of  his  subjects,  the  noble-minded  and  un- 
fortunate Lambert,  'who  denied  the  doctrine  of  the  real  presence,  was,  perhaps,  regarded  at 
the  time  as  an  act  of  admirable  zeal  and  most  generous  condescension.  It  might  have  merited 
this  praise,  if  the  horrid  death  by  which  he  revenged  the  impotence  of  his  logic  did  not  prove 
i:  io  iiavv  bcc.  on  overflowing  uf  arrogance  and  vsin-glory. 


126 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11 


wrong,  was  disabled  from  correcting  either  his  own  errors  or  those  bequeathed 
to  him  by  his  predecessors.  Henry,  merely  ^etending  to  the  privilege  of 
being  always  in  the  right,  defeated  this  pretension  by  the  variety  and  incon- 
;sistency  ot  the  systems  to  which  he  applied  it.  While  he  insisted  on  retain- 
ing mucii  of  the  peculiar  doctrine  of  the  church  of  Rome,  he  attacked,  in  lis 
infallibility,  a  tenet  not  only  important  in  itself,  but  the  sole  sanction  and 
foundation  of  a  great  many  others.  Notwithstanding  his  desire  to  restrain  it, 
—  nay,  promoted,  indeed,  by  some  part  of  his  own  conduct,  —  a  spirit  of 
religious  inquiry  began  to  arise  among  the  multitude  of  professors  who  blindlj 
or  interestedly  had  followed  the  fortunes  and  the  fluctuations  of  the  royal 
creed  ;  and  the  knowledge  of  divine  truth,  combined  with  a  growing  regard 
for  simplicity  of  divine  worship,  arising  first  in  the  higher  classes,  spread 
downwards  through  the  successive  grades  of  society  in  this  and  the  following 
reigns.  The  administration  of  inquisitorial  oaths,  and  the  infliction,  in  va- 
rious instances,  of  decapitation,  torture,  and  burning,  for  the  crime  of  heresy, 
during  Henry's  reign,  demonstrate  how  fully  he  embraced  the  character  as 
well  as  the  pretensions  of  the  haughtiest  pontiffs  that  ever  filled  the  Romish 
see,*  and  how  ineffectually  he  labored  to  impose  his  own  heterogeneous  sys 
tem  of  opinions  on  the  understandings  of  his  subjects.  Evenjn  his  lifetime, 
the  Protestant  doctrines  had  spread  far  beyond  the  limits  of  any  of  the  pecu 
liar  creeds  which  he  adopted  and  promulgated  ;  and  in  their  illegitiniatt 
extent  made  numerous  proselytes  in  his  court  and  kingdom.  The  propaga- 
tion of  them  was  aided  by  the  translation  and  diffusion  of  the  Scriptures, 
which  he  vainly  endeavoured  to  prevent,  and  which  enabled  his  people  tc 
imbibe  religious  knowledge,  unstinted  and  unadulterated,  from  its  everlasting 
fountains.  The  open  profession  of  those  illicit  opinions  was  in  many  in- 
stances repressed  by  the  terror  of  his  inflexible  cruelty,  and  by  the  influence 
over  his  measures  which  his  lay  and  clerical  courtiers  found  it  easy  to  ob- 
tain by  feigning  implicit  submission  to  his  capricious  and  impetuous  temper.^ 
The  temptations  which  these  men  were  exposed  to  proved  fatal,  in  some 
instances,  to  their  integrity  ;  and  several  of  them  (even  the  vaunted  Cran- 
iner)  concurred,  though  reluctantly,  in  punishinp;  by  a  cruel  death  the  public 
avowal  of  sentiments  which  they  secretly  cherished  in  their  own  breasts. 

By  the  death  of  Henry  the  Eighth  his  Protestant  subjects  were  released 
from  the  necessity  of  farther  dissimulation.  In  the  reign  of  his  son,  Edward 
the  Sixtli,  the  Catholic  doctrines  were  wholly  expunged  from  the  national 
creed,  and  the  fundamental  articles  of  the  Protestant  faith  recognized  and 
established  by  law.  As,  among  other  practices  of  the  preceding  reign,  the 
absurd  and  tyrannical  device  of  promoting  uniformity  of  faith  and  worship 
by  persecution  was  still  pursued,^  the  influence  of  temporal  fear  and  favor 
contributed,  no  doubt,  to  encumber  the  Protestant  church  with  many  reluc- 
tant and  hypocritical  professors.  In  the  hope  of  reconciling  the  English 
nation  as  extensively  as  possible  to  the  system  which  they  established,  the 
ministers  of  Edward  preserved  not  only  the  ecclesiastical  constitution  whicli 
Henry  had  retained,  but  as  much  of  the  ancient  ceremonial  of  worship  as 
they  judged  likely  to  gratify  the  taste  and  predilections  of  minds  that  still 
hankered  after  Catholic  pageantry.     They  rather  complied  in  this  respect 

'  One  of  hie  laws  (31  Henry  VlTl.  Cap.  14^  bear«  the  pregumptuous  title  of  "  An  act  foi 
ebolishing  ditersittj  of  opinions  in  certain  articlea  concerning  the  ChriBtiqn  religion." 
•  Lord  Herbert. 


*  «  *-  3  Edward  VI.  C 


ap.  I. 


Riirnot'a   tflmtnru  nt  lh»  ftufitrminlinn.      RvnjAf  i 


CHAP.  I] 


RISE  OF  PURITANISM. 


127 


with  the  prevalent  temper  and  disposition  of  the  people,  than  indulged  their 
own  sentiments  or  followed  out  their  principles  ;  and  plainly  insinuated  their 
opinion,  that,  whenever  the  public  mind  was  sufficiently  prepared  for  it,  a 
farther  reformation  should  be  introduced  into  the  establishment,  by  inserting 
a  prayer  to  this  purpose  in  the  liturgy.^  But,  in  the  exercise  of  their  tem- 
porizing policy,  the  rulers  of  the  English  reformed  church  encountered  a 
spirit  of  resistance,  originating  in  the  Protestant  body  itself.  During  the 
late  reign,  the  disaffection  that  had  been  cherished  in  secret  towards  the 
national  church  was  not  confined  to  the  doctrines  savoring  of  Popery,  which 
she  retained,  and  which  many  Protestants  connected  in  their  opinion  and 
esteem  with  the  ceremonial  rites  and  clerical  habits  that  had  for  ages  been 
their  inveterate  associate  and  distinctive  livery.  With  their  enmity  to  the 
doctrines  of  the  Romish  church,  they  combined  an  aversion  to  those  cere- 
monies which  her  ministers  had  too  often  rendered  subservient  to  imposture  ; 
which  seemed  to  owe  their  survivance  in  the  national  system  to  the  same 
cloud  of  error  and  superstition  that  had  long  sheltered  so  much  doctrinal 
heresy  ;  and  which  diverted  the  mind  from  that  spiritual  worship  expressly 
claimed  for  the  Most  High  in  the  Scriptures  of  truth. 

These  sentiments,  which  were  subsequently  developed  and  ripened  into 
the  doctrines  of  the  Puritans,  had  already  taken  possession  of  the  minds  of 
some  of  the  English  Protestants  ;  but  their  operation  was  yet  compara- 
tively feeble  and  partial.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  manifestations  of 
their  influence  that  has  been  transmitted  to  us  was  afforded  by  Bishop 
Hooper,  who,  in  the  reign  of  Edward,  refused  to  be  consecrated  to  his  office 
in  the  superstitious  habits  (as  he  deemed  them)  appropriated  by  the  church 
to  the  episcopal  order.  The  Protestant  opinions  of  this  prelate  had  ren- 
dered him  an  exile  from  England  during  the  latter  part  of  the  preceding  reign, 
and  his  Puritan  sentiments  were  confirmed  by  the  conversation  of  the  Pres- 
byterian teachers  with  whom  he  associated  during  his  residence  abroad. 
Cranmer  and  Ridley,  who  were  afterwards  his  fellow-sufferers  under  the 
persecution  of  Mary,  resorted  to  arguments,  threats,  entreaties,  and  im- 
prisonment, in  order  to  overcome  Hooper's  objections  ;  and  it  was  not 
without  great  difficulty  and  reluctance  that  his  rigid  spirit  condescended  to 
terminate  the  dispute  by  a  compromise.''  The  sentiments  which  had  thus 
received  the  sanction  of  a  man  distinguished  no  less  by  the  purity  and  ele- 
vation of  his  character  than  by  the  eminence  of  his  station  in  the  church, 
continued  to  manifest  themselves  throughout  the  short  reign  of  Edward ;  and 
there  was  scarcely  a  rite  of  the  established  worship,  or  an  article  of  eccle- 
siastical apparel,  that  escaped  impugnatlon  and  contentious  discussion.^ 
The  defenders  of  the  controverted  practices  (or  at  least  the  more  enlightened 
of  this  party)  did  not  pretend  thai  they  were  of  divine  appointment,  or  in 
themselves  of  essential  importance.  They  maintained  that  they  were  in 
themselves  inoffensive,  and  that  by  long  establishment  and  inveterate  asso- 
ciation they  had  taken  possession  of  the  reverence  of  the  people,  and  con- 
tributed to  attach  their  affections  to  the  national  worship.  They  admitted, 
that,  as  useless  and  exotlcal  appendages,  it  was  desirable  that  time  and  reason 
should  gradually  obliterate  such  practices  ;  but  insisted  that  it  would  be  botii 
unwise  and  illiberal  to  abolish  them  abruptly,  and  at  the  risk  of  unhinging  the 
important  sentinients  with  which  they  had  accidentally  connected  themselves. 
This  reasoninp'  was  very  unsatisfactory  to  the  Puritans,  who  rejected  such 


>  Neat. 


?tory 

*  Burnet.    Heylin's  History  of  the  Reformation. 


Strype. 


128 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


temporizing  policy  as  the  counsel  of  lukewarm  piety  and  worldly  wisdom, 
and  regarded  with  abhorrence  the  mixture  of  superstitious  attractions  with 
the  motives  to  that  which  should  be  entirely  a  reasonable  service  ;^  and 
whatever  weight  the  arguments  of  the  prevailing  party  may  be  considered 
to  possess,  they  certainly  cannot  justify  the  violent  imposition  of  obser- 
vances, which  their  own  patrons  regarded  as  indifferent,  on  persons  who 
deemed  them  sinful  and  pernicious.  The  sentiments  of  the  Puritans,  whether 
supported  or  not  by  superior  force  of  reason,  were  overborne  by  the  force 
of  superior  numbers,  and  might  perhaps  have  gradually  died  away,  if  the 
reign  of  Edward  had  been  farther  prolonged,  or  his  sceptre  been  transmitted 
to  a  Protestant  successor.  But  the  reign  of  Mary  was  destined  at  once  to 
purify  the  Protestant  body  by  separating  the  true  and  sound  members  from 
tlie  false  or  formal  professors,  and  to  radicate  every  Protestant  sentiment 
by  exposing  it  to  the  fiery  test  of  tyrannical  rage  and  persecution. 

The  administration  of  this  queen  was  productive  of  events  that  tended  to 
enliven  and  extend  the  Puritan  sentiments,  and  at  the  same  time  to  animate 
the  opposition  of  some  of  their  adversaries.  During  the  heat  of  her  bloody 
persecution,  many  of  the  English  Protestants  forsook  their  country,  and 
sought  refuge  in  the  Protestant  states  of  Germany  and  Switzerland.  There, 
.  in  regulating  for  themselves  the  forms  and  ordinances  of  divine  worship, 
their  ancient  disputes  naturally  recurred,  and  were  exasperated  by  the  ap- 
proach of  the  two  parties  to  an  equality  of  numbers  that  never  before  Sib- 
sisted  between  them,  and  protracted  by  the  utter  want  of  a  spirit  of  mutual 
compliance,  and  the  absence  of  any  tribunal  from  which  an  authoritative 
decision  could  be  obtained.  Tiie  Puritans  beheld  with  pleasure  in  the  con- 
tinental churches  the  establishment  of  a  constitution  and  ritual  which  had 
been  the  object  of  tlieir  own  warm  approbation  and  earnest  desire  ;  and 
they  either  composed  for  themselves  a  formula  of  religious  association  on  a 
similar  model,  or  entered  into  communion  with  the  churches  established  in 
the  places  where  they  resided.  Their  opponents,  on  the  other  hand,  clung 
more  firmly  than  ever  to  their  ancient  practices  ;  refused  to  surrender  any 
one  of  the  institutions  of  the  faith,  for  the  sake  of  which  they  had  forsaken 
tlieir  country  ;  and  plumed  themselves  on  reproducing,  amidst  the  desola- 
tion of  their  church  at  home,  an  entire  and  accurate  model  of  her  ordi- 
nances in  the  scene  of  their  exile.  Both  parties  were  willing  to  have  united 
in  church-fellowship  with  each  other,  if  either  could  have  yielded  in  the  dis- 
pute concerning  forms  of  office,  habits,  and  ceremonies.  But  though  each 
considered  itself  strongest  in  faith,  neither  felt  disposed  on  that  account  t.o 
succumb  to  what  it  deemed  the  infirmities  of  the  other  ;  and  though  united 
in  the  great  fundamental  points  of  Christian  belief,  and  associated  by  the 
common  calamity  that  rendered  them  fellow-exiles  in  a  foreign  land,  their 
iVuidess  controversies  separated  them  more  widely  than  they  had  ever  been 
before,  and  inflamed  them  with  mutual  dislike  and  animosity.''  On  the  death 
of  Mary,  both  parties  returned  to  England  ;  the  one  joyfully  expecting  to  sec 
their  ancient  style  of  worship  restored  ;  the  other  more  firmly  wedded  to 
their  Puritan  sentiments  by  the  opportunity  they  had  obtained  of  freely  in- 
dulging them,  and  entertaining  (in  common  with  many  who  had  remained  at 
home)  an  increased  antipathy  to  the  habits  and  ceremonies  which  the  recent 
ascendency  and  measures  of  Catholic  bigots  forcibly  associated  with  the 


in 


Strype. 


•  Neal. 


CHAP.  I] 


THE  ACT  OF  UNIFORMITY. 


129 


le  to  animate 


The  views,  of  which  the  Puritans  expected  the  accomplishment  from  the 
accession  of  Elizabeth  to  the  throne,  were  seconded  by  the  disposition  of 
not  a  few  even  of  their  opponents  among  the  leading  Protestant  churchmen 
who  had  weathered  the  storm  at  home.  Several  of  the  most  distinguished 
persons  of  this  class  expressed  the  strongest  reluctance,  in  restoring  the 
Protestant  constitution,  to  interweave  with  its  fundamental  canons  any  sub- 
ordinate or  merely  ceremonial  regulations  that  might  be  offensive  to  men  en- 
deared to  them  by  their  common  calamity,  and  so  recently  associated  with 
them  as  confessors  not  merely  for  the  forms  but  for  the  very  substance  of 
the  Christian  religion.  Some  of  the  Puritans,  no  doubt,  were  stiffly  bent 
on  reducing  the  model  of  the  church  to  a  strict  conformity  with  their  own 
peculiar  sentiments  and  standard  of  propriety  ;  and  some  of  their  opponents 
were  as  stoutly  resolved  to  prohibit  and  suppress  every  trace  of  Puritan 
practice.*  The  majority,  however,  as  well  as  the  leading  members  of  both 
parties,  were  sincerely  desirous  to  promote  an  accommodation  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  mutual  forbearance  ;  and  willingly  agreed  that  the  disputed  habits 
and  ceremonies  should  be  retained  in  the  church  as  observances  merely  of 
a  discretionary  and  indifferent  nature,  not  to  be  controverted  by  the  one 
party  nor  enforced  by  the  other,  but  left  to  be  confirmed  or  abolished,  ex- 
tended or  qualified,  by  the  silent  progress  of  sentiment  and  opinion.^  But 
these  wise  and  candid  concessions  were  frustrated  by  the  views  and  temper 
of  the  queen;  whose  authority  soon  defaced  the  fair  prospect  that  had  arisen 
of  concord  and  happiness,  and  involved  the  people  committed  to  her  care  in 
a  long  and  widening  scene  of  strife,  malevolence,  and  misery. 

Elizabeth  inherited  the  headstrong  and  arrogant  disposition  of  her  father, 
and  his  taste  for  splendid  pageantry.  And  though  she  was  educated  with 
her  brother  Edward,  and  her  understanding  had  received  a  stiong  tincture 
of  Protestant  opinion,  her  sentiments  inclined  her,  with  manifest  bias,  in  fa- 
vor of  the  rites,  discipline,  and  even  doctrine  of  the  Catholics  ;  of  every 
thing,  in  short,  that  could  lend  an  imposing  aspect  to  the  ecclesiastical  estab- 
lishment of  which  she  was  the  supreme  head,  and  extend  the  dominion  which 
she  was  resolved  to  maintain  over  the  clergy.  She  publicly  thanked  one 
of  her  chaplains  for  preaching  ui  defence  of  the  Real  Presence,  and  rebuked 
another  for  mentioning  with  little  reverence  the  Catholic  notion  of  an  inherent 
virtue  in  the  symbol  of  the  cross.^  She  desired  to  make  the  clergy  priests, 
and  not  preachers  ;  discouraged  their  sermons  ;  and  would  have  interdicted 
them  from  marriage,  had  she  not  been  restrained  by  the  remonstrances  of 
her  minister,  Lord  Burleigh.*  Disregarding  the  wishes  and  entreaties  both 
of  Churchmen  and  Puritans,  she  restored  King  Edward's  constitutions,  with 
no  other  alteration  than  the  omission  of  a  few  passages  in  the  liturgy  which 
were  offensive  to  the  Catholics  ;  and  caused  a  law  to  be  framed,  com- 
manding, under  the  penalties  of  fine,  imprisonment,  and  deprivation  of 
ministerial  office,  a  strict  uniformity  of  religious  worship.'  This  was  the  first 
step  in  a  line  of  policy  which  the  church  of  England  has  had  de^^i  and  lasting 
cause  to  deplore,  and  which,  by  compelling  thousands  of  her  best  and  ablest 
ministers  reluctantly  to  forsake  her  communion,  afflicted  her  with  a  decay 
of  internal  piety,  of  which  the  traces  continued  to  be  visible  after  the  lapse 
of  many  generations. 

But  this  law  was  for  some  time  neither  strictly  nor  generally  executed. 
The  queen  could  not  at  once  find  a  sufficient  number  of  Msrsons  fittf^d  Ui 


'  Nool.         »  Strype's  Life  of  Parker. 
VOL.   I.  17 


Neal. 


^  Hevlin. 


Strypo. 


«  Neal 


130 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


sustain  the  dignity  of  episcopal  elevation,  and  yet  willing  to  become  the  in- 
struments  of  her  arbitrary  designs  ;  nor  could  all  her  efforts  for  a  while 
excite  general  strife  and  ill-wiU  among  men,  of  whom  so  many,  though  dif- 
fering from  each  other  on  subordinate  points,  had  but  lately  been  united 
by  community  of  sentiment  and  suffering  in  the  noblest  cause  that  can 
interest  human  hearts.  Her  first  bench  of  bishops  were  not  only  eager  to 
clear  themselves  of  the  reproach  of  having  composed  or  approved  the  ex- 
isting laws,*  but,  by  a  general  forbearance  to  exact  compliance  with  them, 
enabled  the  Puritan  ministers  and  the  practices  of  Puritanism  to  obtain  a 
considerable  footing  in  the  church.  And  though  she  reprimanded  the  pri- 
mate, Parker,  for  his  negligence,  and  at  length  stimulated  him  to  the  exer- 
tion of  some  rigor  in  the  execution  of  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  it  was  far  from 
obtaining  general  prevalence  ;  and  by  various  acts  of  connivance  on  the  one 
side,  and  prudent  reserve  or  simulated  compliance  on  the  other,  the  Puritans 
were  enabled  to  enjoy  the  semblance  of  toleration.  Their  tranquillity  was 
promoted  by  the  accession  of  Grindall  to  the  primacy.  The  liberal  princi- 
ples and  humane  disposition  of  this  man  revolted  against  the  tyrannical  injus- 
tice which  he  was  required  to  administer  ;  and  at  the  expense  of  his  own 
temporal  liberty  and  dignity  (for  the  queen  disgraced  and  imprisoned  him), 
he  prolonged  the  duration  of  lenient  policy  and  the  peace  of  the  church.^ 

At  length,  on  the  death  of  Grindall,  the  primacy  was  bestowed  on  Whit- 
gift,  a  man  of  severe  temper,  a  rigid  votary  of  the  established  system  of 
ecclesiastical  discipUne  and  policy,  and  an  implacable  adversary  of  the  Puri- 
tans, against  whom  he  had  repeatedly  directed  the  hostility  of  his  pen,  and 
now  gladly  wielded  a  more  formidable  weapon.  From  this  period,  all  the 
force  of  the  law  was  spent  in  uninterrupted  efforts  to  harass  the  persons  or 
violate  the  consciences  of  the  Puritans.  A  great  number  of  Puritan  minis- 
ters were  deprived  of  their  benefices  ;  and  many  of  their  parishioners  were 
punished  by  fine  and  imprisonment  for  attending  their  ministry  in  the  fields 
and  woods,  where  they  continued  to  exercise  it.  Vainly  were  the  exertions 
of  wise  and  good  men  employed  to  move  the  queen,  ere  yet  it  was  too  late, 
to  recede  from  her  fatal  pohcy,  and  stifle  the  flame  of  discord  which  she 
was  essaying  to  kindle  among  her  people.  Burleigh  and  Walsingham  ear- 
nestly interceded  for  the  suspended  ministers  ;  urging  the  indulgence  due  to 
their  conscientious  scruples,  the  humane  concern  to  which  their  families 
were  entitled,  and  the  respect  which  sound  policy  demanded  for  the  senti- 
ments of  that  numerous  portion  of  the  people  by  whom  they  were  revered 
and  beloved.  The  House  of  Commons,  too,  showed  a  desire  to  procure 
some  relief  for  the  oppressed  Puritans.  But  Whitgift  flung  himself  on  his 
knees  before  the  queen,  and  implored  her  to  uphold  the  sinking  church,  and 
to  admit  no  alteration  of  its  ritual  that  would  authorize  men  to  say  that  she 
had  maintained  an  error.^  His  humiliation,  most  probably,  was  prompted 
rather  by  flattery  than  fear  ;  for  Elizabeth  had  shown  no  inclination  what- 
ever to  mitigate  an  imperious  policy  so  congenial  to  her  own  character. 

""'  InTheirTettcrg  to  theiTfriondd  at  home  and  abroad,  they  not  only  reprobate  the  obnoxious 
institutions,  but  promise  to  withstand  them  "till  they  bo  sent  back  to  hell,  from  whence  tlicy 
came  to  sow  discord,  confusion,  and  vain  formality  in  the  church.       Burnet.    Weal. 

*  Strype'g  Life  of  Grindall.    Neal. 

'  Walton,  a  erettt  admirer  of  this  prelate,  thus  chnractenzes  hiB  policy  with  the  queen 
"  By  justifiable  sacred  insinuations,  such  an  St.  Paul  to  Agrippa, '  Agrippa,  believest  thou. 
»   i.i-.-  .L_.  .1 i.„i;..,„.>  •  i,„  ..../Mioht  (limaoir  "mtn  an  orrnnt  a  dnffrco  of  favor  With  ner,  OS, 


1  kifioVthat  thou  believest,'  he  wrought  himself  into  so  great  a  degree  of 

ny  rns  piuua  astr  vt   It,  ijntii  j;-"  •" •-  s ^''^Vi  "i  " 

in  that  into  which  they  are  now  both  entered.  '     Life  of  Hooker^ 


world  and  ofelorv 


CHAP.  I.] 


MEASURES  FOR  ENFORCING  UNIFORMITY. 


131 


The  exaction  of  implicit  deference  to  her  judgment,  and  of  rigid  con- 
formity to  the  ecclesiastical  model  she  had  preferred,  was  the  result  of  her 
early  and  stubborn  choice,  and  pursued  with  her  usual  firmness  and  vigor 
of  determination.  She  overbore  all  opposition  ;  and  the  primate  and  his 
associates  being  encouraged  to  proceed  m  the  course  which  they  had  com- 
menced, their  zeal,  enlarging  as  it  flowed,  soon  transported  them  beyond 
all  bounds  of  decency  and  humanity.  They  were  empowered  to  establish  a 
court  of  commissioners  for  the  detection  of  non-conformity,  which  even  the 
privy  council  complained  of  as  a  copy  of  the  detested  tribunal  of  the  In- 
quisition. By  the  assistance  of  this  tyrannical  engine,  they  gave  freer  course 
to  the  severities  of  the  law ;  and  having  rendered  integrity  hazardous,  they 
made  prudence  unavailing  to  the  Puritans.  In  vain  were  they  reminded  of 
the  maxim  of  the  earliest  Christian  council,  which  recommended  the  impo- 
sition of  no  greater  burden  on  the  people  than  the  observation  of  duties 
undeniably  necessary  and  of  primary  importance.  For  the  purpose  of  im- 
posing a  load  of  ceremonies,  which  they  could  not  pretend  to  characterize 
as  essential  requisites  to  salvation,  they  committed  such  oppression  as  ren- 
dered the  ceremonies  themselves  tenfold  more  obnoxious  to  those  persons 
to  whom  even  bdulgent  treatment  would  have  failed  to  recommend  them  ; 
and  roused  the  opposition  of  others,  who  would  willingly  have  complied  with 
the  ceremonial  ordinances,  if  they  had  been  proposed  to  them  merely  as 
matters  of  convenient  observance,  but  revolted  from  them,  as  fraught  with 
danger  and  mischief,  when  it  was  attempted  to  bind  them  on  the  conscience, 
and  place  them  on  a  level  with  the  most  sacred  obligations. 

The  chief  fruits  of  this  increased  severity  were  the  enkindling  of  much 
additional  zeal  and  fervor  in  the  minds  of  the  Puritans  ;  the  multiplication  of 
their  numbers,  by  the  powerful  influence  of  sympathy  with  their  courage  and 
compassion  for  their  sufferings  ;  and  a  growing  abhorrence  among  them  of 
the  order  of  bishops  and  the  whole  frame  of  a  church  which  to  them  was  an 
organ  of  injustice  and  tyranny.  It  is  certain  that  all  or  almost  all  the 
Puritans  of  those  times  were  at  first  averse  to  separate  from  the  church  of 
England  ;  and  their  ministers  were  still  more  reluctant  to  abet  a  schism  and 
renounce  their  preferments.  They  willuigly  recognized  in  her  the  character 
of  a  true  Christiaji  church,  and  merely  claimed  for  themselves  indulgence 
with  regard  to  a  few  ceremonies  which  did  not  affect  the  substance  of  her 
constitution.  But  the  injurious  treatment  which  they  received  held  forth  a 
premium  to  very  different  considerations,  and  at  once  aroused  their  pas- 
sions, stimulated,  their  inquiries,  and  extended  their  arguments  and  objec- 
tions. Expelled  from  fellowship  with  the  national  church,  they  were  forci- 
bly invited  to  inquire  If  they  could  not  dispense  with  that  which  they  found 
they  could  not  obtain  ;  and  were  easily  led  to  question  if  the  genuine  fea- 
tures of  a  Christian  chiurch  could  be  recognized  in  that  society  which  not 
only  rejected  but  persecuted  them  for  conscientious  adherence,  in  a  matter 
of  ceremonial  observance,  to  what  they  believed  to  be  the  manifest  will  of 
God.  As  the  Puritan  principles  spread  through  the  mass  of  society,  and 
encountered  in  their  progress  a  greater  variety  of  character  in  their  votaries 
and  of  treatment  from  their  adversaries,  considerable  varieties  and  inequali- 
ties of  sentiment  and  conduct  appeared  in  different  portions  of  the  Puritan 
body.     Some  of  them  caught  the  spirit  of  thair  oppressors,  and,  in  words 

the  doctrines  of  the  New  with  the  practices  of  the  Old  Testament,  in  a  man- 


132 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


ner  which  will  not  excite  the  wonder  of  those  who  recollect  that  some  of  the 
very  earliest  votaries  of  Christianity  in  the  world  comnutted  the  same  error, 
and  so  far  forgot  the  meekness  they  had  been  commanded  to  evmce,  as  even 
in  the  presence  of  their  Divine  Master  to  propose  the  invocation  of  fire  from 
heaven  on  the  men  who  rejected  their  society.  But  the  instances  of  this 
spirit  were  at  first  exceedingly  rare  ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  following  reigns 
that  it  prevailed  either  strongly  or  widely.  In  general,  the  oppressed  Puri- 
tans conducted  themselves  with  the  fortitude  of  heroes  and  the  patience  of 
saints ;  and,  what  is  surprising,  they  made  more  zealous  and  successful 
efforts  to  preserve  their  loyalty  than  the  queen  and  the  bishops  did  to  ex- 
tinguish it.  Many,  in  defiance  of  every  danger,  followed  the  preaching  of 
their  favorite  ministers  into  the  highways  and  fields,  or  assembled  privately 
m  conventicles,  which  the  general  sympathy,  or  the  connivance  of  their 
secret  partisans  among  the  adherents  of  the  ecclesiastical  establishment, 
sometimes  preserved  from  detection.  Others  reluctantljr  tarried  withm  the 
pale  of  the  national  church,  unweariedly  pursuing  their  ineffectual  attempts 
to  promote  parliamentary  interference  in  behalf  of  the  Puritan  cause,  and 
casting  a  wistful  eye  on  the  presumptive  succession  of  a  prince  who  was 
educated  in  a  Presbyterian  society.  Some,  at  length,  openly  disclaimed  the 
national  system,  and  were  led  by  the  cruel  excesses  of  magisterial  power  to 
the  conviction,  that  magisterial  power  ought  to  be  banished  entirely  froip  the 
administration  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ.^  ,  ,      ,  ,    , 

The  designs  of  the  queen  were  cordially  abetted  by  the  angry  zeal  of 
those  Churchmen  who  had  fled  from  England  in  the  preceding  reign,  and 
taken  part  in  the  controversy  that  arose  with  the  Puritans  during  their  com- 
mon exile.  But  the  whole  civil  and  ecclesiastical  policy  of  the  present 
reign  was  mainly  and  essentially  the  offspring  of  Elizabeth's  own  character 
and  disposition.  The  Puritan  writers,  bestowing  an  undue  proportion  of 
their  resentment  on  those  persons  whose  functions  rendered  them  the  instru- 
ments as  well  as  the  apologists  of  the  queen's  ecclesiastical  system,  have 
been  disposed  to  impute  the  tjTannical  features  of  this  system  exclusively  to 
the  bishops,  and  particularly  to  Whitgift,  whose  influence  with  Elizabeth 
they  ascribe  to  his  constant  habit  of  addressing  her  on  his  knees.  But 
Whitgift,  in  seconding  her  enmity  to  the  Puritans,  did  no  more  than  suh- 
minister  to  her  favorite  and  declared  purpose  ;  with  zeal  half  courtly,  half 
clerical,  he  flattered  a  temper  which  she  had  already  unequivocally  mani- 
fested, and  swam  with  tlie  stream  of  that  resolute  determination,  which,  he 
saw,  would  have  its  way.  The  abject  homage  which  he  paid  her  was 
nothing  more  than  she  was  accustomed  generally  to  receive  ;  and  the  obser- 
vation which  it  has  attracted  from  the  Puritans  denotes  rather  a  peculiarity 
in  their  own  sentiments  and  manners,  than  any  thing  remarkable  in  the  con- 
duct of  their  ecclesiastical  adversary.  Not  one  of  her  subjects  was  permitted 
to  address  the  queen  without  kneehng ;  wherever  she  turned  her  eye,  every 
one  was  expected  to  fall  on  his  knees  ;  and  even  in  her  absence,  the  nobles, 
who  were  alone  deemed  worthy  to  cover  her  table,  made  three  genuflec- 
tions every  time  they  approached  or  retired  from  it  in  the  performance  of 
their  menial  duty.^  This  was  an  exact  counterpart  of  the  homage  rendered 
by  the  CathoHcs  to  the  Real  Presence,  which  they  beheved  to  reside  m  the 

I  fi«.^no'.  IJf.  nt  WhUttiti      FiiHcr's  Church  History.     Neul.  '  Kctt\. 

»  UeTa7.ner'B  Joiirney  into  England  in  I5SW.  Mt.ch'of  this  abject  reremoninl  w«»  aboi.»lH-.i 
by  King  James,  who,  though  liiehly  relishing  adulation,  found  himself  embarrassed  by  a  modi 
of  displaying  it  so  ill  suited  to  liis  awkward  manners  and  ungainly  appearance. 


CHAP.  I] 


LIBERAL  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  PURITANS. 


Ids 


Host ;  and  the  sentiments  which  it  tended  to  implant,  both  in  the  prince 
who  received  and  the  subjects  who  profFered  it,  were  confirmed  by  the 
language  of  parliament,  in  which  the  queen  was  continually  flattered  with 
attributes  and  praise  befitting  the  homage  of  creatures  to  their  Creator. 
Nor  was  this  servile  system  of  manners  peculiar  to  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 
On  the  contrary,  it  was  carried  even  to  a  greater  extent  under  the  govern- 
ment of  her  predecessors  ;  and  her  ministers  frequently  noted  and  deplored 
the  decay  of  that  fearfulness  and  reverence  of  their  superiors  which  had  for- 
merly characterized  the  inferior  estates  of  the  realm.'  Sense  and  reason 
shared  tlie  ignominy  and  degradation  of  manners  ;  arrogance  disordered  the 
understanding  of  the  prince,  while  servility  deformed  the  sentiments  of  the 
people  ;  and  if  Henry  the  Eighth,  by  a  royal  proclamation,  assured  the 
populace  that  they  were  brutes,  —  the  same  populace,  in  their  petitions 
against  his  measures,  represented  the  promotion  oi  low-born  persons  to  pub- 
lic trust  and  honor  as  one  of  the  most  serious  and  intolerable  grievances  of 
which  they  had  reason  to  complain.* 

The  sentiments  which  such  practices  and  manners  tended  to  create  or 
nourish  in  the  mind  of  the  queen  enhanced  the  displeasure  with  which  she 
regarded  the  Puritans,  who  were  fated  to  offend  her  by  their  political  con- 
duct, as  well  as  their  religious  opinions.  Many  persons  of  note  among  them 
obtained  seats  in  parliament,  where  they  studied  to  cherish  and  invigorate  a 
spirit  of  liberty,  and  direct  its  energy  to  the  protection  of  their  persecuted 
brethren.  Impelled,  by  the  severity  of  the  restraints  they  experienced,  to 
investigate  the  boundaries  of  that  authority  by  which  such  restraints  were 
imposed,  —  and  regulating  their  sentiments  rather  by  the  consequences  they 
foresaw  than  by  the  precedents  they  remembered,  —  they  questioned  the 
rational  legitimacy  of  the  most  inveterate  practices,  and  obtained  the  con- 
fidence of  the  people  by  showing  themselves  the  indefatigable  and  fearless 
defenders  of  all  who  were  oppressed.  In  the  annals  of  those  times,  we  find 
them  continually  supporting  petitions  in  parliament  against  monopolies,  and 
advocating  propositions  for  reformation  of  ecclesiastical  abuses  and  corrup- 
tions. Attracting  popular  favor,  and  willing  to  undergo  the  labor  of  parlia- 
mentary service,  they  gradually  multiplied  their  numbers  in  the  House  of 
(commons,  and  acquired  an  ascendant  over  its  deHberations.  The  queen, 
observing  that  the  Puritans  were  the  sole  abettors  of  measures  calculated  to 
restrict  her  prerogative,  was  easily  led  to  ascribe  the  peculiarity  of  their  re- 
ligious and  political  opinions  to  the  same  source,  —  a  malignant  aversion  to 
exalted  rank,  and  mutinous  impatience  of  subordination.  Their  reluctance 
to  render  to  the  Deity  that  ceremonious  homage  which  she  herself  received 
from  the  most  illustrious  persons  in  the  land,  and  their  inclination  to  curtail 
the  royal  authority,  which  from  no  other  quarter  experienced  resistance, 
seemed  to  her  the  manifest  proofs  of  an  insolent  disregard  no  less  of  the 
Supreme  Being  than  of  her,  his  acknowledged  vicegerent  and  representative, 
—  a  presumptuous  insurrection  of  spirit  against  the  reverence  due  to  God 
and  the  loyalty  due  to  the  prince.^ 

'  Hayne's  Collection  of  State  Papers.  '  Lord  Herbert. 

'  In  a  speech  from  the  throne,  she  informed  the  Commons  (after  a  candid  confession  that 
she  knew  nobody  who  had  read  or  reflected  as  much  as  herself),  that  whoever  attacked  the 
(onstitutions  of  the  church  slandered  her  as  its  supreme  head,  divinely  appointed;  and  that, 
if  the  Papists  were  inveterate  enemies  to  her  person,  the  modern  sectaries  were  no  less  for- 
midable to  all  regal  government.  She  added,  that  she  was  determined  to  suppress  their  over- 
Doiduuw  ill  uresuiiiptuously  scanning  the  will  of  God  Almighty.  D'Ewes's  'Account  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  Parliaments.     The  cruel  law  that  was  passed  in  the  thirty-fifth  year  of  the  queen'i 


134 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOR  11. 


'1- 


Nothing  could  be  more  unjust  and  fallacious  than  this  royal  reasoning. 
The  religion  as  well  as  the  loyalty  of  the  Puritans  was  the  less  ceremonious, 
only  because  it  was  the  more  reflective,  profound,  and  substantial.  To  jpre- 
serve  an  unstained  conscience,  they  encountered  the  extremities  of  ecclesi- 
astical rigor.   Notwithstanding  the  most  oppressive  and  tyrannical  treatment, 
they  exhibited  a  resolute  constancy  of  regard  to  their  sovereign.     And  nei- 
tlier  intimidated  by  danger  nor  dispirited  by  defeat,  they  maintained  a  con- 
tinual effort  to  check  the  excesses  of  despotic  authority,  and  to  rear  and 
sustain  the  infant  liberties  of  their  country.     They  have  incurred  the  re- 
proach of  gloomy  and  unseasonable  melancholy  from  those  who  rendered 
their  lives  at  once  bitter  and  precarious  ;  of  a  neglect  of  general  literature, 
and  an  exclusive  study  of  the  Bible,  from  those  who  destroyed  their  writ- 
ings,  subjected  the  press  to  episcopal  licensers,  and  deprived  them  of  every 
source  of  comfort  and  direction  but  what  the  Bible  could  supply  ;  of  an  ex- 
aggerated estimate  of  little  matters,  from  those  who  rendered  such  matters 
the  occasion  of  cruel  suffering  and  enormous  wrong  to  them  ;  of  a  stern 
jealousy  of  civil  power,  from  those  who  made  it  continually  their  interest  to 
question  and  abridge  the  authority  by  which  they  were  oppressed.    A  great 
philosopher  and  historian,  who  will  not  be  suspected  of  any  undue  partiality 
for  Puritan  tenets,  whether  religious  or  political,  has  been  constrained  to 
acknowledge  that  the  Puritans  were  the  preservers  of  civi'  and  religious 
liberty  in  England.^     It  was  a  scion  of  the  same  stock  that  was  destinW  to 
propagate  these  blessings  in  America. 

The  minds  of  a  numerous  party  among  the  Puritans  had  been  gradually 
prepared  to  disclaim  the  authority  of  the  national  church,  and  to  deny  the 
lawfubess  of  holding  communion  with  it ;  insomuch,  that,  when  these  senti- 
ments were  first  publicly  proclaimed  by  Robert  Brown,  m  1586,  they 
readily  gained  the  assent  and  open  profession  of  mulatudes.  Brown,  who 
obtained  the  distinction  of  bestowing  hre  name  on  a  sect  which  derived  very 
little  credit  from  the  appellation,  was  a  young  clergyman  of  good  family, 
endowed  with  a  restless,  intrepid  disposition,  a  fiery  temper,  and  an  insatiable 
thirst  for  controversy.  Encountering  the  wrath  of  ecclesiastics  with  still 
fiercer  wrath,  and  trampling  on  their  arrogance  with  more  than  clerical  pride, 
he  roamed  about  the  country,  inveighing  against  bishops,  ecclesiastical  courts, 
religious  cerehionies,  and  episcopal  ordination  of  ministers,  and  exulting, 
above  all,  in  the  boast  that  he  had  been  committed  to  thirty-mo  prisons,  m 
some  of  which  he  could  not  discern  his  hand  at  noonday.  His  impetuous 
and  illiberal  spirit  accelerated  the  publication  of  opinions  which  were  not 
yet  matured  in  the  Puritan  body,  and  which,  but  for  his  unseasonable 

rcisn,  against  all  ecclesiasticul  recusants,  is  entitled  "An  Act  t  retain  hor  Majesty's  Subjects 
in  Theirdue  Obedience,"  and  was  intended,  as  the  preamble  declares,  to  repress  the  evil  prac 
ticos  of  "sectaries  and  disloyal  persons,"  -  synonymous  descnpUons  of  guilt,  in  the  estimation 

"'"i^u  sf  abrolute,  indeed,  waa  the  authority  of  the  crown,  tliat.the  precious  spark  of  liberty 
had  been  kindled  and  was  preserved  by  the  Puritans  alone ;  and  it  was  to  »»•«  sect,  whose 
principles  appear  so  frivolous  and  habits  so  ridicuous,  that  the  Engl^h  owe  the  whole  freedom 
Sf  the'ir  consUtution."     Hume's  England.    Again,  "  It  was  only  during    he  «"»  K«n^  «  '» 
that  the  noble  principles  of  liberty  took  root,  and,  spreading  themselves  under  the  shelter  of 

Puritanical  absurdities,  became  fashionable  among  the  people.       Ibid.  

In  a  well  known  passage,  Hume  has  represented  the  domestic  leisure  and  social  convex 
of  the  Puritan  leaders  as  polluted  by  a  harfcarous  sullenncss,  vulgarit;  and  [«n««''l"™  ' J".^ 
unjustly,  as  every  one  must  have  felt,  who,  in  reading  the  Mfrnotrs  o/ Cohnd  ^«'f '«*««-  f"; 
j.-L-j'^»„.  »l.-  U^V.^htM  nip.ur«  thev  present  of  case  and  leisure  devoted  to  elegant  studies. 
Virtuous  pursuits,  ureful  wicupations',  polite  amusements,  rational  converse,  avid  che«rtui 
hoapitality. 


CHAP.  I  ] 


RISE  OF  THE  BROWNISTS. 


135 


interposition  and  perverting  influence,  might  sooner  have  been  ripened  into 
the  system  of  the  Independents.  The  queen  and  the  bishops  applied  the 
usual  remedy  of  persecution  to  this  innovation,  with  even  more  than  the 
usual  evidence  ot  the  unfitness  of  such  instrumentality  to  accomplish  their 
purpose.  Supported  by  strong  argument,  maintained  with  striking  zeal  and 
courage,  and  opposed  by  cruelties  that  disgraced  the  name  of  religion,  the 
principles  of  the  Brownists  spread  widely  through  the  land.  Brown  him- 
self, and  a  congregation  more  immediately  attached  to  him,  expatriated  to 
Miildelburg,  in  Zeeland,  where  they  were  permitted  to  express  and  culti- 
vate their  opinions  without  molestation.  But  Brown  had  collected  around 
him  spirits  oo  congenial  to  his  own  to  preserve  their  union  when  the  iron 
band  of  oppression  was  withdrawn.  The  congregation  crumbled  into  par- 
ties, and  was  soon  dissolved  ;  and  Brown,  returning  to  England,  rejoined 
the  national  church,  and,  contracting  dissolute  habits,  ended  his  days  in 
indolence  and  contempt.  But  the  doctrines  which  he  had  been  the  means 
of  introducing  to  public  notice  had  firmly  rooted  themselves  in  the  Puritan 
body,  and  received  daily  accessions  to  the  numbers  and  respectability  of  the  r 
votaries.^ 

The  Brownists  did  not  dissent  from  the  church  of  England  in  any  of  her 
articles  of  faith,  but  they  accounted  her  ritual  and  discipline  unscriptural  and 
superstitious,  and  all  her  sacraments  and  ordinances  invalid  ;  and  they  re- 
nounced communion  not  only  with  her,  but  with  every  other  Protestant 
church  that  was  not  constructed  on  the  same  model  as  their  own.     Their 
ecclesiastical  model  was  derived  from  the  closest  imitation  of  the  apostolical 
institutions  as  delineated  in  Scripture.   When  a  church  or  congregation  was 
to  be  formed,  all  the  persons  who  desired  to  be  members  of  it  professed 
the  particulars  of  their  religious  faith  in  each  other's  presence,  and  signed  a 
covenant  by  which  they  obliged  themselves  to  make  the  Bible  and  its  or- 
dinances the  sole  guide  of  their  conduct.     Each  congregation  formed  an 
independent  church,  and  the  admission  or  exclusion  of  members  resided 
with  the  brethren  composing  it.     Their  ecclesiastical  ofiicers  were  elected 
from  among  themselves,  and  invested  with  their  several  charges  of  preaching 
the  gospel,  administering  the  sacram.ental  ordinances,  and  relieving  the  poor, 
—  after  fasting  and  prayer,  by  the  imposition  of  the  hands  of  certain  of  the 
brethren.     They  did  not  account  the  priesthood  a  distinct  order,  nor  the 
ministerial  character  indelible  ;  but  deemed,  that,  as  the  appointment  of  the 
church  conferred  on  a  minister  his  function  (which  in  its  exercise,  too,  was 
limited  to  the  special  body  to  which  he  was  attached),  so  the  same  au- 
thority was  sufficient  to  deprive  him  of  it.     It  was  permitted  to  any  one  of 
the  brethren  to  exercise  the  liberty  of  prophesying,  which  meant  the  address- 
ing of  occasional  exhortation  to  the  people  ;  and  it  was  usual  for  some  of 
them,  after  the  customary  religious  service,  to  promulgate  questions  and 
considerations  relative  to  the  doctrines  that  had  been  preached.**    The  con- 
dition to  which  the  Puritans  were  reduced  by  their  oppressors  favored  the 
prevalence  of  all  that  was  separative  and  unsocial  in  the  principles  of  the 
Brownist  teachers  ;  for,  as  they  could  assemble  only  by  stealth,  it  was  im- 
possible to  preserve  a  regular  intercourse  between  their  churches,  or  to 
ascertain  how  far  they  mutually  agreed  in  doctrine  and  discipline. 

Against  these  men,  in  whose  characters  were  united  more  piety,  virtue, 
pnurnfo  nnd  Invaltv  tVinn  ax>v  Other  nnrtion  of  her  neonlfi  disnlaved,'  did 
■  ^1  FuTlerr~NeaI.  •  Neal. 


186 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


f  BOOK  il. 


Elizabeth  and  her  ecclesiastical  counsellors  direct  the  whole  fury  of  the  law. 
John  Udall,  one  of  their  ministers,  was  tried  in  the  year  1591,  for  having 
published  a  defence  of  tl.eir  tenets,  which  he  entitled,  w3  Demonstration 
of  the  Discipline  which  Christ  hath  prescribed  in  his  Word  for  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Church  in  all  Times  and  Places  until  the  fVorld^s  End.  This 
j)erformance,  consistently  with  Elizabeth's  maxim,  that  whoever  attacked 
the  established  church  slandered  the  queen,  was  regarded  as  a  political 
libel,  and  Udall  was  arraigned  on  a  charge  of  capital  felony.  In  conformity 
with  the  barbarous  jurisprudence  which  then  prevailed  in  England,  the 
witnesses  against  the  prisoner  were  not  confronted  with  him ;  his  proposition 
to  adduce  exculpatory  evidence  was  disallowed,  as  an  affront  to  the  majesty 
of  the  crown  ;  and  because  he  refused  at  the  bar  to  swear  that  he  was  not 
tlie  author  of  the  book,  his  refusal  was  urged  against  him  as  the  strongest 
proof  of  his  guilt.  When  he  was  told  by  one  of  the  judges  that  a  book  re- 
plete with  sentiments  so  inconsistent  with  the  established  institutions  tended 
to  the  overthrow  of  the  state  by  the  provocation  of  rebellion,  he  replied, 
"  My  Lords,  that  be  far  from  nie  ;  for  we  teach,  that,  reforming  things  amiss, 
if  the  prince  will  not  consent,  the  weapons  that  subjects  are  to  fight  withal, 
are  repentance  and  prayers,  patience  and  tears."  The  judge  offered  him 
his  life,  if  he  would  recant ;  and  added,  that  he  was  now  ready  to  pronounce 
sentence  of  death.  "  And  I  am  ready  to  receive  it,"  exclaimed  this 
magnanimous  man  ;  "  for  I  protest  before  God  (not  knowing  that  I  have  to 
live  an  hour)  that  the  cause  is  good  ;  and  I  am  contented  to  receive  s°n- 
tence,  so  that  I  may  leave  it  to  posterity  how  I  have  suffered  for  the 


cause. 


"1 


He  was  condemned  to  die ;  and  being  still  urged  to  submit  to  the 
queen,  he  readily  expressed  his  regret  that  any  of  his  writings  had  given  her 
offence,  and  disclaimed  any  such  wish  or  intention,  but  firmly  refused  to  dis- 
own what  he  believed  lo  be  truth,  or  to  renounce  liberty  of  conscience. 
By  the  interest  of  some  powerful  friends,  a  conditional  pardon  was  obtained 
for  him  ;  but  before  the  terms  of  it  could  be  adjusted,  or  the  queen  prevailed 
on  to  sign  it,  he  died  in  prison. 

Penry,  Greenwood,  Banow,  and  Dennis,  of  whom  the  first  two  were 
clergymen,  and  the  others  laymen,  were  soon  after  tried  on  similar  charges, 
and  perished  by  the  hands  of  the  executioner.  A  pardon  was  offered  to 
them,  if  they  would  retract  their  profession  ;  but,  inspired  by  a  courage 
which  no  earthly  motive  could  overcome,  they  clung  to  their  principles,  and 
left  the  care  of  their  lives  to  Heaven.  Some  more  were  hanged  for  dispersing 
the  writings,  and  several  for  attending  the  discourses,  of  the  Brownists. 
Many  others  endured  the  torture  of  severe  imprisonment,  and  numerous 
families  were  reduced  to  indigence  by  heavy  fines. ^  Who  could  doubt  the 
final  triumph  of  a  cause  that  already  produced  so  noble  an  army  of  heroes 
and  martyrs  ?  As  the  most  virtuous  and  honorable  are  ever,  on  such  occa- 
sions, most  exposed  to  danger,  every  stroke  of  the  oppressor's  arm  is  aimed 
at  those  very  qualities  in  his  adversaries  that  constitute  his  own  defence  and 
security  ;  and  hence,  severities,  so  odious  to  mankind,  and  so  calculated  to 
unite  by  a  strong  sympathy  the  minds  of  the  spectators  and  the  sufferers, 

'  HoweH's  State  Trialt.  It  is  remarkable,  that,  although  one  devoted  victim  of  royal  vcn- 
gnnnce  and  persecution  (Sir  Nicholas  Thropnorton)  was  enabled  to  escape  during  tne  reign 
of  Mary,  not  one  of  the  objects  of  Elizabeth  b  hostility  was  equally  fortunate.  A  great  addition 
to  the  power,  aa  well  as  the  pretensions,  of  the  first  Protestant  sovereigns  of  England  wna 
derived  from  their  assumption  of  the  ecclesiastical  supremacy  previously  ascribed  to  the 

*  Strype's  Ufe  of  Hliitgift.    Fuller.     Noel 


CHAP.  1  ] 


PERSECUTION  OF  THE  PURITANS. 


137 


are  more  likely  to  diminish  the  virtue  than  the  numbers  of  a  party.  By 
(lint  ol'  Jong  continuance  and  of  the  exertion  of  their  influence  on  a  greater 
variety  of  human  cliaracter,  they  finally  divested  a  great  many  of  the  Puritans 
of  the  spirit  of  meekness  and  non-resistance  for  which  the  fathers  of  the 
party  had  been  so  highly  distinguished.  But  this  fruit  was  not  gathered  till 
a  subsequent  reign  ;  and  the  first  eflfect  of  the  system  of  rigor  was  not  only 
to  multiply  the  numbers,  but  to  confirm  tlie  virtue  of  the  Puritans.  When 
persecution  had  as  yet  but  invigorated  their  fortitude  without  inspiring  fero- 
city, a  portion  of  this  people  was  happily  conducted  to  the  retreat  of  Ameri- 
there  to  plant  and  extend  the  principles  of  their  cause,  —  while  their 


ca,  _      ^_ 

brethren  in  England  remained  behind  to  revenge  its  accumulated  wrongs. 

When  the  queen  was  informed,  by  Dr.  Reynolds,  of  the  firm  and  ele- 
vated, yet  mild  and  gentle,  piety  which  the  martyrs  of  her  cruelty  had  dis- 
played,—  how  they  blessed  their  persecuting  sovereign,  and  turned  the 
scaffolds  to  which  she  consigned  them  into  scenes  of  holy  charity,  whence 
ihey  prayed  for  her  long  and  happy  reign,  —  her  heart  was  touched  with  a 
sentiment  of  remorse,  and  she  expressed  regret  for  having  taken  their  lives 
away.  But  repentance  with  all  mankind  is  too  often  but  a  fruitless  anguish  ; 
and  princcr'  have  been  known  to  bewail,  even  with  tears,  the  mortal  con- 
dition of  multitudes  whom  they  were  conducting  to  slaughter,  and  the  brevity 
of  that  life  which  their  own  selfish  and  sanguinary  ambition  was  contributing 
still  farther  to  abridge.  Elizabeth,  so  far  from  alleviating,  increased,  the 
legislative  severities  whose  effects  she  had  deplored  ;  and  was  fated  never 
to  see  her  errors,  till  it  was  too  late  to  repair  them.  In  the  year  1593,  a 
few  months  after  the  executions  which  we  have  remarked,  a  new  and  se- 
verer law  was  enacted  against  the  Puritans.  These  sectaries  were  not  only 
increasing  their  numbers  every  day,  but  furnishing  so  many  votaries  of  the 
Brownist  or  Independent  doctrines,  that,  in  the  debate  which  took  place  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  introduction  of  this  measure.  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  stated  that  the  number  of  professed  Brownists  alone  then  amountf.tl 
to  twenty  thousand.  The  humane  argument,  however,  which  he  derived 
from  this  consideration,  was  unavailing  to  prevent  the  enactment  of  a  law,^ 
which  ordained,  that  any  person  above  sixteen  years  of  age,  who  obstinately 
refused,  during  the  space  of  a  month,  to  attend  public  worship  in  a  legiti- 
mate parochial  church,  should  be  committed  to  prison ;  that,  if  he  persisted 
three  months  in  his  refusal,  he  must  abjure  the  realm  ;  and  that,  if  he  either 
refused  this  condition,  or  returned  after  banishment,  he  should  suffer  death 
as  a  felon.  If  this  act  was  not  more  fortunate  than  its  predecessors  in  ac- 
complishing the  main  object  of  checking  the  growth  of  Puritan  principles,  it 
promoted  at  least  the  subordinate  purpose  of  driving  a  great  many  of  the 
professors  of  ecclesiastical  independency  out  of  England. 

A  nqpierous  society  of  these  fugitives  was  collected,  about  the  close  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  at  Amsterdam,  where  they  flourished  in  peace  and 
piety  for  upwards  of  a  hundred  years.  Others  retired  to  various  Protestant 
states  on  the  continent,  whence,  with  fond,  delusive  hope,  they  looked  to 
be  recalled  to  their  native  land  on  the  accession  of  Elizabeth's  successor. 
The  remainder  continued  in  England,  to  fluctuate  between  the  evasion  and 
the  violation  of  the  law,  —  cherishing  along  with  their  principles  a  stern  im- 

'  ST)  Eliz.  Cap.  1.    Raleigh  was  not  the  only  favorite  of  Elizabeth  who  was  opposed  to  bn 
ecclesiastical  policy.    One  of  the  causes  of  her  displeasure  at  Lord  Essex  was  the  counte- 

n^rire  ■■-  gave  to  iiio  Puritans,  who  had  jfrcvitms!}-  received  still  more  active  patronage  from 
her  haughty  ininibn,  Lord  Leicester.      Walton's  Life  of  Hooktr. 


VOL.   I. 


18 


138 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n 


ii 


patience,  generated  by  the  galling  restraint  that  impeded  the  free  expression 
of  them  ;  and  yet  retained  in  submission  by  the  hope,  which,  in  common 
with  the  exiles,  they  indulged,  of  a  mitigation  of  their  sufferings  on  the  de- 
mise of  the  queen.'  Some  historians  have  expressed  surprise  at  the  close 
concurrence  of  that  general  and  impatient  desire  of  a  new  reign,  which  was 
manifested  in  the  conclusion  of  Elizabeth's  life,"  with  the  strong  and  sudden 
disgust  which  the  government  of  her  successor  experienced  ;  and  hence  have 
taken  occasion,  with  censorious  but  inappUcable  wisdom,  to  deplore  the  in- 
gratitude and  fickleness  of  mankind.  But  the  seeming  inconsistency  admits 
of  an  explanation  more  honorable  to  human  nature,  though  less  creditable  to 
royal  wisdom  and  virtue.  Elizabeth  had  exhausted  the  patience  and  loyalty 
of  a  great  portion  of  her  subjects  ;  and  the  adherence  to  her  policy,  whicli 
her  successor  unexpectedly  manifested,  disappointed  all  the  hopes  by  which 
those  virtues  had  been  sustained. 

The  hopes  of  the  Puritans  were  derived  from  the  education  of  the  Scot- 
tish king,  and  supported  by  many  of  his  declarations,  which  were  eagerly 
cited  and  circulated  in  England.  James  (pupil  of  the  great  George  Bu- 
chanan, who  succeeded  no  farther  than  in  rendering  the  object  of  his  tuition, 
what  Sully  termed  him,  the  wisest  fool  in  Europe)  was  bred  a  Presbyterian ; 
he  had  publicly  declared  that  the  church  of  Scotland  was  the  best  ecclesi 
astical  constitution  in  the  world,  and  that  the  English  liturgy  resembled,  to 
his  apprehension,  an  ill-chanted  mass.  On  his  accession  to  the  English 
he  was  solicited  by  numerous  petitions  to  interpose  his  authority  for 


crown. 


the  protection  and  relief  of  the  Puritans  ;  and  at  first  he  showed  himself  so 
far  disposed  to  comply  with  their  wishes  as  to  appoint  a  solemn  conference 
between  their  leaders  and  the  heads  of  the  Church  party  at  Hampton  Court. 
But  the  hopes  inspired  by  the  proposition  of  this  conference  were  disap- 
pointed by  its  result.  [Jan.  1604.]  If  James  ever  sincerely  preferred  a 
Presbyterian  to  an  Episcopal  establishment,  his  opinion  was  entirely  re- 
versed by  the  opportunity  he  now  enjoyed  of  comparing  them  with  each 
other,  and  by  the  very  different  treatment  he  experienced  from  their  respec- 
tive ministers. 

In  Scotland  he  had  been  engaged  in  perpetual  contentions  with  the  clergy, 
who  did  not  recognize  in  his  kingly  office  any  supremacy  over  their  church, 
and  who  differed  from  him  exceedingly  in  their  estimate  of  his  piety,  ca- 
pacity, and  attainments.  Precluded  by  his  poverty  from  a  display  of  regal 
pomp,  that  might  have  dazzled  their  eyes,  and  hid  the  weakness  of  the  man 
behind  the  grandeur  of  the  monarch,  he  stood  plainly  revealed  to  their  keen 
glance,  an  awkward  personification  of  conceit  and  pedantry,  obstinate  but 
unsteady,  filled  with  the  rubbish  and  subtilty  of  scholastic  learning,  void  of 
manly  sense  and  useful  knowledge.  They  have  been  accused,  and  not  with- 
out reason,  of  disturbing  his  government  by  exercising  a  censorial  power 
over  it ;  but  it  was  he  himself  that  first  taught,  or  at  least  encouraged,  them 
thus  to  overstep  their  functions.  Extending  his  administration  into  their 
peculiar  province,  where  it  had  no  right  to  penetrate,  he  seemed  to  sanction 
as  well  as  provoke  their  retributive  strictures  on  his  intrusion.  Mingling  re- 
ligious notions  with  his  political  views,  he  attempted  to  remodel  the  church ; 
and  the  clergy,  mingling  political  doctrines  with  their  theological  sentiments, 
complained  of  his  interference,  and  censured  the  whole  strain  of  his  govern- 
ment.    In  an  appeal  to  the  public  opinion  and  will,  they  easily  triumphed 

'  Strype's  Lt/e  of  Whitgijt.    D'Ewes.    Neal. 

»  "  Four  dnys  aAur  her  death,  she  was  forgotten."      Carte's  England 


CHAP.  I  ] 


ECCLESIASTICAL  POLICY  OF  JAMES  I. 


139 


over  the  unpopular  pretensions  of  their  feeble  sovereign,  and  gained  a  vic- 
tory which  tliey  used  witli  little  moderation,  and  vvliicb  lie  resented  not  less 
as  a  theological  than  as  a  political  affront.  One  of  the  ministers  of  the 
church  of  Scotland  had  so  far  transgressed  the  limits  of  decency  and  pro- 
priety as  to  declare  publicly  that  "  all  kings  are  tlie  Devil's  children  "  ; ' 
and  James  retorted  the  discourtesy,  when  he  found  himself  safe  from  their 
spleen  and  turbulence  in  England,  by  warmly  protesting  that  "  a  Scottish 
presbytery  agrees  as  Well  with  monarchy  as  God  and  the  Devil.'"*  The 
sentiments  Uiat  naturally  resulted  from  offended  arrogance  and  mortified  pre- 
sumption were  expanded  to  their  amplest  plenitude  by  the  blaze  of  flattery 
and  adulation  with  which  tlie  dignitaries  of  the  English  church  greeted  their 
new  sovereign.  By  them  he  was  readily  hailed  the  supreme  head  of  their 
establishment,  the  protector  of  its  privileges,  the  centre  of  its  splendor,  the 
fountain  of  its  dignities  ;  and  Whitgift  did  not  scruple  to  declare,  in  the  con- 
ference at  Hampton  Court,  that  undoubtedly  his  JHajesty  spake  by  the  special 
assistance  of  God^s  spirit.'^ 

This  was  the  last  impulse  that  the  deluded  ecclesiastic  was  destined  to 
impart  to  royal  pride  and  folly.  Confounded  at  tlie  wide  and  spreading 
explosion  of  Puritan  sentiment,  which  he  had  flattered  himself  with  the 
hope  of  having  almost  entirely  extinguished,  his  grief  and  concern  so  vio- 
lently affected  his  aged  frame  as  to  cause  his  death  very  shortly  after. 
Lt'eb.  1604.]  But  he  had  already  contributed  to  instil  the  ecclesiastical 
spirit  of  Ehzabeth  into  tiie  mind  of  her  successor  ;  and  James,  inflamed  with 
admiration  of  a  church,  which,  like  a  faithful  miiTor  (he  thought),  so  justly 
reflected  and  illustrated  his  royal  perfections,  became  henceforward  the  de- 
termined patron  of  the  church  of  England,  and  the  persecutor  of  all  who 
opposed  her  institutions.  He  was  the  first  prince  who  assumed  the  title  of 
Sacred  Majesty,  which  the  loyalty  of  bishops  transferred  from  their  God  to 
their  king.  His  natural  conceit,  fortified  l9y  the  testimony  of  the  English 
prelates,  soared  to  a  height  of  surpassing  arrogance  and  presumption  ;  and 
he,  who,  in  Scotland,  liad  found  himself  curbed  in  every  attempt  to  interfere 
with  the  religious  institutions  of  his  own  narrow  realm,  now  reckoned 
himself  qualified  and  entitled  to  dictate  the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  foreign 
nations. 

Engaging  in  a  dispute  with  Vorstius,  professor  of  theology  in  a  Dutch 
university,  and  finding  his  adversary  insensible  to  the  weight  of  his  argu- 
ments, he  resolved  to  make  him  feel  at  least  the  weight  and  the  stretch  of 
his  power  ;  and,  roused  on  this  occasion  to  a  degree  of  energy  and  haughti- 
ness to  which  no  other  foreign  concernment  was  ever  able  to  excite  him,  he 
remonstrated  so  strenuously  with  the  States  of  Holland,  that,  to  silence  his 
clamor,  they  stooped  to  the  mean  injustice  of  deposing  and  banishing  the 
professor.  With  this  sacrifice  to  his  insulted  logic  James  was  forced  to  be 
contented,  though  he  had  endeavoured  to  inspire  his  allies  with  the  purpose 
of  more  sanguinary  vindication,  by  acquainting  them,  "  that,  as  to  the 
burning  of  Vorstius  for  his  blasphemies  and  atheism,  he  left  them  to  their 
own  Christian  wisdom,  —  though,  surely,  never  heretic  better  deserved  the 
flames."  He  did  not  fail  to  reinforce  this  charitable  counsel  by  his  own 
example  ;  and  in  the  course  of  his  reign  burned  at  the  stake  two  persons 
who  entertained  the  Arian  system  of  doctrine,^  and  an  unfortunate  lunatic 

"'  SDottiBwoodG^  *  Fuller.  '  Kennet. 

*  One  of  theM  victims  is  termed  by  Fuller,  in  his  Churek  History,  "  our  English  VoreUus. 


140 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


who  mistook  himself  for  the  Deity,  and  whose  frenzy  was  thus  cruelly 
treated  by  a  much  more  dangerous  and  deliberate  invader  of  diviue  at- 
tributes. 

If  James  had  not  been  restrained  by  the  growing  political  ascendency  of 
the  Puritans,  there  would  probably  have  been  more  of  such  executions  in 
England.  He  did,  however,  as  much  as  he  dared  ;  and  finding  in  Bancroft 
H  fit  successor  to  Whitgift,  he  made,  with  his  assistance,  so  vigorous  a  com- 
mencement, that  in  the  second  year  of  his  reign  three  hundred  Puritan  min- 
isters were  deprived  of  their  benefices,  and  either  imprisoned  or  banished. 
To  preclude  the  communication  of  light  from  abroad,  the  importation  of  any 
books  hostile  to  the  restraints  imposed  by  the  laws  of  the  realm  or  the  king's 
proclamations  was  forbidden  under  the  severest  penalties  ;  to  prevent  its  rise 
and  repress  its  spread  at  home,  no  books  were  suffered  to  be  printed  in 
England  without  the  license  of  a  committee  of  bishops  or  their  deputies ; 
and  arbitrary  jurisdictions  for  the  trial  of  ecclesiastical  offences  were  multi- 
plied and  extended.  Persons  suspected  of  entertaining  Puritan  sentiments, 
even  though  they  adhered  to  the  established  ecclesiastical  system,  were  sub- 
jected to  fine  and  imprisonment  for  barely  repeating  to  their  families,  in 
the  evening,  the  substance  of  the  discourses  they  had  heard  at  church  during 
the  day,  —  under  the  pretence,  that  this  constituted  the  crime  of  irregular 
preaching.  One  Peacham,  a  Puritan  minister,  in  whose  study  there  was 
seized,  by  a  tyrannical  stretch  of  power,  a  manuscript  discourse  never 
preached,  nor  intended  to  be  preached,  containing  censures  on  the  toyal 
government,  was,  by  the  king's  desire,  first  tortured  on  the  rack,  and  then 
condemned  to  the  death  of  a  traitor. 

Some  of  the  Puritans  having  conceived  the  design  of  withdrawing  to  Vir- 
ginia, where  they  hoped  that  distance  would  at  least  mitigate  the  violence 
of  oppression,  a  small  party  of  them  did  actually  repair  thither  ;  and  a 
larger  number  were  preparing  to  follow,  when  Bancroft,  apprized  of  their 
intention,  obtained  a  proclamation  from  the  king,  commanding  that  none  of 
his  subjects  should  settle  in  Virginia  without  the  authority  of  an  express 
license  under  the  great  seal.  [1620.]  Thus  harassed  and  oppressed  in  Eng- 
land, and  denied  a  refuge  in  Virginia,  the  Puritans  began  to  retire  in  con- 
siderable numbers  to  the  Protestant  states  of  the  continent  of  Europe  ;  and 
the  hopes  of  the  still  greater  and  increasing  portion  that  remained  at  home 
W3re  fixed  on  the  House  of  Commons.  In  this  assembly  the  Puritan  as- 
cendency at  length  bacame  so  manifest,  that,  in  spite  of  the  king's  procla- 
mations for  encouraging  mirthful  games  on  Sunday,  a  bill  was  introduced  for 
compelling  a  more  strict  and  solemn  observance  of  the  day,  to  which  it  gave 
the  denomination  of  the  Sabbath  ;  and  when  one  member  objected  to  this 
as  a  Puritan  appellation,  and  ventured  to  justify  dancing  on  Sunday  by  a 
jocose  misapplication  of  some  passages  of  Scripture,  he  was,  on  the  sugges- 
tion of  Pym,  expelled  from  the  House  for  his  profanity.'  But  we  have  now 
reached  the  period  at  which  we  forsake  the  main  stream  of  the  history  of 
the  Puritans,  to  follow  the  fortunes  of  that  illustrious  branch  which  was  des- 
tined to  visit  and  ennoble  the  deserts  of  America.  In  reviewing  the  strange 
succession  of  events  which  we  have  beheld,  and  the  various  impressions 
they  have  produced  on  our  minds,  it  may  perhaps  occur  to  some,  as  a 

The  king,  in  itiitation  of  Henry  the  I'lghth's  grnerogity  to  Lambert,  held  a  personal  dispute 
with  him.  and  concluded  it  by  ilelivering  him  into  the  hands  of  the  executicnor. 

I  K- Jainei'f  ffor/u.   Journals  of  lite  Jlousc  of  Cummons.   llyiuer.   iSciU.    tiiith's  Virgm'' 
Smt  Trial!. 


CHAP.  I.] 


RELIGIOUS  VIEWS  OF  JOHN  ROBINSON. 


141 


jraonal  dispute 


humiliating  consideration,  that  the  crimes  and  follies,  the  cruelties  and  weak- 
nes.ses,  which  would  excite  no  other  sentiments  but  horror,  grief,  or  pity  in 
an  angelic  beholder,  are  capable  of  presenting  themselves  in  such  an  aspect 
to  less  purified  eyes,  as  to  excite  the  splenetic  mirth  even  of  beings  whose 
nature  is  reproached  by  the  odious  or  absurd  display. 

In  the  year  1610,  a  congregation  of  Brownists,  expelled  by  royal  and 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  from  their  native  land,  removed  to  Leyden,  where 
they  were  permitted  to  establish  themselves  in  peace  under  the  ministry  of 
their  pastor,  John  Robinson.^     This  excellent  person  may  be  justly  re- 
garded as  the  founder  of  the  society  of  Independents,  having  been  the  first 
teacher  who  steered  a  middle  course  between  the  narrow  path  of  Browriism 
and  the  broader  Presbyterian  system  ;  to  one  or  other  of  which  the  views 
and  inclinations  of  the  Puritans  were  now  generally  tending.    The  sentiments 
which  he  entertained,  when  he  first  quitted  his  country,  bore  the  impress  of 
the  persecution  under  which  they  had  been  formed,  and  when\  he  com- 
menced his  ministry  at  Leyden  he  was  a  rigid  Brownist  ;  but  after  he  had 
seen  more  of  the  world,  and  enjoyed  opportunities  of  familiar  converse  with 
learned  and  good  men  of  different  ecclesiastical  denominations,  he  began  to 
entertain  a  more  charitable  opinion  of  those  minor  differences,  which  he 
plainly  perceived  might  subsist  without  injury  to  the  essentials  of  religion, 
and  without  violating  charity  or  generating  discord.     Though  he  always 
maintained  the  legitimacy  and  expediency  of  separating  from  the  established 
Protestant  churches  in  the  country  where  he  lived,  he  willingly  allowed  them 
the  character  of  churches  substantially  Christian  ;  esteemed  it  lawful  to 
unite  with  them  in  preaching  and  prayer  ;  and  freely  admitted  their  mem- 
bers to  partake  the  sacrament  of  the  Lora's  Supper  with  his  own  congrega- 
tion.   He  considered  that  each  particular  church  or  society  of  Christians 
possessed  the  power  of  electing  its  oflficers,  administering  the  gospel  ordi- 
nances, and  exercising  over  its  own  members  every  necessary  act  of  disci- 
pline and  authority  ;  and,  consequently,  that  it  was  independent  of  all  eccle- 
siastical synods,  convocations,  and  councils.     He  admitted  the  expediency 
of  synods  and  councils  for  composition  of  emergent  differences  between 
particular  churches  by  the  communication  of  friendly  advice  to  them  ;  but 
df3nied  their  competence  to  exercise  any  act  of  jurisdiction,  or  authoritatively 
to  impose  any  articles  or  canons  of  doctrine.     These  sentiments  Robinson 
recommended  to  esteem,  by  exemplifying  in  his  life  and  demeanour  the  best 
fruits  of  that  divine  spirit  by  whose  tuition  they  were  imparted, — by  a  char- 
acter and  behaviour,  in  which  the  most  eminent  faculties  and  the  highest 
attainments  were  leavened  and  controlled  by  the  predominating  influence  of 
a  solemn,  affectionate  piety.**     [1620.] 

Enjoying  the  counsel  and  direction  of  such  a  pastor,  and  entertaining  a 
just  sense  of  his  value,  the  English  exiles  composing  this  congregation  re- 
mained for  ten  years  at  Leyden,  in  harmony  with  each  other  and  in  peace 
with  their  neighbours.  But  at  the  end  of  that  period,  the  same  pious  views 
that  had  prompted  their  original  departure  from  England  incited  them  to 
undertake  a  more  distant  migration.  *  They  beheld  with  strong  concern  the 
prevalence  around  them  of  manneis  which  they  esteemed  loose  and  orofane: 
more  particularly,  the  general  neglect  among  the  Dutch  of  a  revereniiai 

'  Cardinal  Bcntivoglio,  in  hia  Account  of  the  United  Provinces,  describes  these  exiles  as  a 
hod'j  of  F.\\fflisk  ksrttics.  called  Puritans  who  had  resorted  to  Holland  for  purposes  of  commerce 

•'Mather's  Ecciesiasiical  History  of  JN'eio  England.  Neal.  Robinson'B  Jifoiogy  for  tht 
Brownints. 


142 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


observance  of  Sunday ;  and  they  reflected  with  apprehension  on  the  danger 
to  which  their  children  were  exposed  from  the  natural  contagion  of  habits  so 
inimical  to  serious  piety.  Their  country,  too,  still  retained  a  hold  on  their 
affections  ;  and  they  were  loath  to  behold  their  posterity  commingled  and 
identified  with  the  Dutch  population.  The  smallness  of  their  numbers,  to- 
getlier  with  the  difficulties  occasioned  by  difference  of  language,  discour- 
aged them  from  attempting  to  propagate  in  Holland  the  principles,  which 
with  so  much  peril  and  suffering,  they  had  hitherto  maintained  ;  and  the  con- 
duct of  the  English  government  extinguished  every  hope  of  toleration  in 
their  native  land.  The  famous  Arminian  Controversy^  moreover,  which 
was  now  raging  in  Holland  with  a  fury  that  produced  the  barbarous  execu- 
tion of  the  Grand  Pensionary  Barneveldt  and  the  imprisonment  of  the  illus- 
trious Grotius,  probably  contributed  to  alienate  the  desires  of  the  English 
exiles  from  farther  residence  in  a  land  where  the  Calvinistic  tenets  which 
they  cherished  were  thus  disgraced  by  practical  cruel.y  and  intolerance. 
In  these  circumstances,  it  occurred  to  them  that  they  might  combine  the  in- 
dulgence of  their  patriotic  attachment  with  the  propagation  of  their  religious 
principles,  by  estaWishing  themselves  in  some  remote,  sequestered  part  of 
the  British  dominions  ;  and  after  many  days  of  earnest  supplication  for  tlie 
counsel  and  direction  of  Heaven,  they  unanimously  determined  to  transport 
themselves  and  their  families  to  the  territory  of  America.  It  was  resolved 
that  a  select  portion  of  the  congregation  should  proceed  thither  befotre  the 
rest,  to  prepare  a  settlement  for  tlie  whole  ;  and  that  the  main  body  hiean- 
while  should  continue  at  Leyden  with  their  pastor.  In  choosing  the  partic- 
ular scene  of  their  establishment,  they  hesitated  for  some  time  between  the 
territory  of  Guiana,  of  which  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  had  published  a  most  daz- 
zling and  attractive  description  (mainly  the  offspring  of  his  own  lively  and 
fertile  imagination) ,  and  the  province  of  Virginia,  to  which  they  finally  gave 
the  preference  ;  but  Providence  had  ordained  that  their  residence  should 
be  established  in  New  England. 

By  the  intervention  of  agents,  whom  they  deputed  to, solicit  the  sanction 
of  the  English  government  to  their  enterprise,  they  represented  to  liie  king, 
"  that  they  were  well  weaned  from  the  delicate  milk  of  their  mother  coun- 
try, and  inured  to  the  difficulties  of  a  strange  land  ;  that  they  were  knit  to- 
g»!ther  in  a  strict  and  sacred  bond,  by  virtue  of  which  they  held  themselves 
bound  to  take  care  of  the  good  of  each  other  and  of  the  whole  ;  and  that  it 
was  not  with  them  as  with  other  men,  whom  small  things  could  discourage, 
or  small  discontent  cause  to  wish  themselves  at  home  again."  The  king, 
wavering  between  his  desire  to  promote  the  colonization  of  America,  and 
his  reluctance  to  suffer  the  consciences  of  any  portion  of  his  subjects  to  he 
emancipated  from  his  control,  refused  to  grant  them  a  charter  assuring  the 
full  enjoyment  of  ecclesiastical  liberty,  but  promised  to  connive  at  their 
practices,  and  to  refrain  from  molesting  tliem.  They  were  forced  to  accept 
tliis  precarious  security,  and  would  hardly  have  obtained  it  but  for  the 
friendly  interposition  of  Sir  Robert  Nanton,  one  of  the  secretaries  of  state, 
and  a  favorer  of  the  Puritans  ;  but  they  relied  with  more  reason  on  their 
distance  from  the  ecclesiastical  tribunals  of  England,  and  from  the  eye  and 
arm  of  their  persecuting  sovereign.  Having  procured  from  the  Plymouth 
Company  a  grant  of  a  tract  of  land,  situated,  as  was  supposed,  within  the 
limits  of  its  oatent,  some  memheps  of  the  congregation  sold  their  estates-, 
and  expended  the  purchase-money  in  the  equipment  of  two  vessels,  in  which 


[BOOK  n     I     CHAP.  I]      ROBINSON'S  EXHORTATION  TO  THE  EMIGRANTS.  143 

a  hundred  and  twenty  of  their  number  were  appointed  to  embark  from  an 
English  port  for  North  America.^     [1620.] 

All  things  being  prepared  for  the  departure  of  this  detachment  of  the 
congregation  from  Delft  Haven,  where  they  took  leave  of  their  associates, 
for  the  English  port  of  ultimate  embarkation,  Robinson  and  his  people  de- 
voted their  last  meeting  in  Europe  to  an  act  of  solemn  and  social  worship, 
intended  to  implore  a  blessing  from  Heaven  upon  the  hazardous  enterprise. 
He  preached  a  sermon  to  them  from  Ezra  viii.  21  :  —  I  proclaimed  a  fast 
there,  at  the  river  of  Ahava,  that  we  might  afflict  our$elves  before  our  God^ 
to  seek  of  him  a  right  way  for  us,  and  for  our  little  ones,  and  for  all  our 
substance ;  —  and  concluded  his  discourse  with  the  following  exhortation,  to 
which,  with  the  fullest  perception  of  its  intrinsic  merits,  our  sentiments  will 
fail  to  do  justice,  unless  we  remember  tliat  such  a  spirit  of  Christian  candor 
and  liberality  as  it  breathes  was  then  hardly  known  in  the  world. 

"Brethren,"  said  he,  "we  are  now  quickly  to  part  from  one  another, 
and  whether  I  may  ever  live  to  see  your  faces  on  earth  any  more  the  God 
of  heaven  only  knows  ;  but  whether  the  Lord  has  appointed  that  or  no,  I 
charge  you,  before  God  and  his  blessed  angels,  that  you  follow  me  no  far- 
ther than  you  have  seen  me  follow  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

"  If  God  reveal  any  thing  to  you  by  any  other  instrument  of  his,  be  as 
ready  to  receive  it  as  ever  you  were  to  receive  any  truth  by  my  mmistry  ; 
for  I  am  verily  persuaded,  I  am  very  confident,  the  Lord  has  more  truth 
yet  to  break  forth  out  of  his  holy  word.  For  my  part,  I  cannot  sufficiently 
bewail  the  condition  of  the  reformed  churches,  who  are  come  to  a  period  in 
religion,  and  will  go  at  present  no  farther  than  the  mstruments  of  their 
reformation.  The  Lutherans  cannot  be  drawn  to  go  beyond  what  Luther 
saw ;  whatever  part  of  his  will  our  good  God  has  revealed  to  Calvin,  they 
will  rather  die  than  embrace  it ;  and  the  Calviiusts,  you  see,  stick  fast  where 
they  were  left  by  that  great  man  of  God,  who  yet  saw  not  all  things. 

"  This  is  a  misery  much  to  be  lamented  ;  for  though  they  were  burning 
and  shining  lights  in  their  times,  yet  they  penetrated  not  into  the  whole 
counsel  of  God  ;  but,  were  they  now  living,  would  be  as  willing  to  embrace 
farther  light,  as  that  which  they  first  received.  I  beseech  you,  remember  it, 
't  is  an  article  of  your  church  covenant,  that  you  be  ready  to  receive  what- 
ever truth  shall  be  made  known  to  you  from  the  written  word  of  God. 
Remember  that,  and  every  other  article  of  your  sacred  covenant.  But  I 
must  herewithal  exhort  you  to  take  heed  lohat  you  receive  as  truth.  Exam- 
ine it,  consider  it,  and  compare  it  with  other  scriptures  of  truth,  before  you 
receive  it ;  for  't  is  not  possible  the  Christian  world  should  come  so  lately 
out  of  antichristiaxi  darkness,  and  that  perfection  of  knowledge  should  break 
forth  at  once. 

"  I  must  also  advise  you  to  abandon,  avoid,  and  shake  off  the  name  of 
Brownist ;  't  is  a  mere  nickname,  and  a  brand  for  the  making  rehgion,  and 
the  professors  of  it,  odious  to  the  Christian  world." 

Having  said  thus  much,  he  exchanged  with  them  embraces  and  affection 
ate  farewells  ;  and  kneeling  down  with  them  all  on  the  seashore,  commended 
them,  in  a  fervent  prayer,  to  the  blessing  and  protection  of  Heaven.^   Such 

"  <  MntherT  Neal.    HutchinBOnT^Haznrd.    Oldmixon.    If  the  Puritans  would  have  stooped 


I  on  the  danger 
ion  of  habits  so 
a  hold  on  their 
jmmingled  and 
ir  numbers,  to. 
5uage,  discour- 
nciples,  which, 
1 ;  and  the  con- 
)f  toleration  in 
oreover,  which 
rbarous  execu- 
jnt  of  the  illus- 
of  the  English 
ic  tenets  which 
nd  intolerance, 
combine  the  in- 
f  their  religious 
Bstered  part  of 
lication  for  the 
led  to  transport 
It  was  resolved 
ither  befo|re  the 
ain  body  hiean- 
sing  the  partic- 
ne  between  the 
led  a  most  daz- 
own  hvely  and 
ley  finally  gave 
jsidence  should 

cit  the  sanction 
ted  to  ihe  king, 
ir  mother  coun- 
ly  were  knit  to- 
leld  themselves 
)le  ;  and  that  it 
uld  discourage, 
."  The  king, 
'  America,  and 
}  subjects  to  be 
ter  assuring  the 
onnive  at  their 
irced  to  accept 
it  but  for  the 
etaries  of  state, 
reason  on  their 
3m  the  eye  and 
n  the  Plymouth 
)sed,  within  the 
1  their  estotes, 
essels,  in  which 


to  intrigue  and  duplicity,  they  might  have  had  more  powerful  partisans  at  court  than  Sir 
anton.    The  Duke  of  Buckingham,  in  imitation  of  the  policy  of  Lord  Leicester  and 


Robert 


tans  by 
*  Mather. 


caressing  their  leaders. 
Ilazard. 


Inlv  nttAmnted  to  obtain  an  ascendency  over  the  Pun- 


144 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


were  the  men  whom  the  English  monarch  cast  out  of  his  dominions  ;  and 
such  the  scenes  of  wisdom  and  piety,  which  the  control  of  Divine  Providence 
elicited  from  the  folly,  arrogance,  and  bigotry  of  a  tyrant.     The  emigrants 
were  at  first  driven  back  by  a  storm  which  destroyed  one  of  their  vessels ; 
but  finally  reenibarking  in  the  other  at  Plymouth,  on  the  6th  of  September, 
they  succeeded,  after  a  long  and  dangerous  voyage,  in  reaching  the  coast 
of  America.   [9th  Nov.,  1620.]   Hudson's  River  was  the  place  where  they 
had  proposed  to  disembark,  and  its  banks  were  the  scene  of  their  intended 
settlement ;  but  the  Dutch,  who  conceived  that  a  preferable  right  to  this 
territory  accrued  to  them  from  its  discovery  by  Captain  Hudson,  had  main- 
tained there,  for  some  years,  a  small  commercial  establishment,  and  were 
actually  projecting  a  scheme  of  more  extensive  occupation,  which  they  were 
neither  disposed  to  forego,  nor  yet  prepared  to  defend.     In  order  to  defeat 
the  design  of  the  English,  they  bribed  the  captain  of  the  vessel  in  which  the 
emigrants  sailed,  who  was  a  Dutchman,  to  carry  his  passengers  so  far 
towards  the  north,  that  the  first  land  which  they  reached  was  Cape  Cod, 
a  region  not  only  beyond  the  precincts  of  their  grant,  but  beyond  the  terri- 
tories  of  the  company  from  which  the  grant  was  derived.     The  advanced 
period  of  the  year,  and  the  sickliness  occasioned  by  the  hardships  of  a  long 
voyage,  compelled  the  adventurers  to  settle  on  the  soil  to  which  they  were 
thus  conducted,  and  which  seemed  to  have  been  expressly  prepared  and 
evacuated  for  their  reception  by  a  pestilential  disease,  which,  during  several 
preceding  years,  had  swept  away  nine  tenths  of  its  savage  and  idolatrous 
population.     Aft«r  exploring  the  coast,  they  chose  for  their  station  a  place 
afterwards  included  within  the  province  of  Massachtisetts,  to  which  they 
gave  the  name  of  New  Plymouth,  in  commemoration  of  the  city  with  which 
their  last  recollections  of  England  were  associated.     To  supply,  in  some 
measure,  the  absence  of  a  more  formal  title,  they  composed  and  subscribed 
an  instrument  declaratory  of  the  purpose  with  which  tliey  had  come  to  Amer- 
ica, recognizing  the  sovereign  authority  of  the  English  crown,  and  expressing 
their  own  combination  into  a  body  politic,  and  their  determination  to  enact 
just  and  righteous  laws,  and  to  evince  and  enforce  a  strict  obedience  to 
them.^     Here,  then,  remote  from  scenes  and  circumstances  of  temporal 
grandeur,  these  men  embarked  on  a  career,  which,  if  the  true  dignity  of 
human  actions  be  derived  from  the  motives  that  prompt  them,  the  principles 
they  express,  and  the  ends  they  contemplate,  must  be  allowed  to  claim  no 
common  measure  of  honor  and  elevation.     To  live  for  eternity,  and  in  the 
prospect  of  it,  they  deemed  the  great  business  of  their  lives  ;  this  was  a 
just  and  noble  calculation  of  the  value  of  existence. 

The  speedy  approach  and  intense  severity  of  their  first  winter  in  America 
])ainfully  Convinced  the  settlers  that  a  more  unfavorable  season  of  the  year 
could  not  have  been  selected  for  the  plantation  of  their  colony  ;  and  that 
the  slender  stores  with  which  they  were  provided  were  greatly  short  of  what 
was  requisite  to  comfortable  subsistence,  and  formed  a  very  inadequate 
jtreparation  to  meet  the  rigor  of  the  climate.  Their  exertions  to  procuro 
for  themselvRS  suitable  dwellings  were  obstructed,  for  a  time,  by  the  hostile 
attacks  of  sc  m  of  the  neighbouring  Indians,  who  had  not  forgotten  the  inju- 
rious conduct  of  Captain  Hunt ;  and  the  colonists  had  scarcely  succeeded 
in  repulsing  them,  when  sickness,  occasioned  by  scarcity  of  provisions  iind 

I     »*-•! M I         f\lJ  —  ■~-n         II..«..!.;.i»"..         Thn  r...ii£l    iytr  ivkinli  thn  r>ut«'ll  rnntl'ivt'H   1(1 

divert  these  emigrants  from  Hudson's  River  was  discovered  iind  stated  in  n  memorial,  wliieh 
was  published  in  England  before  the  close  of  this  year.    Prince's  JVeir  England  Chronoloipi 


CHAP.  I] 


SUFFERINGS  OF  THE  PLYMOUTH  COLONY. 


145 


the  increasing  horrors  of  the  season,  afflicted  them  with  a  calamity,  perhaps 
less  dangerous  to  their  virtue,  but  more  fatal  to  their  strength  and  security, 
than  the  perils  of  war.  More  than  one  half  of  their  number,  including  John 
(Jarver,  their  first  governor,  perished  by  hunger  or  disease  before  the  return 
of  spring  ;  and  during  the  whole  of  the  winter,  only  a  few  were  capable  of 
providing  for  themselves,  or  rendering  assistance  to  the  rest.  But 'hope  and 
virtue  survived  ;  and,  rising  in  vigor  beneath  the  pressure  of  accumulated 
suffering,  surmounted  and  ennobled  every  circumstance  of  distress.  [1G21.] 
Those  who  retained  their  strength  became  the  servants  of  the  weak,  the 
afflicted,  and  the  dying  ;  and  none  distinguished  himself  more  in  this  hu- 
mane employment  than  Carver,  the  governor.  He  was  a  man  of  large  estate, 
but  more  enlarged  benevolence  ;  he  had  spent  his  whole  fortune  on  the 
colonial  project  ;  and  now,  willingly  contributing  his  life  to  its  accomplish- 
iiiont,  he  exhausted  a  feeble  body  in  laboriously  discharging  the  humblest 
offlees  of  kindness  and  service  to  the  sick.  He  was  succeeded  by  William 
Bradford,  who,  inheriting  the  merit  and  the  popularity  of  his  predecessor, 
was  reelected  to  the  same  office  for  many  successive  years,  —  notwith- 
standing his  own  earnest  desire  to  be  released  from  the  charge,  and  his  oft 
repeated  remonstrance,  that,  if  this  office  were  an  honor,  it  should  be  shared 
by  his  fellow-citizens,  and  if  it  were  a  burden,  the  weight  of  it  should  not 
always  be  imposed  upon  him. 

When  the  distress  of  the  colonists  was  at  its  height,  the  approach  of  a 
powerful  Indian  chief  with  a  band  of  his  followers  seemed  to  portend  their 
utter  destruction  ;  but,  happily,  in  the  train  of  this  personage  was  the  an- 
cient guest  and  friend  of  the  English,  Squanto,  who  eagerly  and  successfully 
labored  to  mediate  a  good  understanding  between  them  and  his  countrymen. 
He  afterwards  cancelled  the  merit  of  this  useful  service,  and  endeavoured 
to  magnify  his  o^vn  importance  by  fabricating  charges  of  plots  and  conspira- 
cies against  some  of  the  neighbouring  tribes,  while  at  the  same  time  he 
maintained  an  empire  of  terror  over  these  tribes  by  secretly  assuring  them 
that  the  English  were  in  possession  of  a  cask  filled  with  the  plague,  which 
only  his  influence  prevented  them  from  setting  abroach  for  the  destruction 
of  the  Indians.  But,  before  he  resorted  to  this  mischievous  policy,  the 
colonists  had  become  independent  of  his  services.  His  friendship  with  the 
English  was  never  entirely  dissolved  ;  and  on  his  death-bed,  soon  after,  he 
desired  Governor  Bradford  to  pray  for  him,  that  he  might  go  to  the  English- 
man's God  in  heaven.  Some  of  the  neighbouring  tribes,  from  time  to  time, 
made  alarr.:ing  demonstrations  of  hostility  ;  but  they  were  at  length  com- 
pletely overawed  by  the  conduct  and  valor  of  Captain  Miles  Standish,  a 
gallant  and  skilful  officer,  who,  witli  a  handful  of  men,  was  always  ready 
to  encounter  their  strongest  force,  and  foil  their  most  dexterous  stratagems 
atid  rapidest  movements.^ 

On  the  arrival  of  summer,  the  health  of  the  colonists  was  restored  ;  and 
their  numbers  continued  to  be  recruited  occasionally,  by  successive  emigra- 
tions of  oppressed  Puritans  from  Europe.  But  these  additions  fell  far  short 
of  their  expectations  ;  and  of  the  reinforcement  which  they  had  mainly 
looked  for  from  the  accession  of  the  remanent  congregation  at  Leyden,  they 

'  Marherr~Neal.   Oidmixon.    Belknap's  American  Biography.    Poter  Martyr  declares,  that 
the  hardships  endured  by  the  Spaniards  in  South  America  were  Buch  as  none  hut  Spaniards 
•  oiild  have  supported,     llut  the  hardsiiips  sustained  by  the  first  colonists  of  New  Plymouth 
•      "  ,   .  ..        .   ...  :_  J.....: J  :_. — :...      g^e  Hutchinson,  H.,  Ap- 


appear 


to  have  exceeded  tlicm  both  in  duration  and  intensity. 


pe 


ndix. 


VOL.    I. 


19 


146 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II, 


were  unliapplly  disappointed.  The  unexpected  death  of  Robinson,  their 
pastor,  deprived  his  people  of  the  only  leader  whose  animating  counsels 
could  have  overcome  the  timidity  inspired  by  the  accounts  of  the  manifold 
hardships  and  distresses  sustained  by  tlieir  friends  in  New  England  ;  and 
upon  that  event,  tlie  greater  part  of  those  who  had  remained  behind  at  Ley. 
den  now  retired  to  join  the  other  English  exiles  at  Amsterdam,  and  very 
few  had  the  courage  to  proceed  to  New  Plymouth.  This  small  colony, 
however,  had  displayed  a  hardy  virtue  that  showed  it  was  formed  for  endu- 
rance ;  and,  having  surmounted  its  first  misfortunes,  continued  to  flourish  in 
the  cultivation  of  piety,  and  the  enjoyment  of  rehgious  and  pohtical  freedom. 
A  generous  attachment  was  formed  to  the  soil  which  had  been  so  worthily 
earned,  and  to  tlie  society  whose  continuance  attested  so  manly  and  glo- 
rious a  struggle  with  every  variety  of  ill.  While  the  colonists  demonstrated 
a  proper  respect  for  the  claims  of  tlie  original  inhabitants  of  the  country,  by 
purchasing  from  them  the  territory  over  which  their  settlement  extended, 
they  neglected  no  preparation  to  defend  by  force  what  they  had  acquired 
with  justice  ;  and,  alarmed  by  the  tidings  of  the  massacre  of  their  country- 
men in  Virginia,  Uiey  erected  a  timber  fort  [1622],  and  adopted  other  pru- 
dent precautions  for  their  security.  This  purchase  from  savages,  who 
rather  occasionally  traversed  than  permanently  occupied  the  territory,  is 
perhaps  the  first  instance  on  record  of  the  entire  prevalence  of  the  principles 
of  justice  in  a  treaty  between  a  civilized  and  a  barbarous  people. 

The  ecclesiastical  coiicatution  which  the  emigrants  established  was  the 
same  with  that  which  had  prevailed  among  them  at  Ley  den  ;  and  their  sys- 
tem of  civil  government  was  founded  on  those  ideas  of  the  natural  equality 
of  men,  to  which  their  religious  policy,  so  long  the  main  object  of  their 
concern,  had  habituated  their  minds.  The  supreme  legislative  body  was 
composed  at  first  of  all  the  freemen  vCho  were  members  of  the  church  ;  and 
it  was  not  imtil  the  year  1639  that  they  established  a  house  of  representa- 
tives. The  executive  power  was  committed  to  a  governor  and  council, 
annually  elected  by  the  members  of  the  legislative  assembly.  Their  juris- 
prudence was  founded  on  the  laws  of  England,  with  some  diversity  in  the 
appreciation  and  punishment  of  crimes,  wherein  they  approximated  more 
nearly  to  tl»e  Mosaic  institutions.  Deeming  the  protection  of  morals  more 
important  t^n  the  preservation  of  wealth,  they  punished  fornication  with 
flogging,  and  adultery  witli  death,  —  while  on  forgery  they  inflicted  only  a 
moderate  fine.  The  clearing  and  cultivation  of  the  ground,  fishing,  and  the 
curing  of  fish  for  exportation,  formed  the  temporal  occupations  of  the  colo- 
nists. The  peculiarity  of  their  situation  naturally  led  them,  like  the  Vir- 
ginians, for  some  time  to  throw  all  their  property  into  a  common  stock, 
and,  like  members  of  one  family,  to  carry  on  every  work  of  industiy  by 
their  joint  labor  for  the  public  behoof.  But  the  religious  zeal  which  pro- 
moted this  self-denying  policy  was  unable  to  overcome  the  difficulties  which 
must  always  attend  it,  and  which  are  peculiarly  aggravated  in  a  society 
deriving  its  princij^e  of  increment  not  so  much  from  internal  growth  as  from 
the  confluence  of  strangers.  About  three  years  after  the  founciatioa  of  New 
Plymouth,  it  was  judged  proper  to  introduce  separation  of  possessions, 
though  the  full  right  of  separ  itc  property  was  not  admitted  till  a  much  later 
period  ;  and  even  that  firsi  'hange  is  represented  as  Jrvhig  produced  a 
great  and  manifieBt  improvement  of  the  industry  of  the  people.* 

'  Mather.     Neul.     Chalmers. 


CHAP.  I  ] 


CHARTER  OF  THE  PLYMOUTH  COLONY. 


147 


The  slow  increase,  which,  for  a  considerable  period  of  time,  the  popula- 
nnn  of  the  colony  exhibited,  has  been  ascribed  to  the  prolonged  operation 
nf  this  system  of  equality  ;  but  it  seems  more  likely  that  the  slowness  of  the 
;„'   ease  (occasioned  by  the  poverty  of  the  soil  and  the  report  of  the  hard- 
hins  attending  a  settlement  in  New  England)  was  itself  the  reason  why  the 
complete  ascertainment  of  the  rights  of  separate  property  was  so  long  re- 
tarded     In  the  first  society  of  men  collected  by  the  bond  of  Christianity, 
nnd  additionally  united  by  persecution,  we  find  an  attempt  made  to  abohsh 
individual  property  ;  and  from  the  apostolic  direction,  that  he  who  would  not 
Lrfc  should  not  eat,  we  may  conclude  that  the  disadvantage,  which  the  op- 
pration  of  this  principle  is  exposed  to  in  a  society  mainly  deriving  its  increase 
from  the  accession  of  strangers  of  dissimilar  characters,  was  pretty  early 
experienced.     In  Paraguay,  the  Jesuits  formed  a  settlement  where  this 
neculiar  disadvantage  was  not  experienced,  and  which  affords  the  only  au- 
thenticated instance  of  the  introduction  and  protracted  endurance  oi  a  state 
of  equality  in  a  numerous  society.  But  there  the  great  fundamental  difliculty 
was  rather  evaded  than  encountered,  by  a  system  of  tuition,  adapted,  with 
pvnuisite  skill,  to  confound  all  diversities  of  talent  and  disposition  among 
the  savage  or  barbarous  natives  in  an  unbounded  and  degrading  dependence 

on  their  Jesuit  instructors.  .      ,      v  •      .u  •    ♦     ^^ 

After  remaining  for  some  years  without  a  patent  legahzmg  their  territo- 
rial occupation,  the  colonists,  whose  numbers  now  amounted  to  a  hundred 
and  eighty,  employed  one  Pierce  as  their  agent  in  England,  to  solicit  a 
grant  of  diis  nature  from  the  English  government,  and  the  Grand  Council  ^^ 
ll^outh,  — a  new  corporation,  by  which  James,  m  the  year  1620,  had 
superseded  the  original  Plymouth  Company,.and  on  which  he  conferred  all 
he  American  territory  lying  between  the  fortieth  and  forty-eighth  degrees 
of  north  latitude.     This  corporate  body  continued  to  subsist  for  a  consid- 
erable time,  notwithstanding  a  vote  of  the  House  of  Commons,  m  the  year 
after  its  creation,  declaring  its  privileges  a  public  grievance,  and  its  patent 
void     Pierce  procured  a  charter  from  the  council,  and  caused  it  to  be 
framed  in  his  o^vn  name,  with  the  appropriation  of  large  territories  and  privi- 
leges  to  himself  and  his  family  [1623]  ;  but,  havnig  f^barked  with  a  nu- 
merous body  of  associates,  whom  he  collected  m  England,  and  mduced  to 
accompany  him,  and  assist  in  the  prosecution  of  his  ainbitious  designs,  his 
"^^"  .r     •/  , .    '       ,     1   -_j  T>: i  u;^»«if  o«  /)  cmovoil  with  the  disastrous 


resigned  his  unjust  acquisition.      ^ -,  - 

treachery,  despatched  Window,  one  of  their  own  r^mber,  t«  resume  the 
solicitation  for  a  charter..  Winslow  did  not  succeed  m  procmring  a  patent 
from  the  crown,  but  he  obtained,  after  a  long  delay,  a  grant  of  land  and  a 
charter  of  privileges  from  the  council.  It  was  directed  Jan.  1630]  to 
William  Bradford,  the  existing  governor;  and  the  immumties  it  bestowed 
uere  appropriated  to  him,  his  heirs,  associates,  and  assignees ;  but  Bradlord 
instantly  surrendered  all  that  was  personal  in  the  charter  and  grant,  and  as- 
sociated the  general  court  of  the  freemen  to  the  privileges  it  conferred. 

By  this  charter  of  the  Grand  Council  of  Plymouth,  the  colonists  were 
authorized  to  choose  a  governor,  council,  and  general  court,  fo^tf  enact- 
ment and  execution  of  laws  instrumental  to  the  public  good.    Some  Amer 
can  historians  have  mistaken  this  charter  for  a  patent  from  the  crown.    But 
>  Hazard.    Chalmers.    Trumbull's  History  of  Connecticut. 


148 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


no  such  patent  was  ever  issued ;  and  the  social  community  of  New  Plymouili 
was  never  incorporated  with  due  legal  formality  into  a  body  politic,  but  re- 
mained a  subordinate  and  voluntary  municipal  association,  until  it  was  united 
to  its  more  powerful  neighbour,  the  colony  of  Massachusetts.    Both  before 
and  after  the  reception  of  their  charter,  the  colonists  were  aware  of  the  doubts 
that  might  be  entertained  of  the  validity  of  the  acts  of  government  which  their 
magistrates  exercised.     This  circumstance,  perhaps,  was  not  altogether  un- 
favorable to  the  interests  of  the  people,  and  may  have  contributed  to  the 
liberal  principles  and  conciliatory  strain  by  which  the  administration  of  their 
domestic  government  was  honorably  distinguished  from  that  which  afterwards 
unhappily  prevailed  among  their  neighbours  in  New  England.     But  the  soil 
around  New  Plymouth  was  so  meagre,  and  the  supplies  received  by  the 
))lanters  from  Europe  were  so  scanty  and  infrequent,  that  in  the  tenth  year 
of  their  colonial  existence  their  numbers  did  not  exceed  three  hundred.' 
Their  exertions,  nevertheless,  were  productive  of  consequences  most  happy 
and  interesting.    They  held  up  to  the  view  of  the  oppressed  Puritans  in  the 
parent  state  a  retreat  to  which  persecuted  virtue  might  retire,  and  where 
only  the  enduring  virtue  which  persecution  had  failed  to  conquer  seemed 
capable  of  obtaining  a  permanent  establishment.     At  the  expense  of  the 
noblest  sacrifices  and  most  undaunted  efforts,  this  handful  of  men  laid  the 
foundation  of  civilized  an  J  Christian  society  in  New  England.    A  few  years 
after  their  arrival  at  New  Plymouth,  a  messenger  was  despatched  to  this 
colony  by  the  governor  of  the  Dutch  plantation  on  Hudson's  River,  witii 
letters  congratulating  the  English  on  their  prosperous  and  commendable 
enterprise,  tendering  the  good-will  and  friendly  services  of  the  Dutch,  and 
proposing  a  commercial  intercourse  between  the  two  settlements.     The 
governor  and  council  of  Plymouth  returned  a  courteous  answer,  expressing 
their  grateful  remembrance  of  the  hospitality  which  they  had  received  in  the 
native  country  of  the  Dutch,  and  a  willing  acceptance  of  the  proffered  friend- 
ship.2  Nothing  farther  ensued  from  this  overture  than  a  series  of  small  com- 
mercial deahngs,  and  an  occasional  interchange  of  similar  civilities,  which, 
but  a  few  years  after,  gave  place  to  the  most  inveterate  jealousy,  and  a 
continual  reciprocation  of  complaint  and  menace  between  the  Dutch  and 
English  colonists. 

Various  attempts  had  latterly  been  made  to  emulate  the  successful  estab- 
lishment of  New  Plymouth ;  but  they  had  all  failed,  in  consequence  of  tlic 
neglect  or  inability  of  their  promoters  to  emulate  the  virtues  from  which  tlie 
success  of  this  colonial  enterprise  was  derived.  In  the  year  1622,  a  rival 
colony  was  planted  in  New  England  by  one  Weston,  and  a  troop  of  disor- 
derly adventurers,  who,  in  spite  of  the  friendly  .a^istance  of  the  settlers  at 
New  Plymouth,  speedily  sunk  into  a  state  of  such  misery  and  degradation, 
that  several  of  them  v/ere  reduced  to  become  servants  to  the  Indians  ;  some 
perished  by  hunger  ;  others  betook  themselves  to  robbery,  and  by  theit 
depredations  involved  both  themselves  and  the  colonists  of  New  Plymouth 
in  hostilities  with  the  natives  ;  and  the  rest  were  glad  to  find  their  way  back 
10  Europe.  In  the  following  year,  an  attempt  was  made  on  a  larger  scale, 
under  the  patronage  of  the  Grand  Council  of  Plymouth,  which  bestowed  on 
Captain  Gorges,  the  leader  of  the  expedition,  the  title  of  governor-general 
of  New  England,  with  an  ample  endowment  of  arbitrary  power,  and  on  a 

'  Neal.    Chalmers.     See  Note  V.,  at  the  end  of  the  voliimn. 
»  ColUctioiu  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.    Noal. 


CHAP.  I] 


OBNOXIOITB  MEASURES  OF  LAUD. 


149 


clergyman  who  accompanied  him  the  office  of  bishop  and  superintendent  of 
all  churches  in  this  quarter  of  America.  But  the  condition  of  New  England 
was  very  ill  suited  to  the  entertainment  of  such  functionaries,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  such  institutions  ;  and  the  governor  and  bishop,  deseriuig  their 
charge,  made  haste  to  return  to  a  region  more  adapted  to  the  culture  of 
civil  and  ecclesiastical  dignity.  Of  their  followers,  some  retired  to  Virginia, 
and  others  returned  to  England.^  At  a  later  period  [1626],  a  similar 
undertaking,  conducted  by  Captain  Wollaston,  was  attended  with  a  repetition 
of  the  same  disastrous  issue.  The  followers  of  Wollaston  first  taught  the 
savage  inhabitants  of  this  part  of  America  the  use  of  firearms,  —  a  lesson 
which  ere  long  tho  colonists  of  New  England  had  abundant  reason  to  de- 
plore.' All  these  unsuccessful  plantations  were  attempted  on  land  more 
fertile,  and  in  situations  more  commodious,  than  the  settlers  at  New  Ply- 
mouth enjoyed.  The  scene  of  their  brief  and  unprosperous  existence  w»« 
the  coast  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  where,  a  few  years  later,  a  colony,  which 
was  formed  after  the  model  and  principles  of  the  society  at  New  Plymouth, 
and  whose  origin  now  claims  our  attention,  afforded  the  second  example  of 
a  successful  establishment  in  New  England. 

The  reign  of  Charles  the  First  was  destined  to  produce  the  consummation 
and  the  retribution  of  royal  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny.  Charles  committed 
the  government  of  the  English  church  to  men  who  penly  professed  the 
most  arbitrary  principles,  and  whose  sentiments  far  more  inclined  them  to 
nronaote  an  approximation  to  the  rites  and  practices  of  the  church  of  Rome 
than  to  mediate  an  agreement  among  the  professors  of  the  Protestant  faith. 
Abbot,  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  being  restrained  by  the  liberality  of 
his  principles  and  the  mildness  of  his  temper  from  lending  his  instrumen- 
tality to  the  views  of  the  court,  was  treated  with  harshness,  and,  at  length, 
finally  suspended  from  his  office  [1627],  of  which  the  functions  were  com- 
mitted to  a  board  of  prelates,  of  whom  the  most  eminent  was  Laud,  who 
afterwards  succeeded  to  the  primacy.  From  this  period,  both  in  the  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  administration  of  the  realm,  a  system  of  deliberate- and  in- 
solent invasion  of  every  right  most  valued  by  freemen  and  most  revered  by 
Protestants  was  puisued  with  a  stubborn  pride,  folly,  and  cruelty,  that  at 
length  exhausted  the  patience  of  the  English  people.  To  the  historian  of 
England  the  political  abuses  that  distinguished  this  period  will  probably  ap- 
pear the  most  interesting  features  in  its  history  ;  and,  doubtless,  they  con- 

'  The  moBt  important  act  of  Captain  Gorges's  administration,  that  has  been  transmitted  to  us, 
is  one  which  afibrds  an  explanation  of  a  passage  in  Hudibras,  where  the  New  Englanders  are 
accused  of  hanging  an  innocent,  but  bedrid,  weaver,  instead  of  a  guilty,  but  useful,  cobbler :  — 
"  That  sinners  may  supply  the  place 

Of  suffering  saints  is  a  plain  case. 

Our  brethren  of  New  England  use 

Choice  malefactors  to  excuse. 

And  hang  the  guiltless  in  their  stead, 
%  Of  whom  the  churches  have  less  need, — 

As  lately  happened.    In  a  town 

There  lived  a  cobbler,"  &c.  Hudibras. 

Some  of  Gorges's  people  had  committed  depredations  on  the  Indians,  who  insisted  that  the 
ringleader  should  be  put  to  death.  Gorges  satisfied  and  deceived  them  by  hanging  up  either 
a  dying  man  or  a  deaa  body.  Hutchinson.  Butler's  witty  malice,  studious  to  defame  the  Puri- 
laiiH,  liuB  rescued  from  oblivion  an  act,  of  which  the  whole  merit  or  demerit  is  exclusively  due 
to  his  own  party.  Morrell,  the  clergyman  who  accompanied  Gorges,  notwithstanding  his  dis- 
appointment, conceived  a  very  favorable  opinion  of  New  England,  which  he  expressed  in 
an  elegant  Latin  poem  descriptive  of  the  country.  Collections  of  the  MasaachustUa  Historical 
Society. 
^  Keal.    Uidniixun  (2d  edit.). 


160 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


fn 
i  •'  I 


tributed  at  least  as  powerfully  as  any  otlier  cause  to  the  production  of  the 
ensuing  scene  of  civil  rage  and  warfare.  But,  as  it  was  the  ecclesiastical 
administration  that  mainly  conduced  to  the  peopling  of  America,  it  is  this 
branch  of  the  English  history  that  chiefly  merits  our  altention,  in  investigating 
the  sources  of  the  colonization  of  New  England. 

Not  only  were  the  ancient  ceremonial  observances,  wliich  long  oppression 
had  rendered  so  obnoxious,  exactpd  with  additional  rigor  from  the  increasing 
numbers  of  the  Puritans,  but  .iv.  \.)u  n  ue  oflensive  rites  were  added  to 
the  ecclesiastical  canons,  .'v  desi«i,  vr-ems  to  have  been  formed  of  enabling 
the  church  of  England  to  vio  witii  the  Romish  see  in  splendid  pageantry, 
elaborate  ceremonial,  and  temporal  power.  Laud,  indeed,  boasted  that  he 
had  refused  the  offer  of  a  cardinal's  hat  from  Rome  ;  but  the  offer  was 
justly  considered  a  more  significant  circumstance  than  the  refusal ;  and, 
having  already  assumed  to  himself  the  papal  title  of  His  Holiness,  which  he 
substituted  in  place  of  His  Grace,  liis  tituhr  u)ie  .\i>uiv  have  been  lowered 
instead  of  elevated  by  the  Romish  promotion  which  he  rejected.  The  i  om- 
munion  table  was  converted  into  an  altar,  and  all  persons  were  commanded 
to  bow  to  it  on  entering  the  church.  [1G27.]  All  the  week-day  lectures, 
and  all  afternoon  sermons  on  Sunday,  were  abolished  ;  and,  instead  of  them, 
games  and  sports  were  permitted  to  all  the  people,  ^^  excepting  known  re- 
cusants,^^ who  were  thus,  with  matchless  absurdity,  penally  debarred  from 
practices  which  they  regarded  with  the  utmost  detestation.  Every  minister 
was  commanded,  under  pain  of  deprivation  of  his  benefice,  to  read  i  from 
the  pulpit  a  royal  proclamation  recommendatory  of  games  and  sports  on 
Sunday.  This  ordinance,  like  all  the  other  novehies,  was  productive  of  the 
greater  dissatisfaction,  from  tlie  extent  to  which  Puritan  sentiments  had 
penetrated  into  the  church,  and  the  number  of  Puritan  ministers  witliin  the 
establishment  whom  habit  had  taught  to  fluctuate  between  the  fulfilment  ;^id 
the  evasion  of  the  ancient  obnoxious  canons,  and  trained  partially  to  submit, 
without  at  all  reconciling  to  the  burden.  Nothing  could  be  more  ill-timed 
than  an  aggravation  of  the  load  under  which  these  men  were  laboring ;  it 
reduced  many  to  despair,  inflamed  others  with  vindictive  resentment,  and 
deprived  the  church  of  a  numerous  body  of  her  most  zealous  an^  most 
popular  ministers.  Nor  were  these  the  only  measures  of  the  day  that  were 
calculated  to  excite  discontents  within  as  well  as  without  the  pale  of  the 
ecclesiastical  establishment.  Three  fourths  of  the  English  clergy  were 
Calvinists  ;  yet  Laud  and  the  ruling  prelates,  who  were  Arminians,  caused 
a  royal  edict  to  be  issued  against  the  promulgation  of  the  Calvinistic  tenets ; 
and  while  the  Arminian  pulpits  resounded  with  the  sharpest  invectives 
against  these  tenets,  a  single  sentence  tliat  could  be  construed  into  their 
defence  exposed  the  preacher  to  the  undefined  and  arbitrary  penalty  at- 
tached to  contempt  of  the  king's  authority. 

In  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  the  Churchmen  wore  eager  to  shift  from  them- 
selves upon  the  courts  of  common  law  as  great  a  portion  as  they  could  of 
the  odium  of  administering  the  ecclesiastic.il  statutes^  But  Laud  and  his 
associates,  inaccessible  to  fear,  remorse,  or  shame,  courted  a  monopoly  of 
the  function  and  repute  of  persecution  ;  and  in  the  Court  of  High  Commis- 
sion exercised  such  arbitrary  power,  and  committed  such  enormous  cruelty, 
as  procured  to  this  odious  tribunal  the  name  of  the  Protestant  Inquisition. 
Fines,  imprisonment,  banishment,  the  pillory,  were  the  most  lenient  of  the 
punishments  inflicted  by  ihu  judges  who  presided  in  it.     Its  viciiins  were 


CHAP.  I]  TYRANNICAL  CIVIL  POLICY  OF  CHAJiLtS   1. 


151 


ireciuently  condemned  to  have  their  flesh  torn  from  their  bodies  by  the  lash 
ofilio  executioner,  their  nostrils  slit,  and  their  ears  cut  ofi";  and  in  this  con- 
dition uore  exhibited  to  the  people  as  monuments  of  what  was  termed  the 
lichteoiis  justice  of  their  sovereign  and  the  holy  zeal  of  the  prelates.  Of 
ilie  ext(  t  to  which  this  tyrannical  policy  was  carried  some  notion  may  bt; 
formed  Uom  the  accounts  that  have  been  transmitted  to  us  of  the  proceed- 
iiiK^  within  the  diocese  of  Norwich  alone.  In  the  articles  of  impeachment 
subsequently  exhibited  against  Bishop  Wren,  it  is  affirmed,  that,  during  liis 
nossession  of  that  diocese,  which  lasted  only  for  two  years  and  a  half,  fifty 
laiiiisters  were  ejected  from  their  pulpits  for  not  complying  with  the  pre- 
scribed innovations,  and  lluee  thousand  of  the  laity  were   compelled  to 

abandon  the  kingdom.^       ,    .     .     ,  ...,,•        r  . .,     ,    ^ 

(jonsonant  with  the  ecclesiastical  was  the  civil  policy  ot  Charles  s  gov- 
ernment.    Parliamentary  taxation  was  superseded  by  royal   imposts;    the 
tenure  of  judicial  office  was  altered  from  the  good  behaviour  of  the  judges 
to  the  arbitrary  pleasure  of  the  kuig  ;  every  organ  of  liberty  was  suspended 
or  perverted  ;  and  the  kingdom  at  length  subjected  to  the  exclusive  domin- 
ion of  a  stern  and  uncontrolled  prerogative.     Insult  was  employed,  as  if 
purposely  to  stimulate  the  sensibility   which  injuries  might  not  have  suf- 
ficiently awakened.     A  clergyman  having  alleged,  in  a  sermon  which  he 
preached  before  the  court,  that  bib  Majesty's  simple  requisition  of  money 
from  his  subjects  obliged  them  to  comply  with  it  "  under  pain  of  eternal 
damnation,"  Charles  at  first  coldly  remarked  that  he  owed  the  man  no  thanks 
for  giving  the  king  his  due  ;  but  when  the  discourse  attracted  a  censure  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  its  author  was  forthwith  accounted  a  proper  object 
of  royal  favor,  and  promoted,  first  to  a  valuable  benefice,  and  afterwards  to 
a  bishopric  .^     A  system  of  such  diffusive  and  exasperating  insolence  and 
violence,  employed  by  the  government  against  a  numerous  and  increasing 
body  of  the  people,  needed  only  sufficient  duration  to  provoke  from  general 
rage  a  vindictive  retribution,  the  more  to  be  dreaded  from  the  patience  with 
which  the  heavy  arrear  of  injury  had  been  endured  and  permitted  to  accu- 
mulate.    Bui  before  this  tyrannical  system  had  time  to  mature  the  growing 
discontents,  and  to  produce  extremities  so  perilous  to  the  moderation  and 
humanity  of  all  who  were  to  abide  them,  it  was  destined  to  inspire  efforts 
of  nobler  energy  and  purer  virtue  ;  much  good  was  to  be  educed  from  the 
scene  of  evil  and  disorder  ;  and  great  and  happy  consequences  were  yet  to 
be  engendered  by  the  steady  and  beneficent  dominion  of  Providence  over 
the  malevolent  and  irregular  passions  of  men. 

The  severities  exercised  on  the  Puritans  in  England,  and  the  gradual 
extinction  of  their  fondly  cherished  hopes  of  a  mitigation  of  ecclesiastical 
rigor,  had  for  some  time  directed  their  thoughts  to  that  distant  territory  in 
which  their  brethren  at  Ne  Plymouth  had  achieved  a  secure  establishment 
and  attained  the  enjoymeiu  of  civil  and  religious  liberty.  In  the  last  year 
of  James's  reign  [1625],  a  few  Non-conformist  families  removed  to  New 
England  and  took  possession  of  a  corner  of  INIassachusetts  Bay  ;  but  being 
disappointed  in  the  hope  they  had  entertained  of  the  accession  of  a  sufficient 
number  of  associates  to  secnire  the  formation  of  a  permanent  settlement, 
they  were  on  the  point  of  returning  to  Britain,  when  they  receiveo  the 
agreeable  intelligence  of  the  approach  of  a  numerous  reinforcement.  \\  hite, 
a  Non-conformist  minister  at  Dorchester,  conceived  the  project  of^_;]f^ 

1  Neal.  *^Sander8oir8  Life  of  Charles  the  First.    Rush  worth's  Hint.  VuUect, 


162 


HISTORY  OP  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n 


settloinent  on  the  shore  of  Afassachusetts  Bay  ;  and  by  his  zeal  and  activity 
lie  succeeded  in  forming  an  association  of  a  number  of  the  gentry  in  his 
Mcighbourhood  who  chorishetl  Puritan  opinions,  for  the  purpose  of  conduct, 
ing  ii  colony  to  that  region.  The  views  and  sentiments  that  actuated  the 
leaders  of  this  enterprise  were  committed  to  writing,  and  circulated  amone 
their  friends  under  the  title  of  General  Consideratiorui  for  the  Plantation 
of  J^ew  England. 

The  authors  of  this  remarkable  proclamation  began  by  alluding  to  the 
progress  of  the  Jesuit  establisliments  in  South  America  ;  and  expatiated  on 
the  duty  and  advantage  of  counteracting  the  influence  of  these  institutions 
by  the  introduction  of  a  purer  system  of  Christianity  into  that  quarter  of  the 
world.  They  observed  that  all  the  other  churches  of  Kurope  had  been 
brought  imder  desolation  ;  that  the  same  fate  seemed  to  impend  over  the 
church  of  England  ;  and  that  it  miglit  reasonably  be  supposed  that  the 
Deity  had  provided  the  unoccupied  territory  of  America  as  a  land  of  refuge 
for  those  of  his  people  yet  inhabiting  the  scene  of  approaching  convulsion, 
whom  he  purposed  to  snatch  from  its  dangerous  vortex.  England,  they  re- 
marked, grew  weary  of  her  inhabitants  ;  insomuch  that  man,  the  most 
precious  of  all  creatures,  was  there  reckoned  more  vile  and  base  than  tlie 
earth  he  trod  on  ;  and  children  and  friends  (if  unwealthy)  were  accounted  a 
burdensome  incumbrance,  instead  of  being  prized  and  relished  as  the 
choicest  of  earthly  blessings.  A  taste  for  expensive  living,  they  added, 
prevailed  so  strongly  among  their  countrymen,  and  the  means  of  indulging 
it  had  become  so  exclusively  the  object  of  men's  desires,  that  all  arts  and 
trades  were  tainted  by  sorclid  maxims  and  dishonest  practices  ;  and  the 
English  seminaries  of  learning  abounded  with  so  many  spectacles  and  temp- 
tations of  dissolute  irregularity,  that  vice  was  there  more  effectually  com- 
municated by  example  than  knowledge  and  virtue  were  imparted  by  precept. 
"  The  whole  earth,"  they  declared,  "is  the  Lord's  garden,  and  he  hath 
given  it  to  the  sons  of  Adam  to  be  tilled  and  improved  by  them.  Why, 
then,  should  any  stand  starving  here  for  places  of  habitation,  and  in  tin; 
mean  time  suffer  whole  countries,  as  profitable  for  the  use  of  man,  to  lie 
waste  without  any  improvement  ?  "  They  concluded  by  adverting  to  the 
situation  of  the  colony  of  New  Plymouth,  and  strongly  urged  the  duty  of 
supporting  the  infant  church  which  had  there  been  so  happily  planted. 

Actuated  by  such  views,  these  magnanimous  projectors  purchased  from 
the  Council  of  Plymouth  all  the  territory  extending  in  length  from  three 
miles  north  of  the  River  Merrimac  to  three  miles  south  of  Charles  River, 
and  in  breadth  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Southern  Ocean.  [1628.]  Their 
measures  were  as  vigorous  as  their  designs  were  elevated.  As  the  precur- 
sors of  the  main  body  of  emigrants  whom  it  was  intended  to  transport,  a 
small  troop  of  planters  and  servants  were  despatched  under  John  Endicott, 
one  of  the  leading  projectors,  who,  arriving  safely  in  Massachusetts,  were 
cordially  greeted  and  kindly  assisted  by  the  colonists  of  New  Plymouth, 
and  laid  the  foundations  of  a  town,  which  they  denominated  Salem,  from 
a  Hebrew  word  that  signifies  peace.^    [1628.] 

'  Mather.  Ncal.  An  earlier  writer  than  these  has  described  Endicott  as  "  a  fit  instrument 
to  begi  I  this  wilderness  work;  of  courage  bold,  undaunted,  yet  socialde,  and  of  a  cheerful 
spirit,  lovine,  or  oustere,  as  occasion  served  "  Johnson's  Wondtr-ieorking  Providence  in  j\ein 
England.^  (l.ondon,  1654.)  This  contemporary  historian  of  the  first  emigrations  from  Britain 
to  New  England  represents  their  lenders  as  "  gentlemen  of  good  estate  and  reputation,  de- 
KceiitimifN  or  cuiiiiucliuns  of  noble  families  i  having  large  means,  and  great  yearly  revenue, 
suffii-ient  in  all  reason  to  content ;  wanting  nothing  of  a  worldly  nature  which  could  contribute 
to  the  oleaaurcs,  the  prospects,  or  the  splendor  of  life." 


CIIAP.  I] 


CHARTER  or  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY. 


163 


Hut  all  the  ardor  and  enthusiasm  of  these  adventurers  could  not  blind 
iliem  to  the  perception  of  their  inability  to  maintain  effectual  possession  of 
the  extensive  territory  that  was  ceded  to  them,  without  the  participation  ol 
,„ore  opulent  coadjutors  in  the  enterprise  ;  of  whom,  chiefly  by  the  uiflu- 
(iice  and  activity  of  White,  they  were  enabled  to  procure  a  sufficient  num- 
ber in  London,  among  the  commercial  men  who  openly  professed,  or  secretly 
favored,  the  tenets  ot  the  Puritans.    These  auxiliaries  brought  an  accession 
of  prudent  forecast,  as  well  as  of  pecuniary  resources,  to  the  conduct  of 
tlie  design  ;  and  justly  doubting  the  expediency  of  founding  a  colony  on  the 
liisis  of  a  grant  from  a  company  of  patentees,  who  might,  indeed,  convey  a 
ridit  of  property  in  the  soil,  but  could  not  confer  municipal  jurisdiction, 
or  the  privilege  of  governing  the  society  which  it  was  proposed  to  establish, 
,liey  persuaded  their  associates  to  unite  with  them  in  an  application  to  the 
crown  for  a  royal  charter. 

The  readiness  with  which  this  application  was  granted  [4th  March,  1629], 
and  the  liberal  tenor  of  the  charter  which  was  obtained,  are  perfectly  unac- 
countable, except  on  the  supposition  that  the  king  and  his  counsellors  were 
willing,  at  this  season,  even  at  the  expense  of  some  concessions  to  the 
Puritars  to  disencumber  the  realm,  in  which  they  were  preparing  to  intro- 
duce the  ecclesiastical  innovations  to  which  we  have  already  adverted,  of  a 
body  of  men  from  whom  the  most  unbending  opposition  to  the  new  meas- 
ures might  be  expected  ;  a  politic  design  which  appears  sufficiently  credi- 
ble- although,  at  a  subsequent  period,  Charles  and  his  ministers  resorted  to 
an  opposite  line  of  policy,  when  they  were  sensible  of  the  reflective  influ- 
ence exercised  on  the  Puritan  body  in  England  by  the  spread  and  predom- 
inance of  their  tenets  in  America.     It  seems  impossible,  on  any  other  sup- 
position, to  account  for  the  remarkable  facts,  that,  at  the  very  time  vvhen 
tills  monarch  was  sanctioning  the  exercise  of  despotic  authority  m  Virgmia, 
he  extended  to  a  colony  of  Puritans  a  constitution  containing  all  the  immu- 
nities of  which  the  Virginians  were  divested  ;  and  that,  well  aware  of  the 
purpose  of  the  applicants  to  escape  from  the  constitutions  of  the  church  of 
Eneland,  he  granted  them  a  charter  containing  ample  commendation  ot  the 
religious  ends  they  had  in  view,  without  the  imposition  of  a  smgle  ordmance 
respecting  the  system  of  their  church  government,  or  the  forms  and  ceremo- 
nies of  their  worship.     Nay,  so  completely  did  he  surrender  the  maxims  ot 
his  colonial  policy  to  the  demands  ot^the  projectors  of  a  Puritan  settlement, 
that,  although  he  had  recently  declared,  in  a  public  proclamation,  that  a 
mercantile  company  was  utterly  unfit  to  administer  the  affairs  of  a  remote 
colony  ;  yet,  on  the  present  occasion,  he  scrupled  not,  m  compliance  with 
the  wishes  of  the  mercantile  portion  of  the  adventurers,  to  commit  the  su- 
preme direction  of  the  colony,  which  was  to  be  planted  in  the  province  ot 
Massachusetts  Bay,  to  a  corporation  consisting  chiefly  of  merchants  resi- 
dent in  London.  a  *u  •„ 
The  new  adventurers  were  incorporated  as  a  body  po4itic  ;  and  tneir 
rieht  to  the  territory  which  they  had  purchased  from  the  Council  of  Ply- 
mouth being  confirmed  by  the  king,  they  were  empowered  to  dispose  ot 
the  soil,  and  to  govern  the  people  who  should  settle  upon  it.     Among 
other  patentees  specially  named  in  this  charter  were  feir  Henry  Kosewell, 
one  of  the  earliest  promoters  of  the  design;   Sir  Richard  Saltonstall,  the 
descendant  of  an  ancient  family  in  Northamptonshire  ;  Isaac  .Johnson,  son- 
in-law  of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln  ;  John  Ven,  a  distinguished  citizen  of  Lon- 
VOL.  I.                             20 


II 


'I 


1 


154 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


["OOKli, 


don,  and  commemorated  by  Clarendon,  as  leading  the  city  after  him  in 
seditious  remonstrances ;  and  Samuel  Vassal,^  who  was  afterwards  member 
of  parliament  for  London,  and  had  already  signalized  himself  by  a  strenu- 
ous  opposition  to  the  arbitrary  collection  of  tonnage  and  poundage.  The 
first  governor  of  the  compnny  and  the  first  members  of  a  council  of  assist- 
ants were  named  by  the  king  ;  the  right  of  electing  their  successors  was 
vested  in  the  freemen  of  the  corporation.  The  executive  power  was  com- 
niitted  to  the  governor  and  council ;  the  legislative,  to  the  body  of  freemen, 
who  were  empowered  to  enact  statutes  and  ordinances  for  the  good  of  the 
community,  not  inconsistent  with  the  laws  of  England.  The  adventurers 
obtained  the  same  temporary  exemption  that  had  been  granted  to  tlie  Vir- 
ginian company  from  duties  on  goods  exported  or  imported  ;  and  it  was 
declared,  that,  notwithstanding  their  migration  to  America,  they  and  their 
descendants  should  be  entitled  to  all  the  rights  of  home-born  subjects  of 
England." 

The  meaning  of  this  charter,  with  respect  to  the  ecclesiastical  rights  of 
the  colonists  of  Massachusetts,  has  been  made  the  subject  of  much  contro- 
versial discussion.  By  the  Puritans  and  the  Puritan  writers  of  that  age,  it 
was  sincerely  believed,  and  confidently  maintained,  that  the  intendment  of 
the  charter  was  to  bestow  on  the  colonists  unrestricted  liberty  to  regulate 
their  ecclesiastical  estate  by  the  dictates  of  their  own  judgments  and  con- 
sciences.' The  grantors  were  fully  aware,  and  the  grantees  had  neither  the 
wish  nor  the  power  to  conceal,  that  the  object  of  the  intending  emigrants 
was  to  make  a  peaceable  secession  from  a  church  which  they  could  no 
longer  conscientiously  adhere  to,  and  to  estabhsh  for  themselves,  at  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  an  ecclesiastical  constitution  similar  to  that  which  was  already 
created  and  supported  without  objection  at  New  Plymouth.  A  silent  ac- 
quiescence in  such  designs  was  all  that  could  reasonably  be  expected  from 
the  king  and  his  ministers  ;  and  when  this  emphatic  silence,  on  a  point  which 
could  not  but  be  intimately  present  to  the  thoughts  of  both  parties,  is  coupled 
with  the  king's  ready  departure,  on  the  same  occasion,  from  all  the  arbi- 
trary principles  which  he  was  preparing  to  enforce  in  every  other  branch  of 
his  domestic  and  colonial  administration,  it  seems  to  follow,  by  inevitable 
inference,  that  Charles  was  at  this  time  not  unwiUing  to  make  a  partial 
sacrifice  of  authority,  in  order  to  rid  himself  of  those  Puritan  petitioners ; 
and  that  the  interpretation  which  they  gave  to  their  charter  was  perfectly 
correct.  And  yet  writers  have  not  been  wanting,  wiiom  enmity  to  tJie  Puri- 
tans has  induced  to  explain  this  charter  in  a  manner  totally  repugnant  to 
every  rule  of  legal  or  equitable  construction.  It  is  a  maxim  of  iMiglish  la^, 
and  the  dictate  of  common  sense  and  universal  equity,  that,  in  all  cases 
where  the  import  of-  a  compact  is  doubtful,  the  bias  of  presumptive  con- 
struction ought  to  incline  against  the  pretensions  of  that  party  whose  oflice 

'  From  the  monument  erected  to  the  memory  of  tliis  man  by  his  great-grandson  at  Hostoii, 
it  appears  that  he  was  the  son  of  the  gallant  John  Vassa^,  wlio,  in  1589,  at  his  own 


CXpiillSI', 

equipped  and  commnnded  two  ships  of  war  against  the  Spanish  Armada.    The  son,  exerting 

gainst  foreigii  invasion, 
>ourt  of  Star  Chnnibcr. 
iipensation  for  ]m  losses,  and 
resolved  that  his  personal  sufferings  should  be  further  considered.  "But  the  rage  of  the  times, " 
fiiys  his  enilaph,  "  and  the  neglect  of  proper  application  since,  have  left  to  his  family  only  tho 
lionorof  that  vote  and  resolution."      Dodsley  s  Annual  Register,  17GG. 


liimscif  as  strenuously  against  domestic  tyranny  as  the  father  had  done  ngai 
was  deprived  of  his  liberty  and  of  the  greater  part  of  his  fortune  by  the  Co 
Tlie  Long  Parliament  voted   him  upwards  of  £  10,000,  as  a  compensati 


«  Mather. 
('Id  edit.). 
*  Maitjer. 


Neal.    HMUAihison'B  ColtectioH  of  Mansachusetts  Papers.    Hazard.    Oldmixoii 
Neal      IS'cttl's  W'ttorij  of  the  Puritans. 


CHAP.  I] 


CHARTER  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  BAY. 


155 


ard.    Oldmixon 


;t  was  to  speak,  and  who  had  the  power  to  clear  every  ambiguity  away. 
Tn  defiance  of  this  rule,  those  writers  have  insisted  that  the  silence  oi  tlie 
rharter  respecting  the  ecclesiastical  state  of  the  colony  iniphed  the  anposi- 
,  on  on  the  colonists  of  everv  particular  ordinance  and  institution  ol  tlie 
Zrch  of  England.     The  most  eminent  writer  of  this  party  has  taken  occa- 
1  on  from  hence  to  reproach  the  colonists  of  Massachusetts  Bay  with  having 
id  the  foundations  of  their  church  establishment  in  fraud.     "  Without  re- 
lard  "  says  this  distinguished  author,  "  to  the  sentiments  of  that  monarch, 
mAev  the  sanction  of  whose  authority  they  settled  in  America,  and  Ironi 
vhom  they  derived  right  to  act  as  a  body  politic,  and  m  contempt  ol  the 
Lws  of  England,  with  which  the  charter  required  that  none  of  their  acts  or 
ordinances  should  be  inconsistent,  they  adopted  in  their  infant  church  that 
form  of  policy  which  has  since  been  distinguished  by  the  name  ol  Inde- 
'  endent."     He  accounts  for  the  pretermission  in  the  charter  of  a  particular 
vhich  was  unquestionably  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  both  parties,  by  re- 
marking, that  "the  king  seems  not  to  have  foreseen,  nor  to  have  suspected, 
the  secret  intentions  of  those  who  projected  the  measure"  ;  and  he  explains 
the  conduct  of  the  colonists,  by  pronouncing  that  they  were  "  animated  with 
a  spirit  of  innovation  in  civil  policy  as  well  as  in  rehgion."  ]    But  surely  no 
impartial  inquirer  will  ever  esteem  it  a  reproach  to  the  Puritans,  driven  by 
'  e  secution  from  their  native  land,  that  they  did  not  cross  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
and  settle  in  a  desert  for  the  purpose,  or  with  the  mtention,  of  cultivating  a 
more  perfect  conformity  with  the  principles  and  policy  of  their  oppressor 
The  provision  in  their  charter,  that  the  laws  to  be  enacted  by  them  should 
not  be  repugnant  to  the  jurisprudence  of  England,  could  never  be  under- 
stood to  enjoin  any  thing  'farther  than  a  general  conformity  with  the  legisla- 
tion of  the  parent  state,  suitable  to  the  acknowledged  dependence  of  the 
colony  on  the  main  trunk  of  the  British  dominions.    The  unsuspectmg  igno- 
rance, too,  that  is  imputed  to  the  king  and  his  counsellors,  appears  quite  in- 
credible, when  we  consider  that  the  example  of  New  Plymouth,  where  a 
hare  exemption  from  express  restrictions  had  been  followed  by  the  estabhsh- 
ment  of  an  Independent  church,  was  fresh  in  their  recollection  ;  that  they 
were  avowed  and  notorious  Puritans  who  now  applied  for  permission  to  re- 
pair to  the  land  where  that  constitution  was  established ;  and  above  all,  that, 
n  their  application  to  the  king,  they  expressly  desired  leave  to  withdraw  in 
peace  from  the  bosom  of  a  church  to  whose  ordmances  they  confessed  that 
Ihey  could  not  conscientiously  conform.^  Whether  the  king  and  Laud  were 
or  were  not  aware  of  the  intentions  of  the  puritans,  they  must  surely  be  re- 
garded as  the  best  judges  of  the  extent  of  concession  which  they  themselves 
intended  to  convey  ;  and  by  their  acquiescence  in  the  constitution  which 
the  planters  of  Massachusetts  Bay  forthwith  established,  they  ratified  a  prac- 
tical interpretation  of  the  charter  in  conformity  with  the  views  of  the  Pun- 
tans,  and  confessed  that  this  proceeding  imported  no  violation  either  ol  gen- 
eral law  or  particular  paction.     When  they  afterwards  became  sensible  tha 
the  progress  of  Puritan  establishments  in  New  England  mcreased  the  ferment 
which  their  own  measures  were  creating  in  the  parent  state,  they  mterposed 
to  check  the  intercourse  between  the  two  countries  ;  but  yet  tacitly  ac- 
knowledged that  the  intolerant  system  which  they  pursued  m  England  was 
excluded  by  understood  compact  from  the  colonial  territory. 

goon  after  the  power  of  the  adventurers  to  establish  a  colony  was  rendered 
~        I  Robertaon'B  History  of  America,  B.  x.  •  '  Mutiier. 


166 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


complete  by  the  royal  charter  [1st  May,  1629],  they  equipped  and  de- 
spatched five  ships  for  New  England,  containing  three  hundred  and  fifty 
emigrants,  chiefly  zealous  Puritans,  accompanied  by  some  eminent  Non- 
conformist ministers.  The  regrets  which  an  eternal  farewell  to  their  native 
land  was  calculated  to  inspire,  the  distressing  inconvenience  of  a  long 
voyage  to  persons  unaccustomed  to  the  sea,  and  the  formidable  scene  of 
toil  and  danger  that  confronted  them  in  the  barbarous  land  where  so  many 
preceding  emigrants  had  found  an  untimely  grave,  seem  to  have  vanished 
entirely  from  the  minds  of  these  men,  supported  by  the  worth  and  dignity 
of  the  design  which  they  were  combined  to  accomplish.  Their  hearts  were 
knit  to  each  other  by  community  of  generous  purpose  ;  and  they  experi- 
enced none  of  those  jealousies  which  invariably  spring  up  in  confederacies 
for  ends  merely  selfish,  among  persons  unequally  qualified  to  promote  the 
object  of  their  association.  Behind  them,  indeed,  was  the  land  of  their 
lathers  ;  ^  but  it  had  long  ceased  to  wear  towards  them  a  benign  or  paternal 
countenance  ;  and  in  forsaking  it  they  fled  from  the  prisons  and  scaffolds  to 
which  Christians  and  patriots  were  daily  consigned.  Before  them  lay  a  vast 
and  dreary  wilderness  ;  but  they  hoped  to  irradiate  its  gloom  by  kindhng 
and  preserving  there  the  sacred  fire  of  religion  and  liberty,  which  regal  and 
pontifical  tyranny  was  striving  to  extinguish  in  the  shrines  of  England, 
whence  they  carried  its  embers.^  They  confidently  believed  that  the  re- 
ligious and  political  tenets  which  had  languished  under  a  protracted  perse- 
ciUion  in  Europe  would  now,  at  length,  shine  forth  in  their  full  lustra  in 
America.  Establishing  an  asylum  where  the  professors  of  these  doctrines 
in'ght  a»  aii  lines  find  shelter,  they  justly  expected  to  derive  continual  ac- 
cessions to  tiie  vigor  of  their  own  principles  from  the  fresh  arrival  of  suc- 
ceedine"  emigrants,  willing,  like  them,  to  transplant  their  uprooted  patriotic 
affection  :•?  a  soil  where  it  might  flourish  in  alliance  with  the  cultivation  and 
enjoyment  of  truth  and  liberty.  They  did  not  postpone  the  practice  of  piety 
till  the  couf!"  jion  of  their  voyage  ;  but,  occupied  continually  with  the  exer- 
cises if  devotion,  they  caused  the  ocean  which  they  traversed  to  resound 
with  unwonted  acclaim  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  to  its  Creator.  The  sea- 
men, catching  their  spirit,  readily  joined  in  all  their  religious  exercises  and 
ordinances,  and  expressed  tlieir  belief  that  they  had  practised  the  first  volun- 
tary sea-fasts  that  had  ever  been  performed  in  the  world.  After  a  pros- 
perous voyage,  tlie  emigrants  had  the  satisfaction  of  reuniting  themselves  to 
their  friends  already  established  at  Salem  under  John  Endicott,  who  had 
been  appointed  ueputy-governorfof  the  colony.'     [June  24,  1629.] 

To  the  assemi  age  of  men  thus  collected  the  formation  of  a  church  ap- 
peared the  most  interesting  of  all  their  concerns,  and  it  occupied,  accord- 
mgly,  their  earliest  and  earnest  deliberation.     They  had  been  advised  to 

■  Francis  Hi(win8on,  one  of  the  most  able,  devout,  and  popular  minister*  in  England,  was 
a  passenger  in  iTiis  fleet.  When  he  perceived  that  he  was  taking  his  last  look  of  the  Fnglisih 
coast,  he  summoned  his  rhildren  and  the  other  passengers  to  the  deck  of  the  veisel,  and  said 
to  them,  "  We  will  not  say,  as  the  separatists  were  wont  to  say  at  their  leaving  of  England, 
'  Farewell,  Babylon  '  Farewell,  Rome  I '  But  we  will  say.  Farewell,  dear  England  !  Farewell, 
the  church  of  («od  in  England,  and  all  Christian  fiicnds  there  !  We-separate  not  from  the  cluirrh 
of  England,  but  from  its  corruptions.  We  ^o  to  practise  the  positive  part  of  church  reformn 
tion,  and  propagate  th«?  gospel  in  America.' 

*  Even  the  pious  George  Herbert,  though  devotedly  attached  lo  royolty  and  the  church  of 
England,  thus  expressed  himself  at  this  period  in  \m  TtmpU  of  Soured  Poenu :  — 

"  Religion  stands  a-tiptoe  in  our  land, 
Ready  to  pass  to  the  American  strand." 

9  ' 'ather.     Seal.     z-Viax' s  .Yod  Sng: and  ifii-graphif.     Walton's  FJfc  cf  ^arheii. 


:i':,m^ 


CHAP.  I] 


CHURCH  AT  SALEM. 


167 


rliscuss  and  settle,  before  their  departure  from  England,  the  form  of  church 
government  which  was  to  be  established  in  the  colony  ;  but,  neglectmg  this 
Hvice  they  had  proceeded  no  farther  tiian  to  express  their  general  assent 
n  the 'principle,  that  the  reformation  of  the  church  .  as  to  be  attempted  ac- 
cording to  the  written  word  of  God.    They  now  applied  to  their  brethren  at 
Npvv  Plymouth,  and  desired  to  be  acquainted  with  the  grounds  of  the  con- 
Lit-uion  which  was  there  adopted  ;  and,  having  heard  these  fully  explained, 
:,,(j  devoted  some  time  to  a  diligent  comparison  of  the  model  with  the  war- 
nnts  of  Scripture  which  were  cited  in  its  vindication,  and  earnestly  be- 
ousht  the  enlightening  aid  of  that  Being  who  alone  can  teach  his  creatures 
how  to  worship  him  in  an  acceptable  manner,  they  declared  their  entire  ap- 
nrobation  of  the  sister  church,  and  closely  copied  her  structure  in  the  coin- 
osition  of  their  own.     [Aug.  6,  1629.]     They  united  together  m  religious 
ocietv  by  a  covenant,  in  which,  after  a  solemn  dedication  of  themselves  to 
ive  in  the  fear  of  God,  and  practise  a  strict  conformity  to  his  will,  so  lar  as 
he  should  be  pleased  to  reveal  it  to  them,  they  engaged  to  each  other  to 
cultivate  watchfulness  and  tenderness  in  their  mutual  intercourse ;  to  repress 
ipalousies,  suspicions,  and  secret  emotions  of  spleen  ;  and,  m  all  cases  ol 
Jffence,  to  suffer,  forbear,  and  forgive,  after  the  example  of  their  divme 
pattern.     They  promised  in  the  congregation  to  restrain  the  indulgence  ot 
?  vain-glorious  forwardness  to  display  their  gifts  ;  and  m  their  intercourse, 
whether  with  sister  churches  or  with  the  mass  of  mankmd,  to  study  a  con- 
versation remote  from  offence  and  from  every  appearance  of  evil.      Ihey 
eneaeed,  by  a  dutiful  obedience  to  all  who  should  be  set  over  them  in  church 
ofcommonwealth,  to  encourage  them  to  a  fahhful  discharge  of  their  func- 
tions; and  they  expressed  their  resolution  to  approve  themselves,  m  their 
articular  callings,  the  stewards  and  servants  of  God  ;  shunmng  idleness  as 
he  bane  of  every  community,  and  dealing  hardly  or  oppressively  with  none 
of  the  human  race.  The  system  of  ecclesiastical  policy  and  discipline  which 
they  adopted  was  that  which  distinguished  the  chivrches  of  the  Independen  s, 
and  which  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  consider.     The  form  of  public 
worship  which  they  instituted  rejected  a  liturgy  and  every  superfluous  cere- 
Tnony,  and  was  adapted  to  the  'strictest  standard  of  Calvinistic  simphcity 
They  elected  a  pastor,  a  teacher,  and  an  elder,  whom  they  consecrated  to 
their  respective  offices  by  imposition  of  the  hands  of  the  brethren      All 
who  were  on  that  occasion  admitted  members  of  the  church  signified  their 
assent  to  a  confession  of  faith  digested  by  their  teachers,  and  gave  an  ac- 
count of  the  foundation  of  their  own  hopes  as  Christians  ;  and  it  was  estab- 
hshed  as  an  ordinance,  that  no  person  should  thereafter  be  Pf'^'tted  to  sub- 
scribe the  covenant,  or  be  received  into  communion  with  the  church,  until 
he  had  satisfied  the  elders  with  respect  to  the  soundness  of  his  faith  a;icl  the 

•""TLlonstitutionrof  which  we  have  now  beheld  an  abstract,  and  especially 
the  cov^jnant  or  social  engagement  so  fraught  with  ?entiments  ot  exalted 
piety  and  genuine  benevolence,  has  excited  the  derision  of  some  writers 
S  refuse  to  regard  the  speculative  liberality  which  it  indicates  m  any 
Jer  point  of  viel  than  as  contrasted  with  the  practical  -tolerance  whd 
the  framers  of  it  soon  after  displayed.  But  however  agreeable  th^  aspect 
may  be  to  eyes  that  watch  for  tlie  follies  and  frailties  of  the  wise  and  rt 
it  is  not  the  only  light  in  which  the  tj-ajisaction  we  hav-e  now  considered  will 
~"  ~  >  Mather.    Neal. 


168 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


present  itself  to  humane  and  liberal  minds.  Philosophy  admits  that  the 
human  soul  is  enlarged  and  ennobled  by  the  mere  purpose  of  excellence ; 
and  religion  has  pronounced  that  even  those  designs  which  men  are  not 
able  or  worthy  to  accomplish  may  beneficially  affect  the  minds  that  have 
sincerely  entertained  them.  The  error  of  the  inhabitants  of  Salem  was  a 
universal  trait  and  feature  of  the  era  to  which  they  belonged  ;  the  virtues 
they  demonstrated  were  peculiar  to  themselves  and  their  Puritan  brethren. 

In  the  ecclesiastical  constitution  which  they  established,  and  the  senti- 
ments and  purposes  which  they  declaratively  interwove  with  it,  they  ren- 
dered a  sincere  and  laidable  homage  to  the  rights  of  conscience  and  the 
requirements  of  piety  ;  and  these  principles,  no  doubt,  exercised  a  bene- 
ficial influence  on  the  practice,  which,  unhappily,  they  did  not  entirely  con- 
trol.  The  influence  of  principles  that  tend  to  the  restraint  of  human  fe- 
rocity and  intolerance  is  frequently  invisible  to  mortal  eyes,  because  it  is 
productive  chiefly  of  negative  consequences  ;  and  when  great  provocation 
or  alarm  has  prompted  the  professors  of  those  principles  to  violate  the  rela- 
tive restraint,  they  will  be  judged  with  little  candor,  if  charity  neglect  to 
supply  the  imperfection  of  that  knowledge  to  which  we  are  limited  by  the 
narrow  and  partial  range  of  our  view,  and  to  suggest  the  secret  and  difRciih 
forbearance  which  may  have  preceded  the  visible  action  which  we  condemn 
or  deplore.  In  tlie  very  first  instance  of  intolerant  proceeding  whh  which 
the  adversaries  of  the  Puritans  have  reproached  this  American  cominunity, 
the  influence  of  genuine  piety  in  mitigating  human  impatience  was  striknigly 
apparent.  It  is  a  notable  fact,  that,  although  these  emigrants  were  collected 
from  a  body  of  men  embracing  such  diversity  of  opinion  respecting  church 
government  and  the  rites  of  worship  as  then  prevailed  among  the  Puritans 
of  England,  and  though  they  had  landed  in  America  without  havirig  pre- 
viously ascertained  how  far  they  were  likely  to  agree  on  this  very  point,  for 
the  sake  of  which  they  incurred  banishment  from  their  native  country,  the 
constitution  which  was  copied  from  the  church  of  New  Plymouth  gave  satis- 
faction to  almost  every  individual  among  them. 

Two  brothers,  however,  of  the  name  of  Brown,  one  a  lawyer,  and  the 
other  a  merchant,  both  of  them  men  of  note  and  among  the  number  of  the 
original  patentees,  dissented  from  this  constitution,  and  arguing,  with  great 
absurdity,  that  all  who  adhered  to  it  would  infallibly  become  Anabaptists, 
endeavoured  to  procure  converts  to  their  opinion,  and  to  establish  a  sep- 
arate congregation,  on  a  model  more  approximated  to  the  forms  of  the 
church  of  England.  The  defectiveness  of  their  argument  was  supplied  by 
the  vehemence  of  their  clamor ;  and  they  obtained  a  favorable  audience  from 
a  few  persons  who  regarded  with  unfriendly  eye  the  discipline  which  the 
provincial  church  was  disposed  to  exercise  upon  offenders  against  the  rules 
of  morality.  Endicott,  the  governor,  called  those  men,  together  vyitli  the 
ministers,  before  a  general  assembly  of  the  people,  who,  after  hearing  botn 
parties,  repeated  their  approbation  of  the  system  that  had  been  established  ; 
and,  as  the  two  brothers  still  persisted  in  their  attempts  to  creater  a  schism 
in  the  church,  and  even  endeavoured  to  excite  a  mutiny  against  the  govern- 
ment, they  were  declared  unfit  to  remain  in  the  colony,  and  compelled  to 
reembark'and  depart  in  the  vessels  in  which  they  had  accompanied  tlic 
other  emigrants  in  the  voyage  from  England.^     Theif  departure  restored 

"i"  MatherT"  Nonirijn  theTrretiirn  to  England,  thoy  preferred  a  cornphiint  ngainst  thocnlo- 
nista  o»oppre««ve  deraoanour  lo  ihemgolvcs  and  enmity  to  the  church  or  tnguina.  The  totai 


CHAP-  M 


INTOLERANCE  OF  THE  SETTLERS. 


169 


K.rmonv  10  the  colonists,  who  were  endeavourmg  to  complete  their  settle- 
ment and  extend  their  occupation  of  the  country,  when  they  were  mter- 
Tnted  bv  the  approach  of  winter,  and  the  ravages  of  disease,  which  quickly 
Iporived  them  of  nearly  one  half  of  their  number,  but  produced  no  other 
'hanse  on  their  minds  thai  to  cause  the  sentiments  of  hope  and  fear  to  con- 
Jvse  more  steadily  to  the  Author  of  their  existence. 

Notwithstanding  the  censure  with  which  some  writers  have  commented 
„n  tlie  banishment  of  the  two  individuals  whose  case  we  have  remarked, 
L  iustice  of  the  proceeding  must  commend  itself  to  the  sentiments  ot  all 
Lartial  men  ;  nor  would  it  have  been  necessary  to  advert  to  the  charge 
o  intolerance  to  which  the  colonists  have  been  exposed,  if  their  conduct 
nd  never  given  juster  occasion  to  it.    But,  unfortunately,  a  great  proportion 
nf  the  Puritans  at  this  period  were  deeply  infected  with  the  prevalent  error 
of  their  age,i  and  regarded  as  impossible  the  peaceable  coexistence  ol  dil- 
.rent  sects  in  the  same  community,  — a  notion  strongly  confirmed,  it  not 
nrisinallv  suggested  to  them,  by  the  treatment  which  they  received  from  their 
Hversaries.     If  it  was  reasonably  incumbent  on  men,  who  were  themselves 
the  victims  of  persecution,  to  abstain  from  what  their  own  experience  had 
Pelingly  shown  them  to  be  hateful  and  odious,  it  was  natural  that  these 
nen,  flying  to  deserts  for  the  sake  of  particular  practices  and  opm.ons, 
tould  desire  and  expect  to  see  the  objects  of  their  pamful  sacrifice  flourish 
nnmolested  and  undisputed  in  the  scene  of  their  retirement.    The  suffermgs 
hevhad  endured  from  their  adversaries  they  considered  as  the  legitimate 
consequence  of  the  pernicious  errors  that  these  adversaries  had  imbibed  ; 
and  they  customarily  regarded  their  opponents  as  the  enemies  of  their  per- 
ons,  as  well  as  persecutors  of  their  tenets.     The  activity  of  government  in 
suDDort  of  a  system  of  rehgious  doctrines  they  were  far  from  condemning 
i„  the  abstract.     They  admitted  the  propriety  of  such  interposition,  and 
condemned  it  only  when  it  seemed  to  them  erroneously  directed.     Even 
when  oppressed  themselves,  they  exclaimed  against  mdiscrimmate  tolera- 
tion    They  contradicted  so  far  their  own  principles  ;  and  mamtamed  that 
hunian  beings  might  and  ought  to  punish  what  God  alone  could  correct  and 
iter.     Some  of  them,  it  is  true,  had  already  anticipated  the  sentiments  by 
which  at  a  later  period  the  Independents  were  generally  characterized,  and 
which  induced  them  to  reject  all  connection  between  church  and  state,  and 
disallow  the  competence  of  interposing  magisterial  authority  to  sustain  one 
church  or  to  suppress  or  d':courage  another.  ,     ,    ,,     r  .1         1  „:.*, 

fint  very  opposite  sentiments  prevailed  among  the  bulk  of  the  colonists 
of  Massachusetts,  who  came  to  America  fresh  from  the  mfluence  of  perse- 

.lU^;:^  which  their  complaint  experienced  (Chdmer^;)  singly  confirms  j|l«  °f "'°"  ^'''^^ 

Tk^,r.vi:  :s»"r§;f  ,lfa  r.,xr^^^^^^^^ 

Anoth..r;in  a  work  published  in  1W5,  thus  ^^F^*^^  »"™  it  thlm  ofit     I  can  ra"her^8tand 
have  liberty  of  conscience,  and  that  .t  >^I«''•«««";'""  t° ''''^»^*7"^  ^  '„.^^^^^^^ 

„, I  ,i.L  roolv  tr,  this.     It  18  an  astonishment  that  the  brains  ot  men  sliouia  do  paruwieu 

insmh  irnpious'ignorance."      Kelkaap's  History  nf  jY«c  Iiamp:>htre. 


160 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


cution  and  had  not,  like  their  brethren  at  New  Plymouth,  the  advantage  of 
an  intermediate  residence  in  a  land  where  (to  a  certam  extent,  at  least')  a 
peaceful  coexistence  of  different  sects  was  demonstrated  to  be  not  merely 
practicable,  but  signally  promotive  of  the  most  excellent  graces  of  Christian 
character.  Much  might  be  urged,  and  will  doubtless  suggest  itself  to  every 
liberal  mind,  in  extenuation  of  their  error,  of  which  tlie  bitter  leaven  con- 
tinued long  to  disturb  their  peace  and  felicity.  But  indulgence  must  not  be 
confounded  with  approval  ;  and  the  considerations  which  may  be  allowed  to 
mitigate  our  censure  of  the  intolerant  spirit  which  these  people  displayed  can 
never  entitle  this  spirit  to  the  commendation  of  virtue.  It  was  sharpened 
by  the  copious  infusions  which  the  colony  received  of  the  feelings  excited 
in  England  by  the  increased  severity  of  persecution,  from  which  the  victims 
began  to  fly  in  increasing  numbers  to  America. 

The  British  empire  in  America  underwent,  about  this  period,  some  vicis- 
situdes, which  in  after  years  affected  materially  the  prosperity  both  of  New 
England  and  of  the  other  colonial  establishments  in  the  same  quarter  of  the 
world.     The  war  which  the  king  so  wantonly  declared  against  France  in 
1627,  and  which  produced  only  disgrace  and  disaster  to  his  arms  in  Europe, 
was  a'ttended  with  events  of  a  very  different  complexion  in  America.    Sir 
David  Kirk,  having  obtained  a  commission  to  attack  the  American  domin- 
ions of  France,  invaded  Canada  in  the  summer  of  1628 ;  and  so  successful 
was  the  enterprise,  tliat  in  July,  1629,  Quebec  was  reduced  to  sui:rende, 
to  the  arms  of  England.    Thus  was  the  capital  of  New  France  subdiied  by 
the  English,  about  one  hundred  and  thirty  years  before  they  achieved  its 
final  conquest  by  the  swofd  of  Wolfe.     But  the  important  tidings  had  not 
been  received  in  Europe  when  peace  was  reestablished  between  France  and 
England  ;  and  Charles,  by  the  subsequent  treaty  of  St.  Germain,  not  only 
restored  this  valuable  acquisition  to  France,  but  expressed  the  cession  m 
terms  of  such  extensive  application,  as  undeniably  inferred  a  recognition  of 
the  French,  and  a  surrender  of  the  British  claims  to  the  province  of  Nova 
Scotia.^  This  arrangement  portended  vexation  and  injury  to  the  settlements 
of  the  English  ;  and  the  sequel  of  our  narrative  will  demonstrate  how  fully 
the  sinister  portent  was  accomplished. 

"  >  It  was  not  till  the  year  1619  (the  year  preceding  ihe  departure  of  the  Plymouth  gettlers 
from  Leyden),  that  the  ganauinary  perseeuLon  of  the  Arrainians,  to  which  1  have  already 
alluded,  occurred  in  Hollanaf.  ,    ,,    „  n    e      .v\ 

*  Clmmvlmn's  Voyage.  Oldmixon.  Chalmers.  "It  is  remarkable  "  says  Professor  Kal„,, 
"that  the  French  were  doubtful  whether  they  should  reclaim  Canada  from  the  English,  or 
leave  it  to  them.  Many  were  of  opinion  that  it  was  better  to  keep  the  people  in  I  rancc,  ami 
employ  them  in  all  sorts  of  manufactures,  which  would  oblige  the  other  European  powers  who 
had  colonies  in  America  to  bring  their  raw  goods  to  French  ports,  and  take  French  manafaf 
tures  in  return  "  But  the  prevalent  opinion  was,  that  the  reclamation  and  retention  ot  tanada 
would  promote  the  navaf  power  of  France,  and  was  necessary  to  counterbalance  the  rising 
colonial  empire  of  England.      Kalni's  Travels  in  Jforth  America. 


[BOOK  II      I     CHAP,  n.]     TRANSFER  OF  THE  MASSACHUSETTS  CHARTER. 


161 


advantage  of 
,  at  least')  a 
)e  not  merely 
s  of  Christian 
tself  to  every 
r  leaven  con- 
3  must  not  be 
be  allowed  to 
displayed  can 
/as  sharpened 
slings  excited 
;h  the  victims 

1,  some  vicis- 
both  of  New 
quarter  of  the 
ist  France  in 
ns  in  Europe, 
tmerica.  Sir 
erican  doniin- 
so  successful 
to  surrender 
ie  subdiied  bv 
y  achieved  its 
idings  had  not 
3n  France  and 
main,  not  only 
the  cession  in 
recognition  of 
vince  of  Nova 
;he  settlements 
rate  how  fully 


Plymouth  settlers 
ih  I  have  already 

B  ProfoBBor  Kalni, 
m  the  English,  or 
pie  in  France,  ami 
ipoan  powers  w!i» 
s  French  manufar- 
stcntion  of  Canada 
balance  the  rising 


CHAPTER    II. 

ThP  Charter  Government  transferred  from  England  to  MaasachuscttB.  —  NumerouB  Emigra- 
tion —  Foundation  of  Boston.  — Hardships  endured  by  the  new  Settlers.  —  Disfranchise- 
ment of  Dissenters  in  the  Colony.  —  Influence  of  the  provincial  Clergy.  — John  Cotton  and 
1 18  Colleagues  and  Successors.  —  Williams's  Schism  — he  founds  Providence. — Represent- 
n'tive  AssMubly  estiiblished  in  Massachusetts.  —  Arrival  >f  Hugh  Peters— and  Henry  Van«, 
who  is  elected  Governor.  —  Foundation  of  Connecticut  — and  New  Haven. —War  witli 
ttie  Pequod  Indians.  —  Severities  exercised  by  the  victorious  Colonists.  —  Disturbances 
r  rented  by  Mrs.  Hutchinson.  —  Colonization  of  Rhode  Island  — and  of  New  Hampshire  and 
Mdine  —Jealousy  and  fluctuating  Conduct  of  the  King.  —  Measures  adopted  ajjai-jst  the 
Liberties  of  Massachusetts  —  interrupted  by  the  Civil  Wars.  —  State  of  New  England  — 
population  —  Laws  — Manners. 

The  directors  of  the  New  England  Company  in  Britain  now  exerted  the 
utmost  diligence  to  reinforce  the  colony  they  had  founded  with  a  numerous 
body  of  additional  settlers.     [1629.]     Their  designs  were  promoted  by  the 
lisror  and  intolerance  of  Laud's  administration,  which  progressively  multiply- 
in2  die  hardships  imposed  on  all  Englishmen  who  scrupled  entire  conformity 
to  his  ecclesiastical  ordinances,  proporiionably  diminished,  in  their  estima- 
tion, the  danger  and  hardships  attending  a  removal   to  America.^    Many 
peopie  began  to  treat  with  the  company  for  a  settlement  in  New  England  ; 
iind  several  of  those  new  adventurers  were  persons  of  distinguished  family 
and  opulent  estate.     But  foreseeing  the  misrule  inseparable  from  the  resi- 
dence of  the  legislative  authority  in  Britain,  they  demanded,  as  a  previous 
condition  of  their  emigration,  that  the  chartered  rights  and  all  the  powers 
of  government  should  be  transferred  to  New  England,  and  exercised  withm 
the  territory  of  the  colony.     The  directors  of  the  company,  who  had  in- 
curred a  considerable  expense,  with  little  prospect  of  speedy  remuneration, 
were  willing  to  secure  the  settlement  of  so  many  wealthy  and  respectable 
colonists  in  their  domains,  even  at  the  expense  of  the  surrender  that  was 
demanded  from  them  ;  but,  doubting  its  legality,  they  thought  proper  to  con- 
sult lawyers  of  eminence  on  the  subject.     Unaccountable  as  it  must  appear 
to  every  person  in  the  slightest  degree  conversant  with  legal  considerations, 
the  lawyers  who  were  consuUed  delivered  an  opinion  favorable  to  the  wishes 
of  the  emigrants  ;  and  accordingly  it  was  determined,  by  general  consent, 
"  that  the  charter  should  be  transferred,  and  the  (government  be  settled  m 
New  England.''     [29th  Aug.,  1629.]     To  the  existing  members  of  the 
corporation  who  sliould  still  remain  in  Britain  was  reserved  a  share  in  the 
trade,  stock,  and  profits  of  the  company,  for  the  term  of  seven  years.i     By 
this  transaction,  —  one  of  the  most  singular  that  is  recorded  m  the  history 
of  a  civilized  people,  — were  the  municipal  rights  and  liberties  of  the  in- 
habitants of  New  England  established  on  a  firm  and  respectable  basis. 

When  we  consider  the  means  by  which  this  was  acconipHshed,  we  find 
ourselves  beset  with  doubts  and  difficuUies,  of  which  the  only  rational  solu- 
tion that  presents  itself  is  the  supposition  we  have  already  adopted,  that  the 
king  was  at  this  time  exceedingly  desirous  to  rid  the  realm  of  the  Puritans, 
and  had  unequivocally  signified  to  them,  that,  if  they  would  withdraw  to 
some  other  part  of  lii^  dominions,  and  employ  then-  energie.?  in  subduing 
the  deserts  of  America,  instead  of  disturbing  his  operations  in  England,  they 


Mather.     HuwhiissOu. 


VOL.    I. 


21 


102 


HISTORY  OF  NOUTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11 


should  have  pemiission  to  arrange  the  structure,  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  of 
their  provincial  commonwealth,  according  to  their  own  discretion.  An 
English  corporation,  appointed  by  its  charter  to  reside  in  London,  resolved 
itself,  by  its  own  act,  into  an  American  corporation,  and  transferred  its 
residence  to  Massachusetts  ;  and  this  was  openly  transacted  by  men  whose 
principles  rendered  them  peculiarly  obnoxious  to  their  rulers,  and  under  the 
eyes  of  a  prince  no  less  vigilant  to  mark,  than  prompt  to  repress,  every 
encroachment  on  the  limits  of  his  prerogative.  So  far  was  Charles  from 
entertaining  the  slightest  dissatisfaction  at  this  proceeding,  or  from  desiring, 
at  the  present  period  of  his  reign,  to  obstruct  the  removal  of  the  Puritans 
to  New  England,  that  about  two  years  after  this  signal  change  was  carried 
into  effect,  when  a  complaint  of  arbitrary  and  illegal  measures  was  preferred 
against  the  colony  by  a  Roman  Catholic  who  had  been  banished  from  it, 
and  who  was  supported  by  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges,  —  the  king,  after  a  de- 
liberate examination  of  the  case  in  the  privy  council,  issued  a  proclamation 
not  only  justifying  but  conmiending  the  whole  conduct  of  the  provincial 
government,  reprobating  the  prevalent  reports  that  he  "had  no  good  opin- 
ion of  that  plantation,"  and  engaging  not  only  to  maintain  the  privileges  of 
its  inhabitants,  but  to  supply  whatever  else  might  contribute  to  their  farther 
comfort  and  prosperity.^  •      •       i       i 

From  the  terms  of  this  document  (of  which  no  notice  is  taken  by  the 
writers  inimical  to  the  Puritans),  and  from  the  whole  complexion  of  the 
king's  conduct  towards  the  founders  of  this  seillement,  it  would  appear,  that, 
whatever  designs  he  might  secretly  cherish  of  adding  the  subjugation  of  New 
England,  at  a  future  period,  to  tliat  of  his  British  and  Virginian  dominions, 
his  policy  at  the  present  time  was,  to  persuade  the  leaders  of  the  Puritans, 
that,  if  they  would  peaceably  abandon  the  contest  for  their  principles  in 
England,  they  were  ut  liberty  to  embody  and  enjoy  them  in  whatever  insti- 
tutions they  might  think  fit  to  estabhsh  in  America.  And  yet  some  writers^ 
—  whom  it  is  impossible  to  tax  with  ignorance,  as  they  had  access  (o  all 
the  existing  materials  of  information,  —  whom  it  might  justly  be  reckoned 
presumptuous  to  charge  with  defect  of  discernment, -— and  whom  it  may, 
perhaps,  appear  uncharitable  to  reproach  with  malignity  towards  the  Puri- 
tans —  have  not  scrupled  to  accuse  the  founders  of  this  colony  of  purr^uins; 
their  purposes  by  a  policy  not  less  impudent  than  fraudful,  and  by  acts  of 
disobedience  little  short  of  rebellion.     The  colonists  themselves,  notwith- 
standing all  the  facilities  which  the  king  presented  to  them,  and  the  unwonted 
liberality  and  consideration  with  which  he  showed  himself  willing  to  grace 
their  departure  from  Britain,  were  so  fully  persuaded  of  his  roc'ed  enmity 
to  their  principles,  and  so  little  able  to  reconcile  his  present  demeanour  with 
his  favorite  policy,  that  they  openly  declared  they  had  been  conducted  by 
Providence  to  a  land  of  rest,  through  ways  which  they  were  contented  to 
admire  without  comprehending  ;  and  that  they  could  asqribe  the  blessings 
tliey  obtained  to  nothing  else  than  the  special  interposition  of  that  Being  who 
orders  all  the  steps  of  his  people,  and  holds  the  hearts  of  kings,  as  of  all 
in  his  hands.     It  is,  in'^eed,  o  strange  coincidence,  that  this  arbitrary 


men 


prince,  at  the  very  time  when  he  was  oppressing  the  royalists  in  Virsmia, 
should  have  been  cherishing  the  principles  of  liberty  among  the  Puiiians  mi 
New  England. 

Having  achieved  this  important  innovation  in  the  structure  of  their  politi- 


ftevti. 


*  Chalmers.    Robcnson. 


CHAP.  H] 


ACTIVE  EMIGRATION. 


163 


nl  svstem,  the  adventurers  proceeded  with  equal  prudence  and  vigor  to 
Irute  the  uherior  designs  wVich  they  had  undertalien.   By  a  general  court 
Tasslbly,  John  Winthrop  was  appointed  governor,  and  Thomas  Dudley 
Lu  y-Kovcrnor  ;  eighteen  counsellors,  or  assistants,  were  also  chosen ;  and 
tCs!  functionaries,  together  with  the  whole  body  of  freemen  residing  in 
\lw  Endand,  were  vested  all  the  corporate  rights  of  the  company.     So 
:,  t  ve  was  the  spirit  of  emigration,  that,  in  the  course  of  the  ensmng  year 
r30l,  above  fifteen  hundred  settlers,  among  whom  were  several  wealthy 
nd  hieh-born  persons,  both  men  and  women,  who  expressed  their  deter- 
mina  ion  to  follow  truth  and  liberty  into  a  desert,  ratlier  than  to  enjoy  all 
The  pleasures  of  the  world  under  the  dominion  of  superstition  and  slavery, 
et  sail  from  Britain  aboard  a  fleet  of  seventeen  ships  for  New  England. 
Tnlv  6.1  Among  them  there  came  Nathaniel  Rogers  (and  his  family  ,  a 
w/yma^  of  Ipswich,  in  Suffolk  ;  the  lineal  descendant  of  that  excellen 
RoSrs,  who,  burned  at  Smithfield  under  Mary's  reign,  attained  the  highest 
me  in  English  martyrology.     On  their  arrival  at  Salem,  many  of  them 
e  e  so  displeased  with  its  local  circumstances,  that  they  explored  the 
ountry  in  qiest  of  more  agreeable  stations  ;  and,  setthng  m  various  places 
ound  the  adjacent  bay,  according  to  their  particular  predilections   laid  the 
Cdation  of  Boston,  Charlestown,  Dorchester,  Roxbury,  and  other  soce- 
Stiich  have  sine;  expanded  into  considerable  towns.     I"  each  of  these 
sett  ements,  a  church  was  established  on  the  same  model  with  that  of  Salem. 
T  L  conce'rnment,  together  with  the  care  of  providing  for  their  subsistence 
du  irs  winter,  afforded  ample  occupation  to  the  emigrants  for  several  months 
eriheir  arrival.     The  approach  of  winter  was  attended  with  a  repeUtion 
those  trials  and  distresses,  through  the  ordeal  of  which  every  band  of 
Eu  opean  settlers  in  New  England  was  long  fated  to  pass.     Afflic  ed  with 
S  scarcity,  which  all  the  generous  contributions  o(the  other  setUemems 
„  the  province  could  but  slightly  alleviate,  -  attacked  with  various  d  tem- 
ps     the  consequence  of  hunger,  cold,  and  the  P^^^l'^^^^^f  °^/  f  1""^ 
1  mte  uncongenial  to  constitutions  formed  in  Europe, -and  lodged  for  he 
moTpart  in  booths  and  tent«  that  afforded  but  imperfect  protection  from  the 
we  her, -great  numbers  of  the  new  colonists  were  speedily  earned  to  the 
Tve    "  Many,"  says  Cotton  Mather,  "  merely  took  New  flngland  m  their 
Sy  to  heaven. "     But  the  noble  determination  of  spirit  which  had  impelled 
hem  to  emigrate  preserved  all  its  force  ;  the  survivors  endured  their  calami- 
iesNv^Jhlshaken  fortitude  ;  and  the  dying  expressed  a  grateful  exultation 
n  the  consciousness  of  having  promoted  and  beheld  the  foundation  of  a 
Cliristian  church  in  this  desolate  and  benighted  quarter  of   he  earth.      Ihe 
conti  uance  of  deadly  disease  enforced  the  devout  supplications  of  the  colo- 
nists :  and  its  cessation,  which  they  recognized  as  the  answer  to  their 
payers,  excited  their  pio'u.  gratitude.     This  calarnity  was  ^f  dlyremo^'ed 
l\Iu  they  were  alarmed  by  the  udings  of  a  conspiracy  of  tl^e  ne#boun^^^ 
Indians  for  their  destruction.     The  colonists,  instead  of  relying  on  their 
patent  from  the  British  cro^vn,  had,  on  their  first  arrival,  fairly  purchased 
from  the  Indians  all  the  tracts  of  land  which  tb^y  proposed  to  occupy ;  and 
In  the  hour  of  their  perU,  both  they  and  the  f-thless  vendors  who  menace^^ 
them  reaped  the  friit  of  their  compliance  or  collision  ^^^^hthe  designs  of 
Eternal  Justice.     The  hostility  of  the  savages  was  interrupted  by  a  pe  ti- 
iential  distemper,  that  broke  out  among  them,  ^jd  with  rapid  desolation 

.    ,    •:  .1  rri,:^  j:„t"-r«~»r  \»«>s  <bp  sinall-pox.  whicn  nas 

svv«-pi  wnoie  iriDCS  uwny.      xiii=  -aisUm-^-^T  ■v.-s  -» i 


i  'm 


164 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11, 


'■!■ 


nhvays  proved  a  much  more  formidable  malady  to  Indian  than  to  European 
constitutions.  In  spite  of  the  most  charitable  exertions  on  the  part  of  the 
colonists  to  arrest  the  progress  of  the  malady  by  their  superior  medical  skill, 
nine  tenths  of  the  neighbouring  Indians  were  cut  off;  and  many  of  the  ur- 
vivors,  flying  from  the  infection,  removed  their  habitations  to  more  distant 

When  the  departure  of  winter  and  the  arrival  of  supplies  from  England 
1 1G31]  permitted  the  colonists  to  resume  their  assemblies  for  the  transar- 
tion  of  public  business,  their  very  first  proceedings  demonstrated  that  a  great 
majority  of  them  were  strongly  imbued  with  a  spirit  of  intolerance,  and  were 
determined  that  ♦heir  conmionwealth  should  exemplify  a  thorough  intertex- 
tare  and  mutual  dependence  of  church  and  state.  A  law  was  framed,  enact- 
ii5g  that  no  persons  should  hereafter  be  admitted  freemen,  or  entitled  to  any 
share  in  the  government,  or  capable  of  being  chosen  magistrates,  or  even  of 
serving  as  jurymen,  but  such  as  had  been  or  should  hereafter  be  received 
members  of  one  or  other  of  the  congregations  of  the  established  church  of 
the  province.     This  law  at  once  divested  every  person  who  did  not  hold 
the  prevailing  opinions,  not  only  on  the  fundamental  points  of  Christian 
doctrine,  but  with  respect  to  ecclesiastical  discipline  and  the  ceremonies  of 
worship,  of  all  the  privileges  of  a  citizen.     An  uncontrolled  power  of  ap- 
]n-oving  or  rejecting  the  claims  of  those  who  applied  for  admission  into  com- 
munion with  the  church  being  vested  in  the  ministers  and  elders  of  each 
congregation,  the  most  valuable  civil  rights  were  made  to  depend  on  their 
decision  with  respect  to  qualifications  purely  ecclesiastical.     Even  at  a 
later  period,  when  the  colonists  were  compelled  by  the  remonstrances  and 
menaces  of  Charles  the  Second  to  make  some  alteration  of  this  law,  they 
altered  it  at  first  rather  in  appearance  than  in  reality,  and  still  required  that 
every  candidate  for  the  rank  of  a  freeman  should  produce  a  certificate  from 
some  minister  of  the  established  church,  that  he  was  a  person  of  orthodox 
principles  and  of  honest  life  and  conversation,  —  a  certificate  which  dis- 
senters from  the  established  church  solicited  with  great  disadvantage.     The 
consequence  of  such  laws  was  to  elevate  the  clergy  to  a  very  his^h  degree 
of  influence  and  authority  ;*»  and,  happily,  the  colony  was  long  blessed  with 
a  succession  of  ministers  whose  disinterested  virtue  and   superior  sense 
served  not  merely  to  counteract  the  mischief  of  this  inordinate  influence,  but 
even  to  convert  it  in  some  measure  into  an  instrument  of  good.     Though 
dissenters  from  the  provincial  church  were  thus  deprived  of  political  privi- 
leges, it  does  not  appear  that  they  were  exposed  to  any  positive  molestation, 

•Mather.  Neal.  Hutchinson.  FeiTce'B  History  of  Harvard  Umvernty.'"VMe&ts\  plant- 
er.s  fur  from  using  the  barbarous  methods  practised  by  the  Spaniards  on  the  southern  con  i- 
noilt,  which  have  made  them  detestable  to  the  whole  ChrisUan  word,  sought  to  gain  tlio 
natives  by  strict  justice  in  their  dealings  with  them,  as  well  as  by  all  the  endearments  r,t 
kindness  and  humanity.  To  lay  an  early  foundation  for  a  firm  and  lasUng  friendship,  they 
assured  the  Americans  that  they  did  not  come  among  them  as  invaders,  but  purchasers,  ami 
therefore  called  an  assembly  of  them  together  lO  inquire  who  had  the  right  to  dispose  of  tluir 
lands;  and  being  told  it  was  their  sachems  or  princes,  they  thereupon  agreed  with  them  tw 
what  districts  tliey  bought,  publicly,  and  in  open  market.'^      Dummer  8  Defence  of  the  .^flc 

"^Smnc  instances  of  their  influence  in  matters  of  imporUnce  will  occur  in  tl-a  further  nrn- 
cress  of  our  narrative.  An  instance  of  their  control  over  public  opinion  on  a  point,  wliicli. 
being  quite  beyond  the  province  of  reason,  was  the  more  likeW  to  interest  the  most  obstinntp 
and  unassailaMe  prejudices,  is  m.-ntioned  by  Hutchinson,  tobacco  was  at  first  prohibit.  <1 
under  a  penalty  ;  and  in  some  writings  that  were  popular  in  the  colonv,  the  smoke  of  i  was 

^vijh «■""  .L.j,^;.v  ^«p.nnro,l  tn  the  fiimeB  of  the  bottomless  pit.    But  some  of  the  clor«!y 

having  fallen  into  tlie  practice  of  smoking,  tobacco  was  instantly,  by  on  act  of  goveriiiiieiU, 
"net  at  liberty." 


CHAP.  II  ] 


JOHN  COTTON. 


166 


except  when  their  tenets  were  considered  as  blasphemous,  or  when  they 
endeavoured  by  the  propagation  of  them  to  detach  other  persons  from  the 
established  system,  or  to  disturb  the  public  peace.     The  exclusion  from 
political  franchises  to  which  they  were  subjected  seems  not  at  first  to  have 
liven  them  any  annoyance,  but  to  hav(3  been  recognized  as  the  necessary 
Operation  of  that  system  of  policy  in  conformity  with  which  the  preservation 
of  the  church  estate  was  accounted  the  main  object  of  political  institutions  ; 
and  the  chief  value  of  political  rights  was  supposed  to  consist  in  their  sub- 
servience to  that  object.     Various  persons  resided   in  peace  withm  the 
colony,  though  excluded  from  political  franchises  ;  and  one  mmister  m  par- 
ticular, of  the  episcopal  persuasion,  provoked  more  mirth  than  displeasure, 
when,  sienifying  his  refusal  to  join  any  of  the  provincial  congregations,  he 
declared,  that,  aa  he  had  left  England  because  he  did  not  like  the  lords 
bishops,  so  they  might  rest  assured  that  he  had  not  come  to  America  to  live 
Wider  the  lords  brethren.^  , .  ,     ,         ,     •  . 

The  diminution  of  their  original  numbers  [1632M,  which  the  colonists 
underwent  from  hardship  and  disease,  was  much  more  than  compensated 
bv  tlie  ample  reinforcements  which  they  continually  received  from  their 
nersecuted  brethren  in  England.     Among  the  new  settlers  who  arrived  not 
one  after  the  transference  of  the  seat  of  government  to  Massachusetts,  were 
come  eminent  Puritan  ministers,  of  whom  the  most  remarkable  were  Lhot 
and  Mayhew,   the  first  Protestant  missionaries  to  the  Indians,  and  John 
Cotton,  a  man  whose  singular  worth  procured,  and  long  preserved,  to  him 
a  patriarchal  repute  and  authority  in  the  colony.     After  ministering  for 
luenty  years  in  England  to  a  congregation  by  whom  he  was  highly  respected 
and  beloved,  Cotton  was  summoned  before  the  Court  of  High  Commission, 
on  a  charge  of  neglecting  to  kneel  at  the  sacrament.     Lord  Dorset  and 
other  persons  of  distinction,  by  whom  he  was  known  and  esteemed,  em- 
ployed the  strongest  intercession  in  his  behalf  with  Laud  ;  but  their  exer- 
tions were  unavailing  ;  and  Dorset  was  constrained  to  mform  his  Iriend, 
"  that,  if  it  had  been  only  drunkenness  or  adultery  that  he  had  committed, 
he  might  have  found  favor  ;  but  the  sin  of  Puritanism  was  unpardonable. 
Cotton,  in  consequence,  retired  to  New  England,  where  he  soon  tound  an 
ample  solace  of  exile  in  an  enlarged  sphere  of  usefulness  and  virtue.      1  o 
an  earnest  concern  for  the  propagation  of  religion  he  united  a  deep  and  con- 
stant personal  sense  of  its  influence  ;  and  habitually  seeking  to  illustrate  and 
adorn  by  his  life  the  doctrine  which  he  taught,  he  promoted  its  acceptance 
bv  the  weight  of  his  character  and  the  animation  of  his  example. 

The  loftiness  of  the  standard  to  which  his  constant  regard  was  directed, 
and  the  assimilating  influence  of  that  strong  admiration  which  he  entertamed 
for  it,  communicated  to  his  character  an  elevation  that  commanded  respect ; 
while  the  continual  sense  of  his  dependence  on  divme  aid,  and  of  his  mleri- 
ority  to  the  great  object  of  his  imitation,  graced  his  manners  with  a  humility 
that  attracted  love,  and  disarmed  the  contentious  opposition  of  petulance 
and  envy.     It  is  recorded  of  him,  that,  having  been  once  followed  from  the 

"MNeal.    Hutchinsonr    Chalmers. 


«  "One  plc^n  thing  happened  this  year,  acted  bv  the  Indians.  Mr.  Winslow.commK  m 
hi.  baVk  VomTonnLti^ut  fJ^Warragans^t,  went  to  pusamequm,  the  sagamore  h.od 
who  offered  to  conduct  him  to  Plymouth.  Ousamequm  sent  %"»«"*«  £?""°"^^^^^ 
Winslow  was  dead  Being  afterwards  asked  the  reason,  he  said  it  was  their  custom, «»  o^a«.' 
.0  Sr  .hefr  mends  mor^  ioyful  on  seeing  them."  Coll ectionsj  the  f  ?;;«£'-<f  ^^ 
ral  Society.  Even  the  wise  Ulysses  is  described  by  Homer  as  employing  a  similar  device  wun 
hi.,  fntti"'  »"''  ■"."•"•'"'T  ii,f  nU.  miin's  sorrow  to  enhance  nis  joy. 

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■^ 


166 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BODE  n. 


church  where  he  preached  by  a  sour,  peevish  fanatic,  who  announced  to 
him  with  a  frown,  that  his  ministry  had  become  dark  and  flat,  he  replied, 
"  Both,  brother,  —  it  may  be  both  ;  let  me  have  your  prayers  that  it  may 
be  otherwise."  On  another  occasion,  being  accosted  in  tfie  street  by  a  prag- 
matical disputer,  who  insolently  called  him  an  old  fool.  Cotton,  with  forgiving 
mildness  blended  with  a  solemmty  that  showed  him  incapable  of  contemning 
the  opinion  of  his  neighbour,  answered,  "  /  confess  I  atn  so ;  the  Lord  mah 
thee  and  me  wiser  than  we  are  ;  even  viise  unto  salvation."  ^  The  charac- 
ter, at  once  so  venerable  and  so  amiable,  of  this  excellent  clergyman,  and 
of  many  of  his  colleagues,  seems  to  have  been  formed  by  Providence  for  the 
express  purpose  of  moderating,  by  a  happy  influence,  the  violent,  divisive, 
and  controversial  spirit  that  long  continued  to  ferment  in  a  community  of 
men  whom  persecution  had  rendered  rigid  and  inflexible  in  opinion,  — 
whose  sentiments  had  not  been  harmonized  by  previous  habits  of  union  and 
accommodation,  —  who  were  daily  receivbg  into  their  body  a  fresh  infusion 
of  dissimilar  characters  and  exasperated  spirits,  —  and  among  whom  each 
naturally  considered  the  notions  and  practices  for  which  he  had  individually 
suffered  as  the  most  important  feature  of  the  conmion  cause. 

When  we  recollect  the  presence  of  such  elements  of  discord,  and  the 
severe  and  protracted  operation  that  had  been  given  to  that  influence  which 
tends  to  drive  even  the  wise  to  frenzy,  we  shall  be  less  disposed  to  marvel 
at  the  vehement  heats  and  acrimonious  contentions  which  in  some  instances 
broke  forth  to  disturb  the  peace  of  the  colony,  than  that  in  the  midst  of 
those  alarming  symptoms  so  much  coherence  and  stability  was  preserved, 
and  so  much  virtue,  happiness,  and  prosperity  attained.  Nor  should  it  ever 
be  forgotten,  that  the  polemical  strife  that  arose  among  the  fathers  of  New 
England  was  not  the  selfish  strife  of  ambition.  It  arose  from  their  com- 
mon attachment  to  the  truths  of  Christianity  ;  but,  unfortunately,  to  these 
truths  partially  conceived,  am  beheld  in  different  points  of  view  by  differ- 
ent men.  Among  the  instruments  haj)pily  qualified  and  providentially  em- 
ployed to  compose  and  unite  the  spirits  of  the  people,  were  this  eminent 
individual,  John  Cotton ;  Thomas  Hooker,  a  man  very  little  inferior  to  him 
in  worth  and  influence  ;  and,  at  a  later  period,  Dr.  Increase  Mather,  who 
succeeded  to  the  estimation  which  Cotton  had  enjoyed,  and  whose  family 
supplied  no  fewer  than  ten  of  the  most  popular  mmisters  of  the  age  which 
they  adorned  to  the  churches  of  Massachusetts,  and  produced  the  celebrated 
author  of  the  ecclesiastical  history  of  New  England.  If  all  the  provincial 
churches  had  been  guided  by  such  spirits  as  these,  the  agitated  minds  of  the 
inhabitants  would  doubtless  have  sooner  attained  a  settled  composure  ;  but, 
unfortunately,  the  intolerant  and  contentious  disposition  which  many  of  the 
people  had  contracted  did  not  long  wait  for  ministerial  leaders  to  excite  and 
develope  its  activity. 

The  first  theological  dissension  that  arose  in  the  colony  was  promoted  by 
Roger  Williams  [1634],  who  emigrated  to  New  England  in  1630,  m'\ 
officiated  for  some  time  as  pastor  of  New  Plymouth.  Not  finding  there  an 
audience  of  congenial  spirits,  he  obtained  leave  to  resign  that  charge,  and 
had  recently  been  appointed  minister  of  Salem.  This  man  was  a  stubborn 
Brownist,  keen,  unpliant,  illiberal,  unforbearing,  and  Passionate ;  seasoning 
evil  with  good,  and  error  with  truth,  he  began  to  vent  from  the  pulpit,  which 
he  had  gamed  by  his  substas.Jui  piety  and  fervid  zeal,  a  singular  medley  of 


CHAP.  11] 


ROGER  WILLIAMS. 


167 


notions,  some  wildly  speculative,  some  boldly  opposed  to  tlie  constitutions 
of  civil  society,  and  some,  which,  if  unexceptionable  in  tlie  abstract,  were 
unsuitable  to  the  scene  of  their  promulgation,  and  to  the  exercises  and  senti- 
ments with  which  he  endeavoured  to  blend  them.  He  insisted  that  it  wcs 
not  lawful  for  an  unregenerate  man  to  pray,  nor  for  Christians  to  join  in 
family  prayer  with  those  whom  they  judged  unregenerate  ;  that  it  was  net 
lawful  to  take  an  oath  to  the  civil  magistrate,  —  not  even  the  oath  of  alle- 
giance, which  he  had  declined  himself  to  take,  and  advised  his  congregation 
equally  to  repudiate  ;  that  King  Charles  had  unjustly  usurped  the  power  of 
disposing  of  the  territory  of  the  Indians,  and  hence  the  colonial  patent  was 
utterly  invalid ;  that  the  civil  magistrate  had  no  right  to  restrain  or  direct 
the  consciences  of  men  ;  and  that  any  thing  short  of  unlimited  toleration  for 
all  religious  systems  was  detestable  persecution. 

These  liberal  principles  of  toleration  he  combined  with  a  spirit  so  rigid 
and  separative,  that  he  not  only  refused  all  communion  with  persons  who 
did  not  profess  every  one  of  the  foregoing  opinions,  but  forbade  the  mem- 
bers of  the  church  at  Salem  to  communicate  with  any  of  the  other  churches 
in  the  colony  ;  and  when  they  refused  to  obey  this  prohibition,  he  forsook 
ills  ministerial  office  among  them,  and  established  a  separate  meeting  in  a 
private  house.  He  even  withdrew  from  the  society  of  his  wife,  because  she 
continued  to  attend  the  church  of  Salem,  and  from  that  of  his  children, 
because  he  accounted  them  unregenerate.  In  his  retirement  he  was  at- 
tended by  a  select  assembly  of  zealous  admirers,  consisting  of  men  in 
whose  minds  an  impetuous  temper,  inflamed  by  persecution,  had  greatly 
impaired  the  sense  of  moral  perspective  ;  who  entertained  disproportioned 
ideas  of  those  branches  of  the  trunk  of  godliness,  for  the  sake  of  which 
they  had  endured  severe  affliction,  and  had  seen  worth  and  piety  foully 
wronged ;  and  who  abhorred  every  symbol,  badge,  and  practice,  that  was 
associated  with  the  remembrance,  and  stained,  as  they  conceived,  with  the 
iniquity,  of  their  idolatrous  oppressors.  One  of  these  mdividuals,  Endicott, 
a  magistrate  of  the  place,  and  formerly  deputy-governor  of  the  colony,  in  a 
transport  of  devouring  zeal  against  superstition,  was  instigated  by  Williams 
to  cut  the  red  cross  out  of  the  royal  standard  ;  and  many  of  the  trained 
bands,  who  had  hitherto  followed  this  standard  without  objection,  caught 
the  contagion  of  Endicott's  fervor,  and  protested  that  they  would  no  longer 
follow  a  flag  on  which  the  popish  emblem  of  a  crucifix  was  painted.  The 
intemperate  and  disorderly  conduct  of  Endicott  was  generally  disapproved, 
and  the  provincial  authorities  punished  his  misdemeanour  by  reprimand  and 
disability  of  holding  office  for  a  year  ;  but  they  were  obliged  to  compromise 
the  dispute  with  the  protesters  among  the  trained  bands,  and  to  comply 
with  their  remonstrances.  It  is  a  notable  fact,  and  illustrative  perhaps  of 
the  extent  of  their  compliance,  that,  only  two  years  after,  when  they  were 
pressed  with  (apparently)  friendly  counsel  to  dissipate  Enghsh  jealousy  by 
hoisting  the  British  flag  on  the  walls  of  their  little  fort,  not  a  single  royal 
ensign  could  be  found  in  Massachusetts.  They  were  preparing  to  call 
Williams  to  a  judicial  reckoning,  when  CoUon  and  some  other  clergymen 
interposed,  and  desired  to  be  allowed  to  reason  with  him  ;  alleging  that  his? 
vehemence  and  breach  of  order  betokened  rather  a  misguided  conscience, 
than  seditious  principles  ;  and  that  there  was  hope  that  they  might  gatn 
instead  of  losing,  their  brother.  You  are  deceived  in  that  man,  if  you  think 
he  will  condescend  to  learn  of  any  of  you^  was  the  prediction  of  the  gov 


168 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


ernor  ;  and  the  result  of  the  conference  proving  the  justice  of  it,i  sen- 
tence of  banishment  from  the  colony  was  forthwith  pronounced  against 
Williams. 

This  sentence  excited  a  great  uproar  in  Salem,  and  was  so  successfully 
denounced  as  persecution  by  the  adherents  of  Williams,  that  the  bulk  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  place  were  preparing  to  follow  him  into  exile,  when  an 
earnest  and  pious  admonition,  addressed  to  them  by  Cotton  and  the  other 
ministers  of  Boston,  induced  them  to  relinquish  their  purpose,  to  acknowl- 
edge  the  justice  of  the  proceeding,  and  abandon  Williams  to  his  fate. 
Still,  was  he  not  abandoned  by  his  more  select  admirers,  whose  esteem  and 
aftection  he  had  gained  to  such  a  degree,  that  they  resolved  to  brave  every 
hardship,  in  order  to  live  and  die  with  him.  Accompanying  him  in  his 
exile,  they  directed  their  march  towards  the  south  ;  and  settling  at  a  place 
beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts,  they  purchased  a  considerable 
tract  of  land  from  the  Indians,  and  bestowed  on  their  plantation  the  name 
of  Providence.  Had  Williams  encountered  the  severities  to  which  the 
publication  of  his  peculiar  opinions  would  have  exposed  him  in  England, 
he  would  probably  have  lost  his  senses  ;  the  wiser  and  kinder  treatment  he 
experienced  from  the  Massachusetts  authorities  was  productive  of  happier 
efi'ects  ;  and  Cotton  and  his  colleagues  weru  not  wholly  mistaken  in  suppos- 
ing that  they  would  gain  their  brother.  They  gained  him,  indeed,  in  ^  man- 
ner less  flattering  to  themselves  than  a  controversial  victory  would  have*  been, 
but  much  more  beneficial  to  the  interests  of  America.  He  contributed,  as 
we  shall  see,  to  found  the  colony  of  Rhode  Island,  and  was  one  of  its  most 
eminent  benefactors.  He  lived  to  an  advanced  age  ;  and  gradually  emanci- 
pating himself  from  the  impetuous  and  yet  punctilious  spirit  with  which  his 
doctrinal  sentiments  had  originally  been  leavened,  he  regained  the  friend- 
ship and  esteem  of  liis  ancient  fellow-colonists,  and  preserved  a  friendly 
•lorrespondence  with  Cotton  and  others  of  them  till  his  death.  The  prin- 
ciples of  toleration,  which  he  had  formerly  discredited  by  the  rigidness  with 
which  he  disallowed  the  slightest  difference  of  opinion  between  the  mem- 
bers of  his  own  communion,  he  now  recommended  by  the  exercise  of 
ineekness,  charity,  and  forbearance.  The  great  fundamental  principles  of 
Christianity  progressively  acquiring  a  more  exclusive  and  absorbing  influ- 
ence on  his  mind,  he  began  to  labor  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians  ;  and 
in  addition  to  the  benefits  of  which  his  ministry  among  them  was  productive 
to  this  race  of  people,  he  acquired  over  them  an  influence  which  he  ren- 
dered highly  advantageous  to  his  old  associates  in  Massachusetts,  whom  he 
was  enabled  frequently  to  apprize  of  conspiracies  formed  against  them  by 
the  savages  in  their  vicinity,  and  revealed  to  him  by  the  tribes  with  whom 
he  maintained  relations  of  friendship.**  Endicott's  vehemence  was  not  less 
mellowed  by  time  and  the  ascendency  of  sound  wisdom  and  piety.  He 
remained  in  Massachusetts  ;  and,  at  a  later  period,  held  for  many  years  the 
chief  office  in  its  government  with  great  public  advantage  and  general 
esteem."* 

'  Thoiigh  ho  would  not  retract  his  donnms,  it  Bcoms  that  some  of  the  argunionts  that  were 
cmplovpd  with  him  (Mtnk  into  his  mind,  and  at  least  reduced  him  to  silence.  Hooker,  .me  of 
tlui  ministers  who  were  sent  to  deal  with  him,  urged,  among  other  reasonings, —  "If  it  bo 
imlnwful  for  an  unregencrate  person  to  pray,  it  is  unlawfiil  for  your  unregenernte  child  to  nsk 
ii  ble«(<ing  on  his  meat ;  and  if  eo,  it  is  unlawful  for  him  to  cat,  since  food  is  sanctifiod  by 
prayer,  and  without  prayer  unsanctiiied  (1  Tim.  iv.  4,  5) ;  and  it  must  be  equally  unlnwtiil 
U:t  \ ■..•.:  •:-.  -rrtvitp  !;i?rt  ?•-•  r-ni,  sir.ve  you  oHght  not  io  tenijit  him  to  sin."  To  this  he  declined 
making  any  answer.       Mather. 

*  3Ii''''«.       IVcal.     Hutchinson.  '■>  Mather. 


CHAP  II.] 


REPRESENTATIVE  GOVERNMENT. 


169 


The  colony  of  Massachusetts  continued  meanwhile  to  advance  in  stability 
and  prosperity,  and  to  extend  its  settlements  ;  and  this  year  [1634]  an  im- 
portant and  beneficial  change  took  place  in  its  municipal  constitution.  The 
mortality  that  had  prevailed  among  the  Indians  vacated  a  great  many  stations 
formerly  occupied  by  their  tribes  ;  and  as  most  of  these  were  advantageously 
situated,  the  colonists  took  possession  of  them  with  an  eagerness  and  latitude 
of  appropriation  that  dispersed  their  settlements  widely  over  the  face  of  the 
country.  This  necessarily  led  to  the  introduction  of  representative  govern- 
ment ;  and,  accordingly,  at  the  period  of  convoking  the  General  Court,  the 
freemen,  instead  of  personally  attending  it,  which  was  the  literal  prescription 
of  the  provincial  charter,  elected  deputies  from  their  several  di'-tricts,  whom 
they  authorized  to  appear  in  their  name  and  act  in  their  behalf.  Without 
demur  or  objection  from  any  quarter,  the  pretensions  of  the  persons  thus 
elected  were  recognized  ;  and  the  popular  representatives  thenceforward 
considered  themselves,  in  conjunction  with  the  governor  and  council  of  as- 
sistants, as  the  supreme  legislative  assembly  of  the  province.  The  abstract 
wisdom  of  this  innovation  is  undeniable  ;  and,  in  defence  of  its  legitimacy, 
it  was  forcibly  urged  that  the  colonists  did  no  more  than  construct  an  im- 
proved and  necessary  access  to  the  enjoyment  of  an  advantage  already  be- 
longing to  them,  and  prevent  their  assemblies  from  becoming  either  too 
numerous  to  transact  business,  or  inadequate  to  represent  the  general  interest 
and  administer  the  general  will.  The  number  of  freemen  was  greatly  aug- 
mented since  the  date  of  the  charter  ;  many  resided  it,  .  distance  from  tlie 
places  where  the  general  courts  or  assemblies  of  the  freemen  were  held  ; 
personal  attendance  had  become  inconvenient ;  and,  in  such  circumstances, 
litde  if  any  blame  can  attach  to  the  colonists  for  effecting  with  their  own 
hands  the  improvement  that  was  necessary  to  preserve  their  existing  rights, 
instead  of  applying  to  the  government  of  England,  wmdi  was  steadily  pur- 
suing the  plan  of  subverting  the  organs  of  liberty  in  the  mother  country,  and 
had  already  begun  to  exhibit  an  ahered  countenance  towards  the  colonial 
community.  In  consequence  of  this  important  measure,  the  colony  advanced 
heyond  the  state  of  a  mercantile  society  or  corporation,  and  acquired  by  its 
own  act  the  condition  of  a  commonwealth  endowed  with  political  liberty. 
The  representatives  of  the  people,  having  established  themselves  in  their 
office,  asserted  its  appropriate  privileges  by  decreeing  that  no  leggl  ordi- 
nance should  be  framed  within  the  province,  no  tax  imposed,  and  no  public 
officer  appointed,  in  future,  except  by  the  provincial  legislature.^ 

The  increasing  violence  and  injustice  of  the  royal  government,  in  Britain 
cooperated  so  forcibly  with  the  tidings  that  were  circulated  of  the  prosperity 
of  Massachusetts,  —  and  the  simple  frame  of  ecclesiastical  policy  that  was 
established  in  the  colony  presented  a  prospect  so  desirable,  and  (by  the 
comparison  which  it  invited)  exposed  the  gorgeous  hierarchy  and  recent 
superstitious  innovations  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  English  church  to  so  much 
additional  odium,  —  that  the  flow  of  emigration  rather  enlarged  than  sub- 
sided, and  crowds  of  new  settlers  continued  to  flock  to  New  England. 
Among  the  passengers  in  a  fleet  of  twenty  vessels  that  arrived  in  the  ensu- 
ing year  [1635]  were  two  persons  who  afterwards  made  a  distinguished 
figure  in  a  more  conspicuous  scene.  One  of  these  was  Hugh  Peters,  tho 
celebrated  chaplain  and  counsellor  of  Oliver  Cromwell  ;  and  the  other  was 
VAne,  whose  father.  Sir  Henry  Vane  the  elder,  enjoyed  the  dignity  of  a 

'  HutchinBon.    Clialtners. 


VOL.   I. 


32 


170 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II, 


privy  counsellor  at  the  English  court,  and  afterwards  filled  the  office  of  prin- 
cipal  secretary  of  state.  Peters,  who  united  an  active  and  enterprising 
genius  with  the  warmest  devotion  to  the  interests  of  religion  and  liberty, 
became  minister  of  Salem,  where  he  not  only  discharged  his  sacred  func- 
tions with  zeal  and  advantage,  but  suggested  new  hints  of  profitable  industry 
to  the  planters,  and  recommended  his  wise  counsels  by  his  own  successful 
example.  His  labors  were  blessed  with  a  produce  not  less  honorable  tlian 
enduring.  The  spirit  which  he  fostered  has  continued  to  prevail  with  un- 
abated vigor ;  and  nearly  two  centuries  after  his  death,  the  piety,  good 
morals,  and  industry,  by  which  Sal^m  has  always  been  characterized,  were 
ascribed  with  just  and  grateful  commemoration  to  the  eflfects  of  Peters's 
residence  there.  He  remained  in  New  England  till  the  year  1641,  when, 
at  the  request  of  the  colonists,  he  went  to  transact  some  business  for  them 
in  the  mother  country,  from  which  he  was  fated  never  to  return.  But  his 
race  remained  in  the  land  thus  highly  indebted  to  his  virtue  ;  and  the  name 
of  Winthrop,  one  of  the  most  honored  in  New  England,  was  acquired  and 
transmitted  by  his  daughter. 

Vane,  afterwards  Sir  Henry  Vane  the  younger,  had  been  for  some  time 
restrained  from  indulging  his  wish  to  reside  in  New  England  by  the  pro- 
hibition  of  his  father,  who  was  at  length  induced  to  waive  his  objections  by 
the  interference  of  the  king.  The  Puritan  principles  which  Vane  had  im- 
bibed, and  to  which  he  had  already  sacrificed  his  collegiate  rank  >  in  the 
university  of  Oxford,  were  distasteful  alike  to  his  father  and  his  king  ;  and 
while  the  one  dreaded  the  effect  of  his  intercourse  with  the  Puritans  of 
Massachusetts,  the  other  feared  tlie  influence  of  his  example  in  England. 
A  young  man  of  patiician  family,  animated  with  such  ardent  devotion  to  the 
cause  of  pure  religion  and  liberty,  that,  relinquishing  the  most  brilliant  pros- 
pects in  Britain,  he  chose  to  inhabit  an  infant  colony  which  as  yet  afibrded 
little  more  than  a  bare  subsistence  to  its  inhabitants,  was  received  in  New 
England  with  the  fondest  regard  and  admiration.  He  was  then  little  more 
than  twenty-four  years  of  age.  His  youth,  which  seemed  to  magnify  the 
sacrifice  he  made,  increased  no  less  the  impression  which  his  manners  and 
appearance  were  calculated  to  produce.  The  fixed,  thoughtful  composure 
of  his  aspect  and  demeanour  stamped  a  serious  grace  and  somewhat  (ac- 
cording^to  our  conceptions)  of  angelic  grandeur  on  the  bloom  of  manliood ; 
his  countenance  disclosed  the  surface  of  a  character  not  less  resolute  than 
profound,  and  of  which  the  energy  was  not  extinguished,  but  concentrated 
into  a  sublime  and  solemn  calm.  He  possessed  a  prompt  and  clear  discern- 
ment of  the  characters  and  purposes  of  other  men,  and  a  wonderful  mastery 
of  his  own  spirit.  Clarendon  ascribes  to  him  "a  quick  conception  and  ready, 
sharp,  and  weighty  expression,  an  unusual  aspect,  a  vultum  clausum,  which, 
though  no  man  could  guess  what  he  intended,  yet  made  men  think  there 
was  something  in  him  extraordinary  ;  and  his  whole  life  made  good  that 
imagination."  He  has  been  charged  with  a  wild  enthusiasm^  by  some  who 
have  remarked  the  intensity  with  which  he  pursued  purposes  which  to  them 
appeared  worthless  and  ignoble  ;  and  with  hypocrisy  by  others,  who  have 
contrasted  the  vigor  of  his  resolution  with  the  calmness  of  his  manners. 

'  One  ingenious  writer  apeaka  more  respectfully  of  Vane's  enthukiasm  ;  declaring  that  "  it 
seems  never  to  have  precipitated  liim  into  mjudicious  measures,  but  to  have  added  new  powers 
to  his  natural  snaaclty."  "  He  mistook,"  continues  the  writer,  "  his  docp  penetration  for  a  pro- 
nhetin  snirit,  and  jhe  light  of  his  Ernius  for  divine  irradiation."  I  see  no  proof  that  he  enter- 
tained iiie  tirst  of  these  notion?,  and  no  mistake  in  the  second. 


CHAP.  II.] 


SETTLEMENT  OF  CONNECTICUT. 


171 


But  a  juster  consideration,  perhaps,  may  suggest  that  it  was  the  habitual 
energy  of  his  determination  that  repressed   every  sympton  of  vehement 
iiupetuosity,  and  uiduced  an  equality  of  manner  that  scarcely  appeared  to 
exceed  the  pitch  of  a  grave,  deliberate  constancy.     So  much  did  his  mind 
predominate  over  his   senses,  that,   although   constitutionally  timid,*  and 
keenly  susceptible  of  impressions  of  pain,  yet  his  whole  life  was  one  con- 
tinued course  of  great  and  darmg  enterprise  ;  and  when,  amidst  the  wreck 
of  his  foi  tunes  and  the  treachery  of  his  associates,  death  was  presented  to 
him  in  tlie  appalling  form  of  a  bloody  execution,  he  prepared  for  it  with  a 
heroic  and  smiling  intrepidity,  and  encountered  it  with  tranquil  and  dignified 
resignation.     The  man  who  could  so  command  himself  was  formed  to  ac- 
quire ascendency  over  the  minds  of  others.     He  was  instantly  admitted  a 
freeman  of  Massachusetts  ;  and  extending  his  claims  to  respect  by  the  ad- 
dress and  ability  which  he  displayed  in  conducting  business,  was  elected 
governor  in  the  year  subsequent  to  his  arrival  [1636],  by  unanimous  choice, 
and  with  the  highest  expectations  of  a  happy  and  advantageous  administra- 
tion.    These  expectations  were  disappointed.     Vane,  not  finding   in  the 
political  aftairs  of  the  colonists  a  wide  enough  field  for  the  excursion  of  his 
active  spirit,  embarked   its  energy  in  their  theological  discussions  ;   and, 
unfortunately,  connecting  himself  with  a  party  who  had  conceived  singularly 
clear  and  profound  views  of  Christian  doctrine,  but  associated  them  with 
some  dangerous  errors,  and  discredited  them  by  a  wild  extravagance  of  be- 
haviour, he  very  soon  witnessed  the  abridgment  of  his  usefulness  and  the 
decline  of  his  popularity.^ 

The  incessant  flow  of  emigration  to  Massachusetts,  causing  the  inhabit- 
ants of  some  of  the  towns  to  feel  thetnselves  straitened  for  room,  suggested 
the  formation  of  additional  settlements.  A  project  of  founding  a  new  colony 
on  the  banks  of  the  River  Connecticut  was  now  embraced  by  Hooker,  one 
of  the  ministers  of  Boston,  and  a  hundred  of  the  members  of  his  congre- 
gation. After  enduring  extreme  hardship,  and  encountering  the  usual  diffi- 
culties that  attended  llie  foundation  of  civihzed  society  in  this  quarter  of 
America,  with  the  usual  display  of  Puritan  fortitude  and  resolution,  they 
succeeded  in  establishing  a  plantation,  which  gradually  enlarged  into  the 
flourishing  State  of  Connecticut.  Some  Dutch  settlers  from  New  York, 
who  took  prior  possession  of  a  post  in  this  country,  were  compelled  to 
surrender  it  to  the  British  colonists,  who,  moreover,  obtained  shortly  after 
from  Lord  Brooke  and  Lord  Say  and  Seal  an  assignation  to  a  district  which 
these  noblemen  had  acquired  in  the  same  quarter,  with  the  intention  of  flying 
from  royal  tyranny  to  America.^     Hooker  and  his  comrades  relied  for  a 

~^ee  Note  VI.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  America  Painted  to  the  Life,  by  Ferdinando  Gorges.  There  is  a  copy  of  this  work  in  the 
Rcdcross-street  Library  of  London.  Neal.  Hutchinson.  Dwight's  Travels  in  JV««)  England 
and  JVetfl  York.  Upham's  Life  of  Sir  Henry  Vane,  in  Sparks's  American  Biography.  New 
England  has  now  repaid  Vane's  noble  devotion  by  the  oest  (Mr.  Upham's^  memoir  of  that 
greiit  man  that  has  ever  been  given  to  the  world.  Vane  was  accompanied  to  America  by 
Lord  Leiffh,  son  of  the  Earl  of  Marlborough,  who  had  conceived  a  curiosity  to  behold  the 
New  England  settlements. 

'  Lord  Brooke  and  Lord  Say  and  Seal  so  far  pursued  their  design  as  to  send  an  agent  to 
take  possession  of  their  territory,  and  build  a  fort.  Happily  for  America,  the  sentiments  and 
habits  that  rendered  them  unfit  members  of  a  society  where  complete  civil  liberty  and  perfect 
simplicity  of  manners  were  esteemed  requisite  to  the  general  happiness,  prevented  these 
nolileraen  from  carrying  their  project  into  execution.  They  proposed  to  establish  an  order  of 
nobility  and  hereditary  magistracy  in  America ;  and  consumed  so  much  time  in  arguing  this 
important  point  with  the  other  settlers  who  were  to  be  associated  with  them,  that  at  length 
tiieir  ardor  Tor  emigration  subsided,  and  nearer  and  more  iiilciesting  prospects  opened  to  tncir 
activity  in  England.      Chalmers. 


172 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


while  on  a  commission  which  they  procured  from  the  government  of  Massa- 
chusetts for  the  administration  of  justice  in  their  new  settlement ;  but  subse- 
quently ascertaining  that  their  territory  was  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
magistrates  from  whom  the  commission  was  derived,  they  combined  them- 
selves by  a  voluntary  association  into  a  body  politic,  constructed  on  the 
model  of  the  colonial  society  from  which  they  had  separated.  They  con- 
tinued in  this  condition  till  the  Restoration,  when  they  obtained  a  charter 
for  themselves  from  King  Charles  the  Second.  That  this  secession  from 
the  colony  of  Massachusetts  was  occasioned  by  lack  of  room  in  a  province 
yet  imperfectly  peopled  has  appeared  so  improbable  to  some  writers,  that 
they  have  thought  it  necessary  to  assign  another  cause,  and  have  found  none 
so  credible  or  satisfactory  as  the  jealousy  which  they  conclude  that  Hooker 
must  inevitably  have  entertained  towards  Cotton,  whose  patriarchal  authority 
had  attained  such  a  height  in  Massachusetts,  that  even  a  formidable  civil 
broil  was  quelled  by  one  of  his  pacific  discourses.  But  envy  was  not  a 
passion  congenial  to  the  breast  of  Hooker,  or  likely  to  be  generated  by  the 
character  or  influence  of  Cotton.  The  notion  of  a  redundant  population 
was  the  more  readily  conceived  at  this  period  from  the  unwillingness  of  the 
settlers  to  penetrate  far  into  the  interior  of  the  country,  and  thus  deprive 
themselves  of  an  easy  communication  with  the  coast.  Another  reason,  in- 
deed, appears  to  have  suggested  the  formation  of  the  new  settlement ;  but 
it  was  a  reason  that  argued  not  dissension,  but  community  of  feelitig  and 
design  between  the  planters  who  remained  in  Massachusetts  and  those  who 
removed  to  Connecticut.  By  the  establishment  of  this  advanced  station, 
a  barrier,  it  was  hoped,  would  be  erected  against  the  vexatious  incursions 
of  the  Pequod  Indians.^  Nor  is  it  unlikely  that  some  of  the  seceders  to  the 
new  settlement  were  actuated  by  a  restless  spirit,  which  had  expected  loo 
much  from  external  change,  and  which  vainly  urged  a  farther  pursuit  of  tliat 
spring  of  contentment  which  must  arise  in  the  minds  of  those  who  would 
enjoy  it. 

In  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  this  new  settlement  another  plantation 
was  formed,  about  two  years  after  [1638],  by  a  numerous  band  of  emi- 
grants who  arrived  from  England  under  the  guidance  of  Theophilus  Eaton, 
a  man  of  large  fortune,  and  John  Davenport,  an  eminent  Puritan  minister. 
Averse  to  erect  the  social  institutions  which  they  projected  upon  founda- 
tions previously  laid  by  other  hands,  these  adventurers  declined  to  settle  in 
Massachusetts,  which  already  presented  the  scene  of  a  thriving  and  well 
compacted  community  ;  and  smit  with  the  attractions  of  a  vacant  territory 
skirting  the  large  and  commodious  sound  to  the  southwest  of  Connecticut 
River,  they  purchased  from  its  Indian  owners  all  the  land  that  lies  between 
that  stream  and  the  line  which  now  separates  New  England  from  New  York. 
Repairing  to  the  shores  of  this  sound,  they  built,  first  the  town  of  New 
Haven,  which  gave  its  name  to  the  whole  colony,  and  then  the  towns  of 
Guilford,  Milford,  Stamford,  and  Branford.  After  some  time  they  crossed 
the  soimd,  and  planted  various  settlements  in  Long  Island  ;  in  all  places 
where  they  came,  erecting  churches  on  the  model  of  the  Independents. 

•  Mather.   Hutchinson.  Trumbull.   It  appears  from  Mather's  UreSf  that  Cotton  and  Hooker 
were  knit  together  in  the  firmest  bonds  of  Christian  friendship  and  cordial  esteem.    Yet  these 


1,  who  forsook  houses,  lands,  and  country  for  the  sake  of  the  gospel,  are  described  by  Ur. 
lertson  as  "  rival  competitors  in  the  contest  for  fame  and  power  "  !    This  is  the  only  light 


men, 

Robertson  as  "  rival  competitors  in  the  contest  lor  lame  and  no  ,     _ 

in  which  many  eminent  and  even  reverend  writers  are  capable  of  regarding  the  labors  of  the 
patriot,  trie  suiiii,  afitl  ihc  sfige.  it  is  not  uneoniinon  for  inen,  in  attf-iitpting  to  pnifit  "'■*;  c ..sr- 
Bcter  of  others,  unconsciously  to  transcribe  their  own. 


CIIAP.  H  ] 


THE   PEQUOD  WAR. 


173 


When  we  observe  the  injustice  and  cruelty  exercised  by  the  government  of 
Britain,  thus  contributing  to  cover  the  earth  with  cities  and  to  plant  religion 
and  liberty  in  the  savage  deserts  of  America,  we  recognize  the  overruling 
providence  of  that  Being  who  can  render  even  the  insolence  of  tyrants  who 
usurp  his  attributes  conducive  to  his  honor.  Having  no  royal  patent,  nor 
iiiiy  other  title  to  their  lands  than  the  vendition  of  the  natives,  and  not  being 
included  within  the  boundaries  of  any  provincial  jurisdiction  established  by 
Hritish  authority,  the  planters  of  New  Haven  united  in  a  compact  of  volun- 
tary association  of  the  same  nature  and  for  the  same  ends  with  that  which 
the  founders  of  Connecticut  had  embraced  ;  and  in  this  condition  they  re- 
mained till  the  Restoration,  when  New  Haven  and  Connecticut  were  united 
together  by  a  charter  of  King  Charles  the  Second.' 

"^Wlien  the  plantation  of  Connecticut  was  first  projected,  hopes  were 
entertained  that  it  might  conduce  to  overawe  the  hostility  of  the  Indians  ; 
but  it  produced  a  perfectly  opposite  effect.     The  tribes  of  Indians  in  the 
ininiedmte  vicinitv  of  Massachusetts  Bay  were  comparatively  feeble  and 
unwarlike  ;  but  the  colonies  of  Providence  and  Connecticut  were  planted 
in  the  midst  of  powerful  and  martial  hordes.     Among  these,  the  most  con- 
siderable were  the  Narragansets,  who  inhabited  the  shores  of  the  bay  which 
bears  their  name  ;  and  the  Pequods,  v/ho  occupied  the  territory  which 
stretches  from  the  River  Pequod**  to  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut.     The 
Pequods  were  a  numerous  tribe,  and  renowned  for  their  prowess  and  ferocity. 
They  entertained,  from  the  first,  a  jealous  hatred  of  the  European  colo- 
nists, and  for  some  time  past  had  harassed  them  with  unprovoked  attacks, 
and  excited  their  abhorrence  and  indignation  hy  the  monstrous  outrages  to 
which  they  subjected  their  captives.     Unoffending  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, who  fell  into  their  hands,  were  scalped  and  sent  back  to  their  friends,  or 
nut  to  death  with  every  circumstance  of  torture  and  indignity,  — -  while  the 
assassins,  with  diabolical  glee  and  derision,  challenged  them  to  invoke  the 
(iod  of  the  Christians,  and  put  to  the  proof  his  power  to  save  them.     The 
extension  of  the  English  settlements  excited  anew  the  fury  of  the  savages, 
and  produced  a  repetition  of  injuries,  which  Vane,  the  governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, determined  at  length  to  retahate  and  punish  by  offensive  operations. 
Receiving  intelligence  of  a  serious  attack  by  the  Pequods  on  the  Connecticut 
settlers  [1637],  he  summoned  all  the  New  England  communities  to  assemble 
and  despatch  the  strongest  force  they  could  contribute  to  the  defence  of  their 
countrymen  and  of  the  common  cause  of  European  colonization.     The 
Pequods,  aware  of  the  impending  danger,  were  not  negligent  of  prudent 
precautions,  as  well  as  active  endeavours  to  repel  it.     To  this  end,  they 
sought  a  reconciliation  with  the  Narragansets,  their  hereditary  enemies  and 

'  Neat.  The  colonists  of  Massachusetts  were  very  desirous  that  Davenport  and  his  associ- 
alP8 should  settle  among  them.  But  "it  had  been  an  observation  of  Mr.  Davenports,  that, 
whenever  a  reformation  had  been  effected  in  any  part  of  the  world,  it  had  rested  where  it 
had  been  left  by  the  reformers.  It  could  not  be  advanced  another  step.  He  was  now  eni- 
liHrked  in  a  design  of  forming  a  civil  and  religious  constitution  as  near  as  possible  to  Scripture 
precept  and  example.  The  principal  gentlemen  who  had  followed  him  to  America  had  the 
same  views.  In  laying  the  foundaUon  of  a  new  colony,  there  was  a  fair  probability  that  they 
inielit  accommodate  all  matters  of  church  and  commonwealth  to  their  own  feelings  and  scnti- 


iruinouii.     in  me  nisiory  oi  every  greai  puuni-  i^iv/m.,  .^-.a.--- —  r >    •  -2  Z'    -ji     -,, 

the  operation,  among  the  leading  reformers,  of  a  narrow,  selfish,  arrogant  spirit,  timidly  or 
ambiuously  contending  for  finality  and  opposed  to  ulterior  progress. 

•   The  TKanins 


X  it€  X  tiam^s. 


174 


H^TORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


rivals  in  power  ;  proposing  that  on  both  sides  the  remembrance  of  ancient 
quarrels  and  animosities  should  be  buried,  or  at  least  suspended  ;  and  urging 
the  Nurragansets  for  once  to  co6perate  cordially  with  them  against  a  com- 
mon foe,  whose  progressive  encroachments  threatened  to  confound  them 
both  in  one  common  destruction.  But  the  Narragansets  had  long  cherished 
a  fierce  and  deep-rooted  hatred  against  the  Pequods  ;  and,  less  moved  by 
a  distant  prospect  of  danger  to  themselves,  than  by  the  hope  of  an  instant 
gratification  of  their  implacable  revenge,  they  rejected  the  proposals  of  ac- 
commodation,  and  determined  to  assist  the  English  in  the  prosecution  of 
the  war.' 

Enraged,  but  not  dismayed,  by  this  disappointment,  the  Pequods  hastened, 
by  the  vigor  of  their  operations,  to  anticipate  the  junction  of  the  allied  pro- 
vincial forces  ;  and  the  Connecticut  troops,  while  as  yet  they  had  received 
but  a  small  part  of  the  succour  which  their  friends  had  engaged  to  afibrd 
them,  found  it  n(  cessary  to  advance  against  the  enemy.     The  "Pequod  war- 
riors, amounting  in  number  to  more  than  fifteen  hundred,  commanded  by 
Sassacus,  their  principal  sachem,  occupied  two  fortified  stations,  against 
one  of  which  Captain  Mason  and  the  Connecticut  militia,  consisting  only 
of  ninety  men,  attended  by  a  troop  of  Indian  allies,  directed  their  attaci(. 
The  approach  of  Mason  was  quickened  by  the  information  he  obtained,  that 
the  enemy,  deceived  by  a  seemingly  retrograde  movement  of  the  pfovincial 
force,  had  abandoned  themselves  to  the  conviction  that  the  English  dared 
not  encounter  them,  and  were  celebrating  with  festive  revel  and  premature 
triumph  the  supposed  evacuation  of  theur  country.     About  daybreak,  while 
wrapped  in  deep  slumber  and  supine  security,  they  were  approached  by  the 
colonists  ;  and  the  surprise  would  have  been  complete,  if  an  alarm  had  not 
been  communicated  by  the  barking  of  a  dog.    The  war-whoop  was  instantly 
sounded,  and  they  flew  to  their  arms.    The  English  troops  rushed  on  to  the 
attack  ;  and  wliile  some  of  them  fired  on  the  Indians  through  the  palisades, 
others  forced  their  way  by  the  entrances  into  the  fort,  and,  setting  fire  to  the 
huts,  which  were  covered  with  reeds,  involved  their  enemies  in  the  confusion 
and  horror  of  a  general  conflagration.     The  Pequods,  notwithstanding  the 
disadvantage  of  their  predicament,  behaved  with  great  intrepidity  ;  but,  after 
a  stout  and  obstinate  resistance,  they  were  defeated,  with  the  slaughter  of  at 
least  five  hundred  of  their  tribe.    Msmy  of  the  women  and  children  perished 
in  the  flames  ;  and  the  warriors,  endeavouring  to  escape,  were  slain  by  the 
colonists,  or,  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Indian  allies  of  the  English,  who 
surrounded  the  fort  at  a  distance,  were  reserved  for  a  more  cruel  fate. 
Soon  after  this  action,  Captain  Stoughton  having  arrived  with  the  auxiliary 
troops  from  Massachusetts,  it  was  resolved  to  pursue  the  victory.     Several 
engagements  took  place,  which  terminated  unfavorably  for  the  Pequods ; 
and  in  a  short  time  they  sustained  another  general  defeat,  which  put  an  end 
to  tho  war.     A  few  only  of  this  once  powerful  nation  survived,  who,  aban- 
doning their  country  to  the  victorious  Europeans,  dispersed  themselves  among 
the  neighbom-ing  tribes,  and  lost  their  existence  as  a  separate  people.    Sas- 
sacus  had  been  an  object  of  superstitious  terror  to  the  Narragansets,  who  at 
first  endeavoured  to  dissuade  the  colonists  from  risking  a  personal  encounter 
with  him,  by  the  assurance  that  his  life  was  charmed  and  his  person  invul- 
nerable.    After  the  destruction  of  his  people,  and  when  he  fled  for  refuge 
to  a  distant  tribe,  the  Narragansets  passing,  by  natural  progress,  from  terror 

'  ""Mather.    Neul.    TnimbuII. 


CHAP  n ] 


TREATMENT  OF  THE  INDIANS. 


175 


to  cruelty,  solicited  and  prevailed  with  his  hosts  to  cut  off  his  head.*  Thus 
terminated  a  struggle,  more  important  from  its  consequences  than  from  the 
numbers  of  the  combatants  or  the  celebrity  of  their  names.  On  its  issue 
there  had  been  staked  no  less  than  the  question,  whether  Christianity  and 
livilization,  or  paganism  and  barbarity,  should  prevail  in  New  England. 

This  first  military  enterprise  of  the  colonists  was  conducted  with  vigor  and 
ability,  and  impressed  the  Indian  race  with  a  high  opinion  of  their  steadfast 
courage  and  superior  skill.    Their  victory,  it  must  be  confessed,  was  sullied 
by  cruelties,  which  it  is  easy  to  account  for  and  extenuate,  but  painful  to 
recollect.    The  Massachusetts  militia,  previously  to  their  march,  exerted  no 
small  diligence  in  purging  their  ranks  of  all  persons  whose  religious  senti- 
ments did  not  fully  correspond  with  the  general  standard  of  faith  and  ortho- 
doxy.^   It  had  been  happy,  if  they  could  have  j)urged  their  own  bosoms  of 
the  vindictive  feelings  which  the  outrages  of  their  savage  foes  were  but  too 
well  fitted  to  inspire.     Some  of  the  prisoners  were  tortured  by  the  Indian 
allies,  whose  cruelties  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  EngHsh  might  have  pre- 
vented ;  a  considerable  number  were  sold  as  slaves  in  Bermudas  ,3  and  the 
rest  were  reduced  to  servitude  in  the  New  England  settlements.     In  aggra- 
vation of  the  reproach  which  these  proceedings  undoubtedly  merit,  it  has 
been  urged,  but  with  very  little  reason,  that  the  Pequods.were  entitled  to 
the  treatment  of  an  independent  people  gallantly  striving  to  defend  their 
property,  their  rights,  and  their  freedom.     But,  in  truth,  the  Pequods  were 
the  aggressors  in  an  uniust  quarrel,  and  were  fighting  all  along  in  support  of 
unprovoked  and  ferocious  purposes  of  extermination.     The  colonists  had 
conducted  themselves  with  undeviating  justice,  civility,  and  Christian  benev- 
olence towards  the  Indians.     They  treated  fairly  with  them  for  the  ceded 
territories;  assisted  them  by  counsel  and  help  in  their  diseases  and  their 
agriculture  ;  and  labored  to  communicate  to  them  the  blessings  of  religion. 
They  disallowed  all  acquisitions  of  territory  from  the  Indians,  but  such  as 
underwent  the  scrutiny  and  received  the  sanction  of  the  colonial  magistracy  ; 
and  they  offered  a  participation  of  all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  their  com- 
monwealth to  every  Indian  who  would  embrace  the  faith  of  a  Christian  and 
the  manners  of  a  civilized  human  being.     In  return  for  these  demonstrations 
of  good-will,  they  experienced  the  most  exasperating  outrage  and  barbarity, 
directed  against  all  that  they  reverenced  or  loved  ;  and  were  forcibly  im- 
pressed with  the  conviction,  that  they  must  either  extirpate  those  saiiguinary 
idolaters,  or  leave  themselves  and  their  wives,  children,  and  Christian  kin- 
dred exposed  to  a  far  more  horrid  extermination.*    Even  in  the  course  of 

'  Mather.  Ncal.  Hutchinson.  Trumhuir  The  destruction  of  the  bravo  Pequods,  though 
provoked  by  their  own  aggressive  hostility,  was  lamented  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
after  iiy  an  American  divine  and  poet :  — 

"  Indulge,  my  native  land  !  indulge  the  tear 

That  steals  impassioned  o'er  a  nation's  doom ; 
To  mo  each  twig  from  Adam's  stock  is  near, 
And  sorrows  fall  upon  an  Indian's  tomb."  —  Dwight. 
«  Regimental  chaplains  accompanied  the  New  England  forces  in  their  campaigns ;  and  in 
circumstances  of  doubt  or  danger,  the  chaplain  was  invited  to  pray  for  divine  direction  and 
assistance.    When  a  commander-in-chief  vfHi  appointed,  his  truncheon  was  delivered  to  him 
by  one  of  the  clergy.      Trumbull.  „       .     „     ,     ,  i.       r  .u 

3  A  similar  punishment  was  inflicted,  some  years  after,  in  England,  on  a  number  ot  the 
royalists  who  were  implicated  in  Penruddock's  insurrection.      Hume.  .... 

«  The  colonists  considered  themselves  in  some  degree  accessory  to  the  crimes  which  they 
failed  to  prevent  by  neglect  of  any  of  the  means  warranted  by  strict  justice.  Belknap  cites 
tho  fniuJin.-  -njrv  in  n  MS  .Tmirysal  of  Events  in  JVeto  Eneland,  some  years  posterior  to  this 

The  In 


the  follow^nV^cnir^in  a*Ms\  JwrKafo/ZriJCTite  in  JVew  Emland,  some'  years  posterior  to  this 
prriod.    "  The  house  of  John  Kcniston  was  burned,  and  he  killed,  at  Greenla 


land. 


176 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


they  made  propositions  of  lenity  to  the  savages,  on  t 
delivering  up  the  murderers  of  the  English  ;  but  their 


[DOCK  II. 

the  condition 


of  their 'delivering  up  the  murderers  of  tlie  English  ;  but  their  offers  were 
uniformly  rejected  ;  and  the  people  who  thus  avouched  the  murders  as 
national  acts  invited  the  avengers  of  blood  to  visit  them  with  national  pun- 

ishments.  , i  i     j-         •      . 

The  mutual  hostilities  of  civilized  nations,  waged  by  dispassionate  mer- 
cenaries, and  directed  by  leaders  more  eager  for  fame  than  prompted  by 
animosity  or  personal  apprehension,  may  be  conducted  on  the  principles  ol' 
a  splenclid  game.     But  such  hostilities  as  those  which  the  New  England 
colonists  were  compelled  to  wage  with  the  hordes  of  savage  assassins  who 
attacked  them  will  always  display  human  passions  in  their  naked  horror  and 
ferocity.     The  permission  (for  we  must  suppose  tliat  they  could  have  pre- 
vented it)  of  the  barbarity  of  their  savage  allies  appears  the  least  excusable 
feature  in  their  conduct.     And  yet,  in  considering  it,  we  must  add  to  our 
allowance  for  passion  inflamed  by  enormous  provocation  a  reasonable  regard 
to  the  danger  and  inexpediency  of  checking  that  mutual  enmity  of  the  sav- 
ao-es  which  prevented  a  combination  that  might  have  proved  fatal  to  all  tiio 
European  settlements.     The  reduction  of  their  captives  to  servitude  was 
unquestionably  an  illaudable  measure  ;  but  one  for  which  it  would  not  bo 
easy  to  suggest  a  substitute.     The  captive  Pequods  were  treated  wilh  all 
Dossible  kindness,  and  regarded  rather  as  indented  servants  than  slaves.    It 
must  be  acknowledged,  at  least,  that  the  colonists  observed  a  magnanimous 
consistency  in  their  international  policy,  and  gave  the  Indians  the  protection 
of  the  same  stern  principles  of  justice  of  which  they  had  taught  them  to  feel 
the  vindictive  energy.     They  not  only  tendered  a  participation  of  their  own 
privileges  and  territory  to  all  civilized  and  converted  Indians  ;  but,  having 
ascertained  the  stations  which  the  savages  most  highly  valued,  and  the  range 
of  territory  that  seemed  necessary  to  their  comfort  and  happiness,  they 
prohibited  and  annulled  every  transaction  by  which  these  domains  might  bn 
added  to  the  European  acquisitions.     A  short  time  after  the  termination  ot 
the  Pequod  war,  an  Indian  having  been  wantonly  killed  by  some  vagabond 
Englishmen,  the  murderers  were  solemnly  tried  and  executed  for  the  crime; 
and  the  Indians  beheld  with  astonishment  the  blood  of  three  men  deliberately 
shed  by  their  own  countrymen  for  the  slaughter  of  one  stranger.     The  sense 
of  justice,  cooperating  with  the  repute  of  valor,  secured  to  the  English  set- 
tlements a  long  rest  from  war.'  „  i      . 

While  the  military  force  of  Massachusetts  was  thus  externally  employed, 
the  provincial  commonwealtli  was  shaken  by  intestine  dissension,  generated 
by  theological  controversy,  and  inflamed  by  the  gall  of  bitterness  of  unruly 
tongues.  [1637.]  It  was  the  custom  at  that  time  in  Boston,  that  the  mem- 
bers of  every  congregation  should  assemble  in  weekly  meetings  to  reconsider 
the  sermons  of  the  preceding  Sunday ;  to  discuss  the  doctrinal  instructions 
they  had  heard  ;  to  revive  the  impressions  that  had  beer,  produced  by  their 
eJabbatical  exercises  ;  and  extend  the  sacred  influence  of  the  Sabbaili 
throughout  the  week.  Anne  Hutchinson,  the  wife  of  one  of  the  most  re- 
spectable inhabitants  of  the  colony,  a  lady  of  masculine  spirit,  subtle,  am- 
bitious, and  enthusiastic,  submitted  with  impatience  to  the  restriction  by 
which  women  at  these  meetings  were  debarred  from  the  privilege  of  joinine 
the  debates  ;  and  conceiving  that  she  was  authorized  to  exercise  her  di- 


HI 


dmni  are  Simon,  Andrew,  and  Peter.    Those  three  we  had  in  prison,  and  should  have  kiUcil 
J%e  gintd  Lord  liar  dan  us:"      Hisiury  of  AeK"-  "smpsktre. 
>  Mather      Neal.     Hutchinson. 


[BOOK  II      I    tHA»'  "  ] 


MUd.  llUTCllIMtON. 


177 


should  liave  killed 


,l,i(lic  nowurs  by  llio  pn'ct'pl  of  Si-ripture  wlilili  enjoins  Ihe  elder  women  to 
tiitcli  ihc  yovnger.,  she  cslublislied  sepiinilc  fonuile  iisstMnblauies,  in  wliich  her 
/(«al  aiiJ  talent  soon  procured  her  a  ninnorous  anil  aihniring  audience.    Tiiese 
ivomen,  who  had  partaken  the  strupslea  and  jierils  of  the  male  colonists,  had 
,l,,o  caught  no  small  portion  of  the  various  hues  of  their  spirit ;  and  as  many 
!'l'  llieni  had  been  accustomed  to  a  life  more  replete  with  external  elegance 
Hid  variety  of  interest  and  employment  than  the  state  of  the  colony  could 
,|mi)ly,  they  experienced  a  restless  craving  for  something  to  animate  and  en- 
';i!ro  their  fac-'lties,  anil  judged  nothing  fitter  for  this  purpose  tliun  an  imita- 
"iim  of  those  exercises  for  the  promotion  of  the  great  conunon  cause,  which 
(Lined  to  minister  so  much  comfort  and  support  to  the  spirits  of  the  men. 
Mrs.  Hutchinson,  their  leader,  gained  by  her  devout  behaviour  the  cordial 
,sicem  of  John  Cotton,  whose  charity  never  failed  to  recognize  in  every 
liiinaii  being  the  sUghtest  trace  of  those  graces  which  he  continually  and 
mdenlly  longed  to  behold  ;  and  towards  him  she  entertained^ and  professed 
;„r  some  time  a  very  high  veneration.     The  friendship  of  Vane  and  some 
i)tliors  had  a  less  favorable  influence  on  her  mind  ;  und  their  admiring  praise 
of  the  depth  and  vigor  of  her  genius  seems  to  have  clevat^»il,  in  her  estinui- 
lioii,  the  gifts  of  intellect  above  the  graces  of  character.     She  acquired  tlie 
tide  of  The  JVonsMc/i,  which  the  ingenuity  of  her  admirers  derived  from  an 
liiiagranimatical  transposition  of  the  letters  of  her  name  ;  and  gave  to  her 
iWiuile  assemblies  the  title  oi  frossipings,  —  a  term,  at  that  time,  of  respect- 
able import,  but  which  tlie  scandalous  repute  of  female  congregation  and 
debate  has  since  consigned  to  contempt  and  ridicule.     Doing  amiss  what 
the  Scriptures  plainly  forbade  her  to  do  at  all,  she  constituted  herself  not 
only  a  dictator  of  orthodoxy,  but  a  censor  of  the  spiritual  condition  and  value 
of  all  the  ministers  and  inhabitants  of  the  province.    Her  canons  of  doctrini' 
uerc  received  by  her  associates  as  the  unerring  standard  of  truth  ;  and  a 
defamatory  persecution  was  industriously  waged  against  all  who  accounted 
ihom  unsound,  uncertain,  or  uninleUigible.      A  scrutiny  was  uistituted  into 
ihe  ciiaracters  of  all  the  provincial  clergy  and  laity  ;  and  of  those  wno  re- 
fused to  receive  the  doctrinal  testimony  of  the  conclave,  few  found  it  easy 
u)  encounter  the  test  of  a  censorious  inquisition  stimulated  by  female  petu- 
linre  and  controversial  rancor.     In  the  assemblies  which  were  held  by  the 
followers  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  there  was  nourished  and  trained  a  keen, 
routentious  spirit,  and  unbridled  license  of  tongue,  of  which  the  influence 
was  speedily  felt  in  the  serious  disturbance,  first  of  domestic  happiness,  and 
then  of  the  public  peace.    The  maiions  of  Boston  were  transformed  into  a 
synod  of  slanderous  praters,  whose  inquisitorial  deliberations  and  audacious 
decrees  instilled  their  venom  into  the  innermost  recesses  of  society  ;  and 
the  spirits  of  a  great  majority  of  the  citizens  being  in  that  combustible  state 
in  which  a  feeble  spark  will  suflice  to  kindle  a  formidable  conflagration,  the 
whole  colony  was  inflamed  and  distracted  by  the  incontinence  of  female 
pleen  and  presumplion.'  •  at      u      i 

The  tenets  embraced  and  inculcated  by  the  faction  of  vyhich  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson was  the  leader  were  denounced  by  their  adversaries  as  constituting 
the  heresy  of  Antinomianisni,  —  a  charge,  which,  when  preferred  by  the 
\^orld  at  large,  indicates  no  more  than  thej-ci)roach  w^hich  the  gospel,  from 

"'  "When  the  minds  of  "men  are  ful^orT<•formii^gTpiri^  and  predisposed  to  tlio  distemper- 
\Micli  arc  engendered  by  such  fulness,  a  little  matter  sometimes  occasions  rather  than  causes 


liangerous  symptoms  to  appear." 
VOL.    I 


Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

23 


178 


HISTORY   OF   NOilTlI   AMi:iUCA. 


[I^OOK  II, 


p.  f  i  •! 


l!;|.^  \ 


I  4  •» 


its  first  promulgation,  has  been  fated  to  sustain,  and  when  advanced  by 
Christians  against  each  other  generally  implies  nothmg  else  than  the  conclu- 
sion  which  the  accusers  logically  deduce  from  certain  articles  of  doctnne, 
hut  which  the  holders  of  these  articles  reject  and  disallow.     ?^othing  can  be 
more  perfectly  free  and  gratuitous  than  the  tender  of  heavenly  grace  nuhe 
-osoel  •  nor  any  thing  more  powerfully  operative  than  the  influence  which 
The  faithful  acceptance  of  this  grace  is  calculated  to  exercise.    Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson and  her  adherents  contended  more  earnestly  for  the  Ireedom  than 
for  the  constraining  influence  of  divine  grace  ;  and,  with  female  eagerness 
and  polemical  impetuosity,  were  prompt  and  swift  to  brand  with  terms  ol 
heretical  and  contemptuous  designation  every  inhabitant  ot  the  colony  ami 
especially  every  minister,  whose  views  did  not  entirely  coincide  with  their 
own      The  cjctrines  which  they  taught,  and  the  censures  which  they  pro- 
nounced,  were  received  with  avidity  and  delight  by  a  considerable  paiiy; 
and,  proportionally  provoking  the  displeasure  of  others,  excited  the  most 
violent  dissensions  throughout  the  whole  colony.     Cotton  endeavoured  to 
moderate  the  heats  that  arose,  by  representing  to  the  parties  that  their  strile 
was  preiudicial  to  the  great  purpose  in  which  he  firmly  believed  the  minds 
of  both  were  united,  —  the  exalting  and  honoring  of  divine  grace  ;  the  on 
(said  he)  seeking  to  advance  the  grace  of  God  wtthm  us  xn  the  work  of  sane- 
tification,  the  other  seeking  to  advance  the  grace  of  God  without  m  in  tk 
work  of  justification.     But  the  strife  was  not  to  be  stayed  ;  his  endeavours 
to  pacify  and  reconcile  only  attracted  upon  himself  the  fulmination  of  a  cen- 
sure of  timorous  and  purblind  incapacity  from  the  assembly  of   he  women; 
and,  as  even  this  insult  was  not  able  to  provoke  him  to  declare  himself 
iMitirelv  opposed  to  them,  he  incurred  a  temporary  abatement  ot  his  popu- 
larity with  the  majority  of  the  colonists.     Some  of  the  tenets  promu  gated 
bv  the  sectaries  he  reverenced  as  the  legitimate  fruit  of  profound  and  per- 
spicuous meditation  of  the  Scriptures  ;  but  he  viewed  with  grief  and  amaze- 
ment the  fierce  and  arrogant  spirit  with  which  they  were  maintained,  and  the 
wild  and  dangerous  errors  with  which  they  were  associated. 

The  controversy  raged  with  a  violence  very  unfavorable  to  the  discern- 
ment and  recognition  of  truth,     Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  her  adherents,  both 
male  and  female,  firmly  persuaded  of  the  superior  soundness  and  purity  ol 
their  system  of  doctrine,  forgot  to  consider  how  fiir  the  opposition  which  it 
encountered  might  be  traced  to  the  obscurity  and  imperfection  with  whuh 
they  themselves  received  and  proclaimed  it  ;  — a  consideration  vvhich  no 
human  being  is  entitled  to  disregard,  and  which  is  peculiarly  fitted  to  em- 
bellish superior  attainments,  and  promote  their  efficacy  by  uniting  them  mt 
the  amiable  graces  of  candor  and  humility.     The  princip  es  they  discarded 
from  their  creed  laid  hold  of  their  spirits  ;  and  while  they  contended  for 
the  sovereignty  of  divine  grace  in  communicating  truth,  they  assailed  their 
adversaries'with  an  acrimony  and  invective  that  might  well  seem  to  imply 
that  i.uth  was  easily  and  exclusively  attainable  by  the  mere  will  and  en- 
deavour of  men.      The  most  enlightened  and  consistent  Christian  will  eve 
be  the  most  ready  to  acknowledge  that  he  knows  nothing  yet  as  he  ovghl  (o 
know,  and  may  have  more  cause  than  in  this  life  he  can  ever  discover  to 
blush  for  the  defectiveness  of  a  testimony,  which,  exhibited  with  more  clear- 
ness and  consistency,  might  have  fo--  i  a  readier  and  more  entire  accein- 
ance  with  mankind,      but  no  such  ronsuu-niuunn  ^li^gvs.c^i  tm  .m...  - 
mitigate  the  vehemence,  or  soften  the  asperity,  of  those  busy,  bold,  ami 


cr 


i  ,&4f 


CHAP.  11  ] 


MRS.  HUTCHINSON. 


179 


ocmntuous  spirits  :  nor  did  it  ever  occur  to  them  that  the  doctrines  they 
P;rc2^d  wotSd  be'discredited  by  association  ^vith  the  venom  of  untamed, 
SaSr trgues.     It  is  asserted' that  the  heat  of  their  tempers  gradually 
ommunfcated  itself  to   the  understandings  of  Mrs.   Hulchmson  and  her 
'T  and  that -in  addition  to  their  original  tenets,  that  believers  are  per- 
S;  unked  with  the  spirit  of  God,  that  commands  to  .ork  out  salva^^on 
'Slur  and  trembling  n^i^ly  only  to  those  who  are  ""der  a  covenant  of 
rks,  and  that  sanctification  is  not  the  proper  evidence  of  Christian  eon 
it  on  L- they  adopted  that  dangerous  and  erroneous  notion  of  the  Quakers, 
h  t  the  spirit  of  God  communicates  with  the  minds  of  believers  mdepend- 
ntlvof  the  written  word;  and,  in  consistency  with  this,  received  many 
evelations  of  future  events  announced  to  them  by  Mrs   Hutchinson,  as 
uaUy  i"  allible  with  the  prophecies  of  Scripture.    But  the  accounts  trans- 
£l  of  such  theological  dissensions  are  always  obscured  by  the  cloud  of 
"temporary  passion^  prejudice,  and  error ;  hasty  effusions  o  irritated  zeal 
re  3akenVir  deliberate  sentiments  ;  and  the  excesses  of  the  zealo  s  of 
apa^lyheld  up  as  Uie  standard  by  which  the  whole  body  may  fairly  be 

'"Tomf  ministers,  who  espoused  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  opinions,  began  to  pro- 
.llrthemf  om  the  pulpit  with  such  opprobrious  invectives  agamst  all  by 
on  he^  vere  rejected,  as  at  length  brought  the  dissensions  to  a  crisis  ; 
i  Vane  being  accounted  the  confederate  and  protector  of  Mrs.  Hutch- 
i  l"is  contLance  in  office,  or  privation  of  it  at  the  approaching  annual 

c  i'on   was  the  first  test  by  ;hich  the  parties  were  to  try  w.th  which  o 
E  resided  the  power  of  imposing  silence  on  the  other      So  rnuch   U- 
ror  and  mutual  jealousy  had  now  been  instilled  into  the  minds  of  the 
opTe,  that  the  utmost  efforts  of  the  sober  and  hurnane  barely  sufficed  to 
ev  n    the  election  from  being  disgracefully  signalized  by  a  gener  »  not 
S  the  exertions  of  Vane's  partisans  failed  to  obtam  his  reappointment 
md  bv  a  ereat  maiority  of  votes,  Winthrop  was  chosen  governor.     [May, 
"637  {    Vane  neiertheless,  still' remained  in  Massachusetts,  professing  his 
Sgness  to  Undertake  even  the  humblest  function  in  the  ^^--^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
monwealth  composed  of  the  undoubted  people  of  God ;  and  the  ^oilowers 
f  Mrs   HutclTnson,  regarding  his  deprivation  of  office  as  a  dangerous  blow 
SseTves  ceased  no't  to  dor  fo^^ 
ns  thev  had  exerted  for  the  propagation  of  their  religious  tenets.      Ihe  gov 

n!rwas  loudly  and  insWgfy.,  vilified,  and  Wi"throp  o^^^^^^^^^ 
md  affronted.    At  length  the  prevailing  party  resolved  to  cut  up  this  source 
; fcontentbn  by  the  robots;  an'd  a  general  synod  «[ ^he  jhurches  of  t^^^^^^^^^ 
ny  having  been  assembled,  the  doctrines  recently  broached  ^^ ex e  condemned 
i  erroneous  and  heretical.     As  this  proceeding  '.^''^^^^J^yJ^J^''^^^^^ 
professors  of  these  doctrines  to  assert  them_^^^th_lnc^ea3e^^ 

„mong  thorn  .ccnis  undnn mbly  .nmuf.st ;  and  >;'«'™have  issued  from  a  society,  which, 
,ho„,  with  the  fundamental  tenet  of  ti^  ^»''J«'^^,  J  ^'^  JntUcr  plural  Tegulartiy  of  female 
with  tiirlher  resembhmco  to  the  Cluakers   ''<l,7,'f';;J.  ^''^^.""S^^^^^^^^  that  error  to  >i 

,,remhi..fr.  Captain  Underhill,  one  of  Mrs.  ""'"''""f "  "  *°  "^of'^onduct.  Much  scandal 
Monstrous  h,nKth,nnd  co,r.bined  with  .1  »''«  f  °f  ^^^ '"^^d  ^^^^^  hi« 

was  occasioned  by  his  p.d.licly  affir.nmg  thatT.o  'l"//^«„«'^,^Ji^Jfi";^^^  his  patroness; 
cvcrlastinc  safety  while  he  was  sinok.ng  a  pipe.  Ho  wa«  ^an's-^"^^  "'^.j;}  „f  Lpocrisy, 
and,  a  few  vear^  after,  returned  to  oston,  where  he  rn-^do  a  P»^'«  ^"^^J^^^^^^^  Sutcf inson^s 
n,l,!ltcrv.  nnd  d.dusion.   Belkuap's  History  of  J^fW  HanipsAtM.^  Anotner  oi  inrs  ^ 

lollower;  was  a  woman  named'  Mary  Dyer,  vv  -o  reurcd  lu  rvruni.  loland,  v,  her_  -      . 
•lucn-iy  became  a  Quaker.    Winthrop's  Journal  (Savage  8  edition). 


180 


HISTORY  OF  iXORTU  AMEllICA. 


[BOOK  II 


m%M 


thiacltv  the  leaders  of  the  party  were  summoned  before  the  General  Court. 
mTs  Hutchinson  rebuked  her  judges  for  their  wicked  persecution  of  truth 
rnmiared  herself  to  the  prophet  Daniel  cast  into  the  den  of  lions,  un.l 
•lUemnted  to  complete  the  shnilitudc  by  exercising  what  she  beheved  to  be 
; le  eift  of  prophecy,  and  predicting  that  her  exile  would  be  attended  with 
e  ruin  of  her  adversaries  and  all  their  posterity.^  To  this  punishment, 
nevertheless,  she  was  condemned,  together  with  her  brother,  Wheelwright, 
who  was  a  clergyman,  and  had  been  the  chief  pulp.t-charnpion  of  her  doc- 
trines •  and  some  of  the  inferior  members  of  the  faction,  partly  or.  account 
of  the  'violence  with  which  they  still  proclaimed  their  theological  tenets,  and 
partly  for  the  seditious  insolence  with  which  they  had  treated  the  new  gov- 
ernor, were  fined  and  disfranchised.  In  consequence  of  tliese  proceednigs, 
Vane  quitted  the  colony  and  returned  to  England,  "  leavmg  a  caveat,  says 
Cotton  Mather,  "  that  all  good  men  are  not  fit  for  government. 

From  the  unpleasing  contemplation  of  tJiese  religious  dissensions,  we  turn 
to  the  more  agreeable  survey  of  some  of  the  consequences  winch  attended 
their  issue.  A  considerable  number  of  persons,  dissatisfied  with  the  pohcy 
and  conduct  of  the  synod  and  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  volun- 
tarily forsook  the  colony;  some  of  these  umted  themselves  with  Roger 
Williams  and  his  friends  at  Providence  ;  and  being  soon  after  abandoned  by 
Mrs.  Hutchinson,  they  fell  under  the  guidance  of  that  mehorated  spinti  which 
Williams  now  began  to  display.  By  a  transaction  with  the  Indians,  these 
associated  exiles  acquiredtlie  property  of  a  fertile  island  m  Narraganset  Bay, 
whrctXined  the  name  of  Rhode  Island.^  Williams  remained  among  then, 
upwards  of  forty  yeai's,  respected  as  the  father  and  director  of  the  colony, 
of  which  he  was  several  times  elected  governor.  In  the  year  1643,  he  made 
a  iourney  to  England,  and,  aided  by  the  interest  of  Sir  Henry  Vane,  obtained 
and  conveyed  to  his  feUow-colonists  a  parliamentary  charter,  by  which  I  evi- 
dence and  Rhode  Island  were  politically  united  till  the  Restoration.  Others 
of  the  exiles,  under  the  guidance  of  Wheelwright,  betook  themselves  to  the 

~TTf;;r^;;;^^;i^l.lion  was  signally  punished.     The  ruin  she  ,.rndicted  as  the  conscout-ncc  of 
llcr  prcsunim  on  wus     K^^     j^^^^^^^  Ishind ;  but  not  hk.ng  tlial 

'^'.aaon  roLverrL  o?  tt  DuXettlen.cnts,  where  Bhe  ond  all  her  family  wore  mur, 
HoredZtr  Indians.     Before  she  quitted   MassnrhuscUs,  «he  published  a  d.Bclamat.on  „l 

^mn  ,7tlo  erroneous  tenets  ^vhich  were  imputed  to  her  ;  but  maintained  (in  the  face  of  tl,.. 

Tare  evince  to  the  contrary)  that  «he  hall  never  entertained  them.  This  was  consider. 
^ZTTi\\lZiZ<,Uon.  Per...ps  it  might  rather  have  warranted  the  inference,  ha  1  o 
viimmamvioent  spirit  whid.  had  laid  hold  of  her  had  departed  or  «"l'«'J«J.  ?";  .i"  ^^ ,': 
no  Innpm  rocognizcd  tf.c  opinions,  which,  through  its  medium,  formerly  presented  them^ch.. 

'"=''MatT.ef  Neaf.    Ilutehinson.     Milton  dilTered  from  Mather  in  his  estimate  of  Vaiu's 
canacilv.     His  fine  sonnet  to  him  begins  thus :  — ; 
>       ■'  u  Vane,  young  in  years,  but  m  sajie  counsels  old, 

Than  whom  a  better  senator  ne'er  held 

The  liclrn  of  Homo." 


And  ends  thus  :  — 


"  Therefore  on  thy  right  hand  Rolicion  lentiR, 
And  reckons  thee  in  chief  her  olclest  son." 


-   Ihe  price  paid  to  the  Indians  was  fifty  fathoms  of  white  beads,  ten  coats,  and  twenty  sho.s 

Ch.hi  icrs      »  When  a  fourth  part  of  a  township  of  the  common  size  was  sold  by  one  Lngh.h- 

„  n  '  r  n.-thcr  [or  a  wheellJrrow,  it  will  be  Lily  believed  that  it  was  "^  «*;;  'Xn^wor  h 

u.  aUrigineK.     To  the  Indians,  without  an  English  purchaser,  the  land  was  often  uorll 

llmti    m"d  to  the  colonist,  its  value  was  created  by   .is  labor.'      Uwieht  s  Travels.    -'A 

Ul    de  Is  laid,  the  seUlers,  i.   March,  1(08,  subscribeil  tht;  following  civil  comna.^t :  - '  W  , 

Slot  _'are  und..rwritten,  do  hereby  solemK^•Jn  the^ 

lo  iH:or:r  J;:.s  c;^i!:;;';h:  s.:;^Km;'a;.di:^;.r;f  Lo;d;:and  ^;;  aini^-penict  a„d  a..,. 

luto  laws  given  in  iiis  holy  word  '  •     Pitkin's  History  of  Micnca. 


CHAP.  II] 


CHARLES  CHAUNCY. 


181 


ions,  we  turn 


stimato  of  Vane's 


northeast  parts  of  New  England,  and,  being  joined  by  associates  who  were 
allured  by  the  prospects  of  rich  fisheries  and  an  advantageous  beaver  trade, 
they  gradually  formed  and  peopled  the  provinces  of  New  Hampshire  and 
Maine.  These  provinces  had  been  respectively  purchased  from  the  Council 
of  Plymouth  by  Mason  and  Gorges,  who  made  sundry  ineffectual  attempts 
to  colonize  their  acquisitions  with  advantage  to  themselves.     Mason  and 
Gorges  were  actuated  by  views  widely  different  from  those  which  prevailed 
in  general  among  the  colonists  of  New  England  ;  they  wished  to  become  the 
pioprietaries  or  hereditary  chiefs  of  vast  manors  and  seigniories,  and  to  es- 
tablish in  America  the  very  institutions  from  which  emigrants  to  America 
were  generally  seeking  to  escape.     They  found  it  impracticable  to  obtain  a 
revenue  from  the  settlers  in  New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  or  to^  establish 
among  them  a  form  of  government  suited  to  their  own  views.     These  set- 
tlers, composed  partly  of  adventurers  from  England,  and  partly  of  exiles  and 
voluntary  emigrants  from  Massachusetts,  framed  for  themselves  separate 
governments,  to  which  for  a  few  years  they  yielded  a  precarious  obedience  ; 
nil,  wearied  with  internal  disputes  and  divisions,  they  besought  the  protec- 
tion of  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  and  obtained  leave  to  be  in- 
cluded within  the  pale  of  its  jurisdiction.' 

A  schism,  akin  to  that  which  Mrs.  Hutchinson  created  in  Massachusetts, 
was  fomented  at  Plymouth  by  one  Samuel  Gorton  ;  but  his  career  in  this 
place  was  cut  short  by  a  conviction  for  swindling.  He  removed  from  Ply- 
mouth to  Rhode  Island,  where  he  excited  such  disturbance,  that,  even  in 
this  community,  where  unlimited  toleration  was  professed,  he  was  sentenced 
to  be  flogged  and  banished.  Repairing  to  the  plantation  of  Providence,  he  ' 
nearly  involved  the  people  of  this  settlement  in  a  war  with  the  Indians  ; 
but  at  length,  in  compliance  with  the  entreaty  of  Roger  Williams,  the  gov- 
ernment of  Massachusetts  laid  hold  of  him  and  some  of  his  adherents,  and, 
after  subjecting  them  to  a  temporary  imprisonment,  obliged  them  to  depart 
thecountry.2    [1638.] 

The  population  of  Massachusetts,  impaired  by  the  various  drams  from  this 
territory  which  we  have  noticed,  was  recruited  in  the  following  year  by  the 
arrival  of  a  fleet  of  twenty  ships  conveying  three  thousand  emigrants  from 
England.  Of  these  the  most  eminent  and  memorable  person  was  Charles 
Chaimcy,  an  English  clergyman,  and  one  of  the  greatest  scholars  and  theo- 
logians of  his  age.  Flying  from  the  persecution  which  his  own  generous  but 
pa'ssionate  temper  provoked  from  the  bigotry  of  Laud,  he  devoted  himself, 
with  the  most  admirable  zeal,  patience,  industry,  and  success,  to  the  minis- 
try of  the  gospel,  and  the  tuition  of  youth,  in  his  adopted  country.  So 
animating  and  impressive  was  the  Christian  example  he  sustained,  that  the 
church  with  which  he  connected  himself  celebrated,  on  a  day  of  thanksgiving 
to  God,  the  privilege  by  which  they  were  distinguished  in  obtaining  the 
society  and  converse  of  such  a  man.  Resigning  wealth;  ease,  and  distinc- 
tion, he  cheerfully  entertained  a  lot  of  penury,  toil,  and  obscurity  ;  and  at 
the  age  of  fourscore,  resisted  all  solicitations  to  repose,  and  expressed  an 
earnest  desire  to  die  in  his  pulpit._  Thejame  year  wituessed_the  founda- 

'  Noal.  Hutchinson.  !:Jiillivn;r8  Historyl^Maini^  Belknnp.  The  province  of  Maine  was 
thus  ilonominaKHl  in  honor  of  the  British  queon,  with  whom  Charles  the  First  received  as  a 
dowry  the  revonucs  of  a  French  province  of  the  same  name.  Sullivan.  Sullivan  has  been 
represented  to  me  as  an  inteilisient  man  ;  but  ho  is  certainly  not  a  perspicuous  historian. 

'  Oorges's  Jimrrini  pnlnlrd  to  the  Life.     Norj.     Gorton  went  to  England,  and,  durmg_  tho 
civil  wars,  occasioned  some  trouble  to  the  col  iiy  nv  his  comolaints  of  tiie 
had  undergone. 


UOriOll    Wl^lll     I"    i/llKMlim,   .■•■",   "—■•■^•■•" 

!)y  his  complaints  of  tiie  Ireuliueiit  which  he 


?l 


I  i| 


182 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


tion  of  an  establishment  calculated  to  improve  and  preserve  the  moral  con- 
dition of  the  people.  This  was  Harvard  College  (which  has  subsequently 
expanded  into  I^rvard  University),  at  Cambridge,  in  Massachusetts,  the 
first  seminary  of  learning  erected  in  North  America.  So  highly  prized 
were  the  advantages  of  knowledge  and  the  influence  of  education  by  these 
generous  parents  of  American  society,  that  in  the  year  1636,  while  the 
colony,  in  addition  to  the  feebleness  and  suffering  of  its  infant  condition, 
was  struggling  with  the  calamity  of  the  Pequod  War,  the  General  Court  at 
Boston  appropriated  four  hundred  pounds  to  the  erection  of  a  college  or 
academy.  "For  a  like  spirit,  under  like  circumstances,"  says  the  presi- 
dent and  historian  of  this  institution,  "  history  will  be  searched  in  vain." 
The  bequest  of  an  emigrant  clergyman,  who  appointed  his  whole  fortune  to 
be  applied  to  the  same  design,  enabled  them  in  the  present  year  to  enrich 
their  country  with  an  establishment  whose  operation  has  proved  as  beneficial 
to  their  posterity,  as  its  institution,  at  this  early  period  of  their  history,  is 
honorable  to  themselves.  In  the  year  1642,  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts 
was  conferred  by  Harvard  College  on  nine  young  men,  the  first  persons 
who  ever  received  collegiate  honors,  the  growth  of  North  America.^ 

The  national  growth  of  the  New  England  societies  was  now  to  be  left  to 
depend  on  their  own  resources  ;  and  the  impulse  which  had  been  communi- 
cated to  it  by  the  stream  of  emigration  from  the  parent  state  was  for  ^  while 
to  cease.  For  some  time  past,  the  policy  of  the  English  government  in 
relation  to  these  settlements  had  savored  of  fear,  aversion,  and  undecided 
purpose  ;  various  demonstrations  were  made  of  arbitrary  design  and  tyran- 
nical encroachment ;  but,  nut  being  steadily  prosecuted,  they  served  merely 
to  keep  the  colonists  united  by  a  sense  of  common  danger,  and  to  f  ndear  the 
institutions  of  liberty  by  tlie  destruction  with  which  they  were  ineffectually 
menaced.  The  king,  in  reviewing  his  first  proceedings  towards  the  emigrants, 
seems  to  have  doubted  pretty  early  the  soundness  of  that  policy  which  had 
prompted  so  wide  a  departure  from  the  general  principles  of  his  adminis- 
tration ;  the  experience  of  every  year  tended  to  enhance  his  doubts ;  and 
he  wavered  some  time  in  irresolute  perplexity  between  his  original  wish  to 
evacuate  England  of  the  Puritans,  and  his  apprehensions  of  the  dangerous 
and  increasing  influence  which  their  triumphant  establishment  in  America 
was  visibly  exerting.  The  success  of  his  politic  devices  appeared  for  a 
short  time  to  answer  all  his  expectations  ;  and  he  seemed  likely  to  prevail 
over  the  Puritans  by  the  demonstration  of  a  hollow  good-will  or  lenity,  sus- 
pended on  the  condition  of  their  abandoning  the  realm.  A  considerable 
portion  of  the  embers  of  Puritan  and  patriotic  feeling  had  been  removed 
from  England,  and  consigned  to  deserts,  where  as  yet  no  colony  had  been 
able  to  survive  ;  but  they  had  neither  languished  nor  perished  ;  and,  on  the 

•  Mather.  NcaT  Hutchinson.  Wintlirop's  Journal  (Savage's  edition),  (iuincy's  Histnrti 
of  Uiirrard  Vnirersity.  For  some  time  the  college  possessed  but  n  scantj;  collection  of  books. 
The  eftbrts  of  the  mnnagprs  to  nccumulntc  a  library  were  aided  by  considerable  donations  of 
books  made  to  them  by  that  groat  and  pious  ecclesiastic,  Archbishop  Usher ;  by  the  celclimlcd 
JVon-conformist  minister,  Richard  Baxter  ;  the  great  Whig  lawyer  and  partisan,  Sergeant  Miiy- 
nard  ;  and  that  distinguished  warrior  and  philosopher.  Sir  Kenelm  Digby.  This  last  mentioned 
benefactor  to  a  Puritan  library  was  himself  a  Roman  Catholic.  It  is  an  interesting  fact,  and 
serves  to  dignify  and  embellish  the  relationship  between  the  two  countries,  that  many  of  tin 
most  illustrious  men  whom  England  has  ever  produced  contributed  to  lay  the  foundation  of 
civilized  society  in  America.'  The  enumeration  of  the  patentees  in  the  Virginian  charters 
includes  almost  every  distinguished  individual  in  England  at  the  time.  The  people  of  New 
Enffland  have  nlwavs  retaiiie<l  that  nencious  zeal  for  the  cultivation  of  knowledge  vvliid: 
their  fathers  thus  early  displayed.  In  the  year  17H0,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  Revoluiioniiry 
War,  an  Academy  of  Arts  anu  Sciences  was  established  at  Boston. 


CHAF.  11] 


RESTRAINTS  ON  EMIGRATION. 


183 


contrary,  had  kindled  in  America  a  flame  so  powerful  and  diflusive  that  even 
distant  England  was  warmed  and  enlightened  by  the  blaie.  The  jealous 
attention  of  Laud  was  soon  awakened  to  the  disastrous  issue  of  that'experi- 
inent ;  and  while  he  revolved  the  means  by  which  its  farther  effects  might 
be  counteracted,  he  maintained  spies  in  New  England,  whose  reports  in- 
creased his  misgivings,  and  who  courted  his  favor  by  traducing  the  objects 
of  his  dislike.  '  The  detection  of  this  correspondence  served  to  animate  the 
resentment  and  promote  the  caution  and  the  union  of  the  colonists. 

So  early  as  the  year  1633,  the  English  government,  inspired  with  alarm, 
made  a  hasty  and  ill-considered  attempt  to  repair  its  error,  by  issuing  a 
nroclamation  reprobating  the  designs  that  prompted  emigration  to  New  Eng- 
land, and  ordering  all  ships  that  were  ready  to  proceed  thither  with  passen- 
gers to  be  detained.     It  was  soon  perceived  that  this  measure  was  prema- 
ture, and  that  the  only,  or  at  least  the  most  certam,  consequence  of  it  would 
be  to  inflame  the  impatience  of  the  Puritans  to  obtain,  either  at  home  or 
abroad,  the  institutions  which  they  had  made  preparation  to  establish  and  en- 
joy.    Not  only  was  the  proclamation  suffered  to  remain  unexecuted,  but 
even,  at  a  later  period,  Charles  reverted  so  far  to  his  previous  policy  as  to 
promote,  by  his  own  interposition,  the  expatriation  of  young  Vane,  of  whose 
political  and  religious  sentiments  he  was  perfectly  well  informed.     After  an 
interval  of  hesitation,  measures  more  deliberate  were  adopted  for  subverting 
the  system  of  liberty  that  had  been  established  in  the  provincial  territory. 
In  the  year  1635,  a  commission  was  granted  to  the  great  officers  of  state 
and  some  of  the  nobility,  for  the  regulation  and  government  of  the  American 
plantations.    By  this  commission  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  (Laud)  and 
a  few  other  distinguished  associates  were  authorized  to  make  laws  and  con- 
stitutions for  the  colonists  of  New  England  ;  to  establish  an  order  of  clergy, 
and  assign  them  a  maintenance  ;  and  to  punish  capitally,  or  otherwise,  all 
who  should  violate  their  ordinances.    The  same  persons,  in  conjunct"on  with 
a  more  numerous  body  of  commissioners,  were  directed  to  examine  ail  exist- 
ing colonial  patents  and  charters,  and  if  they  found  that  any  had  been  un- 
duly obtained,  or  that  the  liberties  they  conferred  were  hurtful  to  the  pre- 
rogative royal,  to  cause  them  to  be  revoked  and  quashed.     The  English 
Grand  Council  of  New  Plymouth  were  easily  persuaded  to  give  the  first  ex- 
ample of  submission  to  this  arbitrary  authority  ;  and  accordingly  surrendered 
their  useless  patent  to  the  king,  under  reservation  of  their  claims  as  private 
individuals  to  the  property  of  the  soil.    These  reserved  claims  gave  occasion 
at  an  after  period  to  much  dispute,  perplexity,  and  inconvenience.     The 
only  proceeding,  however,  which  immediately  ensued  against  the  New  Eng- 
land colonists,  was  the  institution  of  a  process  of  quo  warranto  against  their 
charter  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  of  which  no  intimation  was  given  to 
the  parties  interested,  and  which  was  never  prosecuted  to  a  judicial  issue. 

It  is  vain  to  speculate  on  all  the  fluctuating  motives  and  purposes  that 
from  time  to  time  guided  and  varied  the  }T.i>cy  of  the  king.  He  was  formed 
to  hate  and  dread  alike  the  growth  of  r-^'  ior.s  and  political  freedom  ;  but 
fated  to  render  the  highest'  service  to  tl. .  jects  of  his  aversion  by  an  ill- 
directed  and  unavaihng  hostility.  In  the  year  1637,  he  granted  a  commis- 
sion to  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges,  appointing  him  governor-general  of  New 
England,  and  issued  a  proclamation  prohibiting  all  persons  from  tra  porting 
themselves,  or  others,  to  that  country,  without  a  special  permission  under 
the  great  seal,  —  which,  it  was  added,  would  be  granted  to  none  wiio  could 


184 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  H 


not  produce  credible  certificates  of  their  having  taken  the  oaths  of  supremacy 
and  allegiance,  and  of  their  having  fully  conformed  to  the  ritual  and  ordi- 
nances of  the  church  of  England.  But  the  critical  state  of  affairs  in  Britain 
prevented  the  adoption  of  measures  requisite  to  give  effect  to  Gorges 's  com- 
mission ;  and  the  irresistible  impatience  of  the  oppressed  Puritans  and  vota- 
ries of  liberty  to  escape  from  the  increasing  heat  of  persecution,  or  the 
approach  of  civil  war,  completely  defeated  the  restrictions  imposed  on  their 
emigration.  We  hav.^  seen,  that,  in  the  year  1638,  a  numerous  transporta- 
tion of  additional  emigrants  took  place.  But  before  the  close  of  that  year 
llie  king  gave  way  to  a  singleness  and  obstinate  directness  of  purpose  whicli 
now  alone  was  wanting  to  assure  and  accelerate  his  ruin  ;  and  after  a  lone; 
course  of  wavering  policy  and  unsuccessful  experiment,  he  adopted  a  meas- 
ure, which,  unfortunately  for  himself,  was  effectual. 

Learning  that  another  fleet  was  preparing  to  sail  for  New  England  with  a 
band  of  emigrants,  among  whom  were  some  of  the  most  eminent  leaders  of 
the  patriots  and  Puritans,  he  caused  an  order  of  council  to  be  issued  for  its 
detention  ;  and  the  injunction  being  promptly  enforced,  the  intended  voyage 
was  prevented.  On  board  this  fleet  tiiere  appear  to  have  been,  among  other 
distinguished  individuals,  Hazlerig,  Hampden,  Pym,  and  Oliver  Cromwell,' 
—  men  to  whom,  but  a  few  years  after,  Charles  was  fain  to  tender  the  highest 
offices  in  his  realm,  and  whom  his  blind  injustice  now  detained  to  averiee  the 
tyranny  by  which  so  many  of  their  friends  had  been  driven  away.  Various 
j)roclamalions  were  issued  the  same  year  for  the  prevention  of  emigration  to 
New  England,  which,  accordingly,  from  this  time  was  for  many  years  dis- 
continued.^ These  measures  inflamed  to  the  highest  pitch  the  discontent 
that  had  long  rankled  in  the  minds  of  a  great  body  of  the  people.  Even  tlie 
hospitality  of  rude  deserts,  it  was  declared,  was  denied  to  the  oppressed 
inhabitants  of  England  ;  and  men  were  constrained  to  inquire  if  the  evils 
which  could  not  be  evaded  might  not  be  repelled,  and,  since  retreat  was 
impracticable,  if  resistance  might  not  be  availing.  By  promoting  emigration 
at  lirst,  the  king  opened  a  vein  which  it  was  impossible  to  close,  without  in- 
curring considerable  danger  ;  and  the  increased  severity  of  his  administration 
augmented  the  flow  of  evil  humors  at  the  very  time  when  he  thus  imprudently 

J  That  nmiipden  and'Cromwell  worn  on  hoard  tliis  fleet,  or  that  they  even  intended  to  re- 
pair  to  Ainorica,  has  heen  doubted,  but  i  think  without  good  reason,  llume  (contrary  to  his 
own  intention)  lias  ratlier  eonfirnied  tlian  removed  the  doubt,  by  tlie  manner  in  which  he  lias 
refi'rrod  to  a  passage  in  Hutchinson,  the  meaning  of  which  he  has  evidently  misunderslond. 
Kut  Dr.  Mather,  who  preceded  Hutchinson,  expressly  names  all  the  individuals  mentioned  in 
tli('  text  ns  having  prepared  for  their  voyage,  and  been  arrested  by  the  order  of  coniKil. 
Olduiixon  recites  the  grant  of  laud  in  America  in  favor  of //«?nH(/€rt  and  others,  whidi  tli(> 
•■migrants  were  nroceeding  to  occupy.  Mather's  statement  is  confirmed  by  Neal,  Chircndoii, 
Bates,  and  Diitt.iule.  The  strong  mind  of  Cromwell  apftears  long  to  have  retained  the  bins  it 
had  once  received  towards  emigration,  and  the  favorable  opimon  of  the  wilonists  of  New 
Ki)g!an<l,  from  which  that  Wum  was  partly  derived.  Atler  the  Hemomtrance  was  voted  in  tiio 
1, on:,' Parliament,  he  told  Lord  Falkland,  that,  if  the  debate  had  been  attended  with  a  dilTci- 
eiit  result,  he  was  prepared  next  day  to  have  converted  his  (effects  into  ready  inontsy  and  lo 
ijuif  the  kingdom.  When  he  was  invested  with  the  Protectorate,  ho  treated  Massaclinsclis 
with  distinguished  partiality.  Hume  considered  Jiimself  as  levelling  u  most  sarcastic  rellccliori 
against  Hauipden  and  Cromwell,  when  he  described  them  as  willing  to  cross  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  for  the  sake  of  saying  their  prayers.  Other  writers,  "who  partake  the  political,  hut  not 
ijie  religious,  sentiments  of  these  eminent  persons,  have  i)een  very  willing  to  defend  tlioiii 
from  this  imputation. 

.Some  historians  have  asserted  that  Hampden  did  artiiallv,  at  one  time,  visit  North  Anicrim; 
and,  doubtless,  in  the  year  Ki'JlJ,  iheri!  was  at  New  Plvnionth  iin  I'.ngiishmau  named  John 
Hampden,  whom  Winslow  describes  as  "  a  gi-ntleman  of  LmikIou,  who  then  wintered  with  us, 
and  (fcuired   nnn'b  to  Ki>e  the  I'ountrv."       ii'Akv.<>.<.'.'9.  Jhnrrirmi    Hianrun!::-. 

*  Mather.     Neal.     Hutchinson.     Oldmixon.    'Chalmers.     Hazard. 


CHAP.  II] 


SURRENDER  OF  THE  CHARTER  REQUIRED. 


185 


(Iqirived  them  of  their  accustomed  vent.  The  previous  emigration  had 
,  Ircady  drained  the  Puritan  body  of  a  great  number  of  those  of  its  members 
whose  milder  tempers  and  meeker  strain  of  piety  rendered  them  more  de- 
sirous than  the  generality  of  their  brethren  to  decline  a  contest  with  their 
sovereign  ;  the'  present  restrictions  forcibly  retained  in  the  realm  men  of 
more  daring  spirit  and  trained  in  experience  of  enmity  to  his  person  and  op- 
posilion  to  his  measures. ^  He  now  at  last  succeeded  in  stripping  his  subjects 
(if  every  protection  that  the  law  could  extend  to  their  rights  ;  and  was  des-. 
tiiiL'd  soon  to  experience  how  completely  he  had  divested  them  of  every  re- 
j'raint  that  the  law  could  impose  on  the  vindictive  retribution  of  their  wrongs. 
From  this  period  till  the  assembling  of  the  Long  Parliament,  he  pursued  a 
short  and  headlong  career  of  disgrace  and  disaster ;  while  a  gross  infatuation 
veiled  from  his  eyes  tlie  gulf  of  destruction  to  which  his  steps  were  ad- 
vancing. 

In  pursuance  of  the  policy  which  the  king  at  length  determined  openly 
iind  vigorously  to  employ,  a  requisition  was  transmitted  by  the  privy  council 
to  the  governor  and  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  commanding  thoni  to 
deliver  up  their  patent,  to  be  conveyed  by  the  first  ship  that  should  sail  for 
I'ngland,  in  order  that  it  might  abide  the  issue  of  the  process  of  quo  war- 
mnlo  that  was  depending  against  the  colony.  To  this  requisition  the  Gen- 
oral  Court  [September,  1638]  returned  for  answer  a  humble  and  earnest 
petition  that  the  colonists  might  be  suffered  to  plead  in  their  own  behalf 
before  they  were  condemned.  They  declared  that  they  had  transported 
their  families  to  America,  and  embarked  their  fortunes  in  the  colonial  pro- 
ject, in  reliance  on  his  Majesty's  license  and  encouragement  ;  that  they  had 
never  willingly  or  knowingly  offended  him,  and  now  humbly  deprecated  his 
wrath,  and  solicited  to  be  heard  with  their  patent  in  their  hands.  If  it  were 
forcibly  withdrav/n  from  them,  they  protested  that  they  must  either  return 
10  England  or  seek  the  hospitality  of  more  distant  regions.  But  they  prayed 
that  they  might  "be  suflered  to  live  in  the  wilderness,"  where  they  had  till 
wow  found  a  resting-place  ;  and  might  experience  in  their  exile  some  of  that 
favor  from  the  ruler  of  their  native  land  which  they  had  largely  experienced 
f.om  the  Lord  and  Judge  of  all  the  Earth.  They  retained  possession  of 
t!:eir  patent  while  they  waited  an  answer  to  this  petition,  which,  happily  for 
their  liberties,  they  were  destined  never  to  receive.  The  insurrections  which 
«oon  after  broke  out  in  Scotland  directed  the  whole  attention  of  the  king  to 
matters  which  more  nearly  concerned  him  ;  and  the  long  gathering  storm, 
v.hich  was  now  visibly  preparing  to  burst  upon  him  from  every  corner  of  his 
iloininions,  engaged  him  to  contract  as  far  as  possible  the  sphere  of  hostility 
ill  which  he  found  himself  involved.^  The  benefit  of  his  altered  views  was 
I'xperienced  by  the  Virginians,  in  the  abolition  of  the  despotism  to  which  he 
had  previously  subjected  them  ;  and  by  the  inhabitants  of  New  England,  m 
ihe  cessation  of  his  attempts  to  supersede  by  a  similar  despotism  the  liberal 
iiistitiitions  which  they  had  hitherto  enjoyed.     He  would  doubtless  now 

'  The  rnnimenceincnt  of  resistnnco  in  Scotland  originiilcd  with  sonic  individuals  of  that 
I'lunlry  who  had  purchased  n  tract  of  territory  in  New  England,  and  made  preparation  to 
ii.iiisport  thomselvcs  thitlinr,  but  were  prevented  (it  does  not  appear  how)  from  carrying  their 
'Isiiin  into  execution.  Tliey  had  obtained  from  the  aasemblj'  of  Massachusetts  an  assurance 
I  I'llic  free  exnrriso  of  their  Presbyterian  form  of  church  government.       Matlier. 

'  lliitc^hinson  Chalmers.  This  year  (K!:??*)  was  distinguished  by  nn  earlhqualvo  in  New 
I'n'ilimd,  which  extended  through  ail  the  settleiiipnts,  and  shook  the  ships  in  Boston  harbour 
ml  llu<  neiglihoiiriii<!  islands.  The  sound  of  it  retnin<led  some  of  the  colonists  of  the  rattling 
urcoafiicK  in  the  streets  of  London.       VVinlhrop  s  Jvuntui.     Trumbull. 

VOL.  I.  24  r  * 


186 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


(5   •  , 


have  readily  consented  to  disencumber  himself  of  some  of  his  domestic  ad- 
versaries by  promoting  the  emigration  which  of  late  he  so  imprudently  ob- 
structed ;  but  such  a  revolution  of  sentiment  had  taken  place  in  England, 
and  such' interesting  prospects  began  to  open  to  the  patriots  and  Puritans  ai 
home,  that  the  motives  which  formerly  induced  them  to  migrate  to  the 
iN'ew  World  ceased  any  longer  to  prevail. 

When  the  intercourse  which  for  twenty  years  had  subsisted  between  New 
England  and  the  parent  state  was  thus  interrupted,  the  number  of  the  colo- 
nists amounted  to  about  twenty  thousand  persons,^  or  four  thousand  families, 
including  a  hundred  ministers.  The  expenditure  already  incurred  in  equip- 
ping  vessels  and  transporting  emigrants  amounted  to  nearly  two  hundred 
tliousand  pounds,  —  a  jjrodigious  sum  in  that  age,  and  which  nothing  but  the 
grand  and  unconquerable  principle  which  annnated  the  Puritans  could  have 
persuaded  men  to  expend  on  the  prospect  of  forming  an  establishment  in  a 
remote,  uncultivated  desert,  offering  to  its  inhabitants  merely  a  plain,  un- 
adorned freedom  and  difficult  subsistence.  When  the  civil  war  broke  out  in 
the  parent  state,  the  colonists  had  already  founded  fifty  towns  and  villages ; 
they  had  erected  upwards  of  thirty  churches  and  ministers'  houses  ;  and  com- 
bining with  their  preponderating  regard  to  the  concerns  of  religion  a  dili- 
s^ent  and  judicious  conduct  of  their  temporal  affairs,  they  had  improved  their 
estates  to  a  high  degree  of  cultivation.  During  the  first  seven  yea^-s  of  the 
infancy  of  the  settlement  that  was  founded  in  1G30,  even  subsistence  was 
procured  with  difficulty,  and  trade  was  not  generally  attempted  ;^  but  soon 
after  that  period,  the  people  began  to  extend  their  fishery,  and  to  open  a 
trade  in  lumber,  which  subsequently  proved  the  staple  article  of  New  Eng- 
land commerce.  In  the  year  1637,  there  were  but  thirty  ploughs  in  the  whole 
province  of  Massachusetts,  and  less  than  the  third  of  that  number  in  Con- 
necticut. The  culture  of  the  earth  was  generally  performed  with  hoes,  and 
was  consequently  slow  and  laborious.  Every  commodity  bore  a  high  price. 
Though  money  was  extremely  scarce,  the  price  of  a  good  cow  was  thirty 
pounds  ;  Indian  corn  cost  five  shillings  a  bushel ;  labor  and  every  other  use- 
ful commodity  was  pjoportionably  dear.  r  t         i     •       r 

Necessity  at  first  introduced  what  the  jurisprudence  of  the  colonists  after- 
wards confirmed  ;  and  desiring  to  perpetuate  the  habits  that  had  proved  so 
conducive  to  piety  and  virtue,  they  endeavoured  by  legislative  enactments  to 
exclude  luxury  and  promote  industry.  When  the  assembling  of  the  Lon? 
J'arliament  opened  a  prospect  of  safety,  and  even  of  triumph  and  supremacy, 
10  the  Puritans  in  England,  many  persons  who  had  taken  refuge  m  America 
returned  to  their  native  country  ;  but  a  great  majority  of  the  emigrants  had 
experienced  so  much  of  the  substance  and  happiness  of  religious  life  in  the 
societies  already  formed  within  the  colony,  that  they  felt  themselves  united 
to  New  England  by  stronger  and  nobler  tics  than  any  that  patriotic  lecol- 
leftions  could  supply;  and  resolved  to  abide  in  the  region  which  their yirtuo 
had  converted  from  a  wilderness  into  a  garden.  In  these  mfant  societies  oi 
men,  devoted  to  godliness  and  liberty,  all  hearts  were  strongly  muted  by 
community  of  feeling  on  subjects  the  most  interesting  and  important ;  the 
inhabitants  were  in  general  very  nearly  on  a  level  in  point  of  temporal  coii- 

'  Josst'yn'H  Voijasf  tf>  J^f-'o  Knglatii. 


•  JOSS,  -vn  H  yo,tn<fe  w  j,r,,c  r,»i.""  "'•  Hut.hinHon.  Josselyn,  who  visiLmI  N.-w  I'.ngliiii 
more  than  once/wiis  intrusted  by  (li.arlfs,  the  po,,t,  with  soiiro  of  his  inetncal  versions  ul 
ISrrintur.',  tobosiil)rnitt.-a  totiin  pcnisai  nnd  jndpnicntof  John  Cotton.  ,,,,,,, 

a  V,.,  i„  ;!;„  v(.'.r  Umi  a  nliip  "f  <>nn  hiindr.'.l  and  tw<!nty  tons  was  hiiilt  at  Marblchcad  In 
Uic  people  of  iJ^idoin.      Collections  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  iiociety. 


CHAP.  11] 


DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  NEW   ENGLAND. 


187 


It  at  Marbk'licad  bv 


r.ion  •  the  connections  of  neighbourhood  operated  as  extended  family  tics  ; 
Aihe  minds  of  all  were  warmed  and  invigorated  by  a  primitive  Iriendli- 
"11    freedom,  and  simplicity  of  mutual  communication.^     And  yet  some 
f  ic'ations  of  an  aristocratical  disposition,  arising,  not  unnaturally,  Irom 
riiliar  circumstances  that  occurred  in  the  formation  of  the  colonial  settle- 
'  pnts   did  occasionally  manifest  themselves.     Several  of  the  first  planters, 
'"nicularly  Dudley,  Winthrop,''  Bradford,  Bellingham,  and  Bradstreet,  were 
'p  sous  of  ample  fortune  ;  and  besides  the  transportation  of  their  ovyn  fami- 
\i  they  had  borne  the  charge  of  transporting  many  poor  families  who  must 
krwise  have  remained  in  England.     Others  were  members  of  tlie  original 
Lv  of  patentees,  and  had  incurred  expenses  in  the  procurement  o    the 
brier,  the  formation  of  the  company,  the  equipment  of  the  first  body  ol 
venturers,  and  the  purchase  of  the  soil  from  the  natives,  of  which  they 
nd  now  no  prospect  of  obtaining  reimbursement.     On  this  class  ol  planters 
t  chief  c'Pces  of  government  naturally  devolved  during  the  infancy  of  the 
Pttlements,  and  long  continued  to  be  discharged  by  them  without  other 
npruniarv  recompense  than  presents,  which  were  occasionally  voted  to  them 
V  the  gratitude  of  their  fellow-citizens.   It  was  probably  owuig  to  the  prev- 
Ince  of  the  pecuhar  sentiments  inspired  by  the  services  of  these  persons, 
Zi  in  the  first  General  Court  which  was  assembled  in  Massachusetts,  the 
ic'tion  of  the  governor,  the  appointment  of  all  the  other  officers,  and  even 
e  power  of  legislation,  were  withdrawn  from  the  freemen,  and  vested  in 
e  Council  of  Assistants  ;  and  although  the  freemen  reclaimed  and  resumed 
their  rights  in  the  following  year,  yet  the  practical  exercise  of  legislation  was 
nfined  almost  entirely  to  the  Council  of  Assistants,  till  the  introduction  of 
Z  representative  system  in  the  year  163.4.   From  this  time  the  council  and 
he  freemen,  assembled  together,  formed  tl^e  General  Court,  till  the  year 
1644  when  it  was  arranged  that  the  governor  and  assistants  should  sit  apart ; 
nnd  tiience  commenced  the  separate  existence  of  the  democratic  branch  oi 
the  leeislature,  or  House  of  Representatives.     Elections  were  conducted  by 
ballot,  in  which  the  balls  or  tickets  tendered  by  the  electors  consisted  of 

Indian  beans.  ,  .         •       i  -i  j 

Some  notice  of  the  peculiaritieso^  jmiymjdenc^^ 

-TThTroll^ng  p-issngc  in  a  ser...on  of  Robert  C..«h.nun    ono  of  the  «"»««*  "'^n'^j^^  f^ 

N,wPymouth,  fs 'characteristic  of  this  Btute  "»  ^^''^ty  =  "  '  »7«'"''"'  ^r    7o™^^ 

hZ  »ivpn  vour  names  and  promises  to  one  another,  here  to  cleave  together.     You  m«st, 

1  frthVweahh  of  one  another,  and  inquire,  as  David,  How  liveth  such  a  man  ?  how 

:;  MP   how  lie  fed?    He  is  m'y  brothe  ,  my  associate  and  -  -{J^^-^-'.^^Yi^on  j 

„.i,„r     la  Ilia  labor  harder  than  m me  ?  surelv,  1  will  case  him.     Hath  he  no  oea  xo  iie  on  . 

•  two    T  -n  lend  Sm  one      He  is  as  good'  a  man  as  I,  and  we  are  bound  each  to  other  ; 

L  that  his'  wants  must  be  my  wants,  and  his  welfare  my  welfare."      Belknap  s  ^mencau 

^' nvSroD  "  had  not  so  high  an  opinion  of  a  democralical  government  as  some  other  gentle- 
man of  rnuaf  w  dom  and  glo,lnessV'  He  remarked  that  « the  best  part  of  a  community  is 
.  wavs  trl^nnd  of  if  best  part  the  wiser  is  still  less.    Therefore  it  is  written,  Choose 

e  iudVc    and  bring  the  cause  be/ore  the  judge."     Belknap's  Mmerican  Biography.  .  Not  nc- 
;oU4^.;eirit;'of  wealth  or  of  bodily  Vclmplishinem^ 

palpable  to  mankind)  infallible  indications  of  superiority  in  moral  »"°  '"Jf'll,^^ **  ^  „ '^^^^ 
VVnihron  suirirests  no  better  success  for  the  ascertainment  and  promotion  of  the  go"d  nn.l 
wi     mZrhf  Sn "".relective  judgment  of  the  less  wise  and  worthy  majority.     Nor  has  a 

noTe  honSr  Snal  suggestion  be'"  ever  propounded.   The  S-^^^^^PP'^^^^^"^^ 
and  .hould  be  the  motive  P"nciple  of  pol.t.(M.l  mst.tutions  in  communit.os  of^^ 

and  good.   But  with  the  actual  imperfection  of  human  '"•«"'g';"««  ""^'''J^"  ;,!!  AflppS^^ 
to  accept  the  term  (continually  enlarged  by  human  advancement)  of  the  greatest  happiness  nj 

'V^rthro";W™/.    Neal.     Hutchinson.    Chalmers..    Tr«.nbull      Holmes^ 

Mnah.     (TlV.s  is,  perhaps,  the  ...u,i  t-xcelient  r  ,ron"!o?!cal  digest  of  Its  history  that  an) 

nation  has  ever  possessed.)     Belknap's  American  Bwgniph 


188 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


in  the  various  communities  of  New  England  will  serve  to  illustrate  the  state 
of  society  and  manners  that  sprung  up  at  first  among  this  singular  people, 
\\y  a  fundamental  law  of  Massachusetts  it  was  enacted,  "  that  all  strangers 
professing  the  Christian  religion,  who  shall  flee  to  this  country  from  the 
tyranny  of  their  persecutors,  shall  he  succoured  at  the  public  charge  til) 
some  provision  can  he  made  for  them."  Jesuits  and  other  Romish  priests, 
liovvever,  were  doomed  to  banishment,  and,  in  case  of  their  return,  to  death. 
This  cruel  ordinance  was  afterwards  extended  to  Quakers ;  and  all  persons 
were  forbidden,  under  the  severest  penalties,  to  import  any  of  "  that  cursed 
sc!Ct,"  or  of  their  writings,  into  the  colony.  By  what  behaviour  the  Quakers 
of  that  age  provoked  so  much  aversion  and  such  rigorous  treatment  we  shall 
have  an  opportunity  of  considering  hereafter.  An  ordinance  of  the  General 
Court  of  Slassachusetts  in  the  year  1637  (prompted  apparently  by  Mrs, 
Hutchinson's  schism)  forbade  the  residence  within  that  colony  of  any  stranger 
im[)rovided  with  the  license  of  a  provincial  magistrate  ;  but  this  illiberal  or- 
(I'nance  (which  was  warmly  combated  by  Henry  Vane)  seems  never  to  have 
ot)taiiied  any  practical  efficiency.  These  persecuting  edicts  had  no  place 
in  Rhode  Island,  where  nobody  was  exposed  to  active  molestation  for  re- 
ligious opinions,  and  all  professors  of  Christianity,  except  Roman  Catholics, 
were  admitted  to  the  full  rights  of  citizenship.  All  persons  were  forbidden 
to  run,  or  even  walk,  "  except  reverently  to  and  from  church,"  onUSunday, 
or  to  profane  the  day  by  sweeping  their  houses,  cooking  their  victuals,  or 
shaving  their  beards.  Mothers  were  even  commanded  not  to  kiss  their 
chihlren  on  that  sacred  day.  The  usual  punishments  of  great  crimes  were 
disfranchisement,  banishment,  and  temporary  servitude  ;  but  perpetual  slav- 
ery was  not  permitted  to  be  inflicted  upon  any  persons  except  captives  law- 
fully taken  in  war  ;  and  these  were  to  be  treated  with  the  gentleness  of  Chris- 
tian manners,  and  to  be  entitled  to  all  the  mitigations  of  their  lot  enjoined  by 
the  law  of  Moses.  Disclaiming  all  but  defensive  war,  the  colonists  con- 
sidered themselves  entitled  and  constrained  in  self-defence  to  deprive  their 
assailants  of  a  liberty  which  they  had  abused  and  rendered  inconsistent  witli 
t!io  safety  of  their  neighbours.  The  practice,  nevertheless,  was  inipoliiic, 
to  say  no  worse,  and  served  to  pave  the  way,  at  a  later  period,  for  the  intro- 
duction of  negro  slavery  into  New  England. 

Adultery  was  punished  by  death;  and  fornication  by  compelling  the 
oflending  parties  to  marry  (an  absurd  device,  which  discredits  the  state  of 
marriage),  or  by  fine  and  imprisonment.  Pjurglary  and  robbery  were  pun- 
ished, for  the  first  oflence,  by  branding  ;  for  the  second,  by  branding  ami 
I'logging  ;  for  the  third,  by  death  :  but  if  either  of  these  crimes,  while  yet  not 
inferring  a  capital  punishment,  were  committed  on  Sunday,  an  ear  was  to 
be  cut  off  in  addition  to  the  other  inflictions.  We  must  beware  of  suppos- 
ing that  such  penal  enactments  indicate  tiie  frequency  or  even  the  actual  oc- 
currence of  the  crimes  to  which  they  refer.  In  those  communities  where 
civilization  has  been  a  gradual  attainment,  penal  laws  denote  the  prevalence 
of  the  actions  they  condemn.  But  in  communities  at  once  infant  and  rivil- 
izcd,  many  of  the  laws  must  be  regarded  merely  as  the  expression  of  the 
opinion  of  the  legislators,  and  by  no  means  as  indicating  the  actiial  condition 
of  society.  Blasphemy  and  idolatry  were  punishable  by  death  ;  and  tlionsh 
it  was  acknowledged  in  the  preamble  to  one  of  the  laws,  "  that  no  luiiiian 
power  is  lord  over  the  faith  and  consciences  of  men,"  yet  heresy,  by  this 
very  law,  was  declared  to  infer  banishment  from  the  province.     Pecuniary 


[BOOK  II,    ■   ilIAr,  II  ] 


DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  NEW   ENGLAND. 


189 


nil 
ir.iis 


ilrts  wcro 


,,wv=  imposed  on  every  person  "observing  any  such  day  as  Clirist- 
W in-hiTiift  and  perjury,  directed  against  human  hie,  were  eapitaUy 
lUshed.     No  capital  charge  was  deemed  capable  of  being  proved  by  evi- 
'i' Inco  less  weighty  than  the  oaths  of  two  witnesses,  —  a  ^irinciple  that  de- 
nes to  bo  universally  established,  as  well  on  account  ol  its  own  mtrnisic 
lUtiide  as  of  the  sanction  it  received  from  divine  legislation.   By  a  singular 
I  a  which,  both  from  its  peculiar  terms  and  from  its  never  havmg  been 
.'arricd  into  effect,  is  more  discreditable  to  the  wisdom  of  its  framers  than 
'„,  tlie  humanity  of  the  people  at  large,  it  was  enacted,  that,  although  torture 
hould  not  be  ordinarily  inflicted,  yet  a  convicted  criminaJ,  known  to  have 
liiKl  accomplices,  and  refusing  to  disclose  them,  might  be  subjected  to  tor- 
,i,re  —  "  yet  not  to  such  tortures  as  are  barbarous  and  mhuman." 

\11  gaming  was  prohibited  ;  cards  and  dice  were  forbidden  to  be  imported  ; 
J  assemblies  for  dancing  were  proscribed.  Public  registers  were  instituted, 
'in  which  all  the  marriages,  births,  and  deaths  of  the  colonists  were  recorded. 
Uv  a  law  enacted  in  1G4G,  kissing  a  woman  in  the  street,  even  in  tlie  way 
,/ honest  salute,  was  punished  by  flogging,  which  was  not  considered  an  in- 
f.i,„nus  punishment  by  tlie  people  of  Massachusetts.     Even  so  late  as  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  were  instances  of  persons,  who, 
alter  undergoing  public  flagellation,  associated  with  the  most  respectable 
circles  of  society  in  Boston.     This  doubtless  arose  from  the  peculiar  char- 
■icter  of  the  government,  which,  seeming  to  hold  a  patriarchal  relation  to 
liie  people,  could  never  be  supposed,  in  correcting  an  offender,  to  divest 
itself  entirely  of  respect  and  good-will  for  him.     The  economy  of  inns  was 
rculated  with  a  strictness  which  deserves  to  be  noted,  as  explanatory  of  a 
riraimstance  that  has  frequently  excited  the  surprise  of  European  travellers 
in  America.     The  intemperance  and  immorality  to  which  these  places  are 
.0  often  made  subservient  was  punished  with  the  utmost  rigor  ;  and  all  inn- 
keepers were  required,  under  the  severest  penalties,  to  restrain  the  excesses  . 
of  their  guests,  or  to  acquaint  the  magistrate  with  their  perpetration.     To 
secure  a  stricter  execution  of  this  law,  it  was  judged  expedient  that  inn 
keepers  should  be  divested  of  the  temptation  that  poverty  presents  to  its 
infraction,  and  should  enjoy  such  personal  consideration  as  would  lacilitatc 
the  exercise  of  their  difficult  duty  ;  and,  accordingly,  none  were  permitted 
10  follow  this  calling  but  persons  of  ajiproved  character  and  competent  estate 
One  of  the  consequences  of  this  policy  has  been,  that  an  employment,  very 
little  respected  in  other  countries,  has  ever  been  creditable  in  New  J-.ngiand, 
mid  not  unfrequently  jnirsued  by  men  who  have  retired  from  honorable  sta- 
tions in  the  civil  or  military  service  of  the  state. 

Persons  wearing  apparel,  which  the  grand  jury  should  account  dispro- 
portioncd  to  tlieir  fortune,  were  to  be  admonished  in  the  first  instance,  and, 
if  contumacious,  fined.  A  fine  was  imposed  on  every  woman  cutting  licr 
hair  like  a  man's,  or  suffering  it  to  hang  loosely  upon  her  face.  Idleness, 
Ivin^,  swearing,  and  drunkenness  were  visited  with  various  penalties  and 
liiarks  of  disgrace.^     The  selectnun  assessed,  in  everyjamdy,  thequantity 

'  That  tlH'seLs  wcrll^U  pcrnultcl  f.  be  a  dwul  hotter  "PIHmrs  fVom  the  <;°"oj'fg  ™".^^ 
from  the  rarlinst  records  of  the  rourt  of  Mussachusetts.  "  W.n  \Ycdgcwood,  M^l'f'''"!' 
rnmp,m,j  of  dninkards,  to  he  set  in  the  stocks.  Catharine  the  wife  of  R'«=';»r'^„^";^'ii;^^or 
ionnd  suiicimis  of  inrontineucy,  and  seriously  aduionished  to  take  heed  rhomas  Te  ',  o 
ni,pidan  of  slander,  idleness,  and  stubbornness,  is  sentenced  to  bo  ««^«;«>y  ^  "PP*:  ;,  V''Pu"V' 
l,o;.el  admonished  to  take  hood  of  /,>/,«  carriage.  Jos.as  PlaiBtowe  for  stealing  «'">•  5^^««'" 
„f  ,,,,,„  f„,,„  .!„,  indiuiiH,  is  ordered  to  r-fm  ihem  eight  baskets,  to  be  fined  /'^e  pounds,  and 
iiereaftcr  to  be  called  bv  the  name  of  Josias,  and  not  Mr.,  as  formerly  ho  used  to  be.      uutcn- 


190 


IIIRTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


of  spinning  whloh  tlio  younp  women  were  reckoned  capable  of  producip);. 
iiiul  onlbrced  by  fines  tbe  prodnction  of  the  requisite  qnuntities.  Usury  w,,, 
forbidden  ;  and  the  prohibition  was  not  confined  to  the  interest  of  nionry, 
but  extended  to  the  hire  of  hiboring  cattle  and  implements  of  husbandrv, 
Persons  deserting  the  English  settlements,  and  living  in  heathen  license  and 
profanity,  were  punished  by  fine  and  imprisonment.  A  male  child  ahovp 
Kixteon  years  of  age,  accused  by  his  parents  of  rebellion  against  thcni  and 
general  misconduct,  incurred  (conformably  with  the  Mosaic  code)  the  doom 
of  capital  punishment ;  and  any  person  courting  a  maid,  without  the  sanction 
of  her  parents,  w.i^  fined  and  imprisoned.  Yet  the  parental  audiority  u^s 
not  left  unregulatoi..  All  parents  were  commanded  to  instruct  and  cate- 
cliize  their  children  and  servants,  whom  the  selectmen  or  overseers  were 
directed  to  remove  from  their  authority  and  commit  to  fitter  iiands,  if  tin 
parents  or  masters  were  found  deficient  in  this  duty  ;  and  children  were  al- 
lowed to  seek  redress  from  the  magistrate,  if  they  were  arbitrarily  restrained 
from  marriage.  The  celebration  of  the  nuptial  ceremony  was  confined  tn 
the  magistrate,  or  such  other  persons  as  the  General  Court  might  authorize 
to  [)erform  it.  The  provincial  law  of  tenures  was  exceedingly  simple  and 
concise.  The  charter  had  conveyed  the  territory  to  the  company  and  lis 
assigns  ;  and  by  an  early  law  of  the  province,  it  was  provided,  "  that  five 
years'  quiet  possession  shall  be  deemed  a  sufficient  title."  Instead  of  prn- 
cliiiming  or  intending  that  the  deficiencies  of  the  provincial  code  should  be 
supplied  by  the  common  or  statute  law  of  England,  it  was  announced,  that, 
in  cases  where  redress  of  wrongs  or  remedy  of  inconvenience  was  not  prn- 
vided  by  the  ordinances  or  customary  practice  of  the  province,  reroiirsc 
should  be  had  to  the  pages  of  holy  writ.^ 

Like  the  tribes  of  Israel,  the  colonists  of  New  England  had  forsaken  their 
native  land  after  a  long  and  severe  persecution,  and  journeyed  into  a  wilder- 
ness for  the  sake  of  reUgion.  Like  the  Israelites,  they  compared  thernsehe? 
to  a  vine  brought  out  of  Egypt,  and  planted  by  the  Lord  in  a  land  from 

iimon.  Few  obtninod  the  title  of  Mr.  in  the  colony  ;  still  fewer  thiit  of  Esquire.  Goodman  ami 
<io(><l\vifo  were  the  common  nppeliiitiona.  It  was  by  merit  and  public  services,  ratiicr  lliiiri 
wcMiith,  that  the  distinctive  appellHtioiis  were  gained.  Ibid.  The  strictness  and  scrupulosiiy 
of  iiianiur!*,  utrected  l)y  many  of  the  inhabitants,  exceeded  the  standard  of  the  laws;  and  assn. 
rialioMS  were  formed  for  supprosning  the  practices  of  drinking  healths,  and  of  wearing  Imi; 
hair  and  periwigs.  Ibid.  lu  some  instances,  the  purposes  of  these  associations  were  alVr- 
wards  sanctioned  and  enf()rccd  by  the  laws.  "  They  thought  the  magistrates,  being  (iods 
ministers,  were  bound  to  punish  all  otlences  in  their  courts  in  the  same  proportion  as  the  Su- 
preme Judge  would  punish  them  in  the  court  of  heaven."  Ibid.  This  notion  frequently  in- 
volved the  inagiatrales  in  most  absurd  and  indecent  inouisitions  ;  some  r'  .^  id*,  lothndi*. 
grace  of  Puritan  jurisprudence,  have  been  preserv.  d  in  VVinthrop's  JuurniU.  !t  i,-  rd'^edol' 
Kome  of  the  earlier  settlers,  that,  with  an  outrageous  exaggeration  of  rigifljlt  i!  ■  ,  ■  innl 
from  brewing  on  Saturday,  because  the  beer  would  work  upon  Sunday.  '<  .f  .;i;  3,  .^  ,'inimi 
if  Ike  DnUsh  StttUmenls  in  America.  A  farmer  in  New  Hampshire  found  great  difficulty  in 
I  scaping  excommunication  for  havinir  -^hot,  on  Sunday,  a  bear  tiiat  was  wasting  his  fiil(N 

Graham's  Sketch  of  Vermont.  „ 

-----  ~     .      .  .  .,    .      „_,_.. Trumbull. 

.■jreoual 
Jimrrml 
The  primitive  >),vi(J<  >•  'iscerniblo'  in  some  of  these  laws  was  tempered  by  a  patrinrclml  mild- 
ness of  adminiii'  a'-o',.  Many  instances  of  this  occur  in  Mather  s  Uves  of  the  Gnrrnwrs  "i 
.Xnr  Kntrland.  'h.v  .  rwv,  Ho  permitted  to  notice  as  a  spociuKm.  Governor  Wintlirop,  Ijiiij 
urged  to  proKf-cuti  (1  punish  a  man  who  pillaged  his  magazine  of  firewood  in  wiiilcr,  di- 
clared  he  wouiii  f  oon  cure  him  of  that  malpractice  ;  and,  accordingly,  sending  for  the  dilin- 
quent,  he  told  hun,  "You  have  n  largo  iiimily,  and  I  have  a  large  magazine  of  wood  ;  cni- 
as  often  to  it  as  you  please,  and  take  as  much  of  it  as  you  need  to  make  your  dwclli 
comfijrtable."  —  "  And  now,"  he  added,  turning  to  his  friends,  "  I  defy  him  to  steal  111}  tin 
w'od  again." 


Graham's  Sketch  of  Vermont. 

'  Mridvment  of  the  Ordinances  of  M'ew  England,  apiul  Neal.  Hutchinson.  Tru 
Josselyn.'Burnaby's  Tror«/«  in, ?mmr«.  Chalmers.  Winthrop's  JournaZ.  Holmes's. 
of  the   Blue  Uurs  of  Connecticut,  in  the  Khnde  Island  Farmers'  and  Afanufactwe.rs  .A 


cniiii' 
ill" 


[BOOK  II  I    (HAP  «"■]   NF.w  ENOKAND  Hini';^  wiTi:  ".•::i:  parliament. 


191 


of  producini;, 
s.  Usury  u',13 
rest  of  nionpv. 

of  hiisbiindrv. 
ben  license  and 
ilo  child  aliovo 
jainst  them  and 
;ode)  the  doom 
3Ut  the  sanctinii 
1  authority  was 
truct  and  catp. 
overseers  were 
sr  iiands,  if  ihi' 
lildren  were  jil. 
rarily  restrained 
vas  confined  in 
might  authorize 
igly  simple  and 
ompany  and  its 
ded,  "  that  five 
Instead  of  pro- 
code  should  be 
nnounced,  that, 
ce  was  not  pm- 
vines,  recourse 

d  forsaken  their 

;d  into  a  wilder- 

ared  thernsclve« 

in  a  land  from 

jiro.  Goodman  and 
irvices,  ratlier  tiiim 
iM  and  scrupiilosiiv 
the  laws  ;  and  ns*ii- 
id  of  wearing  Inn; 
iciations  were  after- 
trates,  being  (iuil,: 
■oportion  as  tlip  f^u- 
lotion  frpquenily  in- 
:■"  .■  irii,  10  tho'dis- 
Mi^.  !t  it*  ril:'!ed of 
Att\.  i!  •  ,  '■■  ■'■  incd 

Diit'ijles,  6''  .  ■miiri/ 
d  great  difBrulty  in 

wasting  his  fiilil- 

hinson.  Trumbull. 
'..  HolincHs  .'Irmunt 
lufacturf.rs'  Jmimil 
r  a  patriarchal  niiW- 
of  the  Giirrriwrs  nf 
lor  Winthrop,  ticiiij 
vood  in  winter, (li- 
nding  for  thr  dclin- 
sine  of  wood  ;  conn 
luko  your  dwelling 
liin  to  steal  ni)  lin' 


,|iicli  the  heathen  were  cast  forth.     I'liey  endeavoured  to  cherish  a  resoni- 
l,la„(e  of  condition,  so  honorable  and  so  fraught  with  itiriteincnts  to  piety, 
hv  cultivatitig  a  conformity  between  their  hiws  and  « iistoms  and  those  which 
ai^tinguishcd  the  uncient  people  of  (Jod.     Hence  arose  some  of  thr  peculi- 
iritii's  which  wo  have  observed   in  their  legislative  code  ;  and  hence  arose 
ilso  the  practice  of  commencing  their  sabbatical  observances  on  Saturday 
rvening.     Tho  same  predilection  for  Jewish  customs  begot,  or  at  least  pro- 
moted, among  them  the  habit  of  bestowing  significant  names  on  children,  of 
uiioiii  the  first  three  that  were  baptized  in  Boston  church  received  the  namc'^ 
„f  Joy,  Recompense,  and  Pity.     This  custom  seems  to  have  obtained  the 
.neatest  prevalence  in  the  town  of  Dorchester,  which  long  continued  to  be 
remarkable  for  sucL  n.iines  as  Faith,  Hope,  Charity,  Deliverance,  Depend- 
ence, Prc^i  rvcd,  CoiiNsnt,  Prudence,  Patience,  Thankfid,  Hate-evil,  Hold- 
last,  and  o'hers  of  a  similar  character.' 


CHAPTER    III 


N..W  F.nehind  embraces  the  Cause  of  the  Parlinmont.  —  Federal  Union  between  the  New 
Knulaiid  StatcH.  —Provincial  Coinage  of  Money.  — Disputes  ocrasioned  by  the  Dinfranrhisu- 
,,',e,,t  of  Dissenters  in  Mnssachusctts.  —  Impeachment  and  Trial  of  Governor  Winthrop. — 
Arliitmry  Proceedings  against  the  Dissenters.  —  Attempts  to  convert  and  "Y'l'Z"  »"«""- 
liuns  _  Ciinractcr  and  Labors  of  Eliot  and  Mayhew.-  Indian  Diblo  printed  in  Massaciiu- 
,ellH  -  Eir..ets  of  the  Missionary  Labor.  -  A  Synod  of  tho  New  England  Churches.  -  Dis- 
„„„.  between  Massachusetts  and  tho  Long  Parliament.  — The  Colony  foils  the  I'.irliam.  nt 
Land  is  favored  by  Cromwell. —  The  Protector's  Administration  beneficial  to  New  Lng- 
lin.l  -Ho  conquers  Acadia.  —  His  Propositions  to  tho  Inhabitants  of  Massncliu»,etts  — 
.Itrlined  by  them. —  Persecution  of  tho  Anabaptists  in  Massachusetts.  —  Conduct  and  Mil- 
IVrinirs  of  the  Quakers.  —  The  Restoration.  —  Address  of  Massachusetts  to  Charles  tho 
S,,,ond. -Alarm  of  the  Colonists  — their  Declaration  of  Rights.  — The  Kings  Message  to 
.Mnswuhusfitts—  how  far  complied  with.  —  Royal  Charter  of  Incorporation  to  Rhode  Island 
and  Providence  —  and  to  Connecticut  and  New  Haven. 

The  coincidence  between  the  principles  of  the  New  England  colonists 
and  those  of  the  prevailing  party  in  the  Long  Parliament  [1G41]  was  ce- 
mented by  the  consciousness,  that  with  the  success  of  this  party  was  identi- 
fied the  security  of  the  provincial  institutions  from  the  dangers  that  had  so 
recently  menaced  them.     As  soon  as  the  colonists  were  informed  of  the 
eonvocation  of  that  famous  assembly,  they  despatched  Hugh  Peters  and  two 
other  persons  to  promote  their  interests  in  the  parent  state.      1  he  mission 
,,0    d  more  fortunate  for  New  England  than  for  her  ambassadors.     By  an 
ordinance  of  the  House  of  Commons  ^  in  the  following  year,  the  mhabitams 
of  all  the  various  plantations  of  New  England  were  exempted  from  payment 
of  any  duties,  either  upon  goods  carried  thither,  or  upon  goods  imported  by 
them  into  the  mother  country,  "  until  the  House  shall  make  further  order 
therein  to  the  contrary."     The  colonists,  in  return,  cordially  embraced  the 
cause  of  their  benefactors  ;  and  when  the  civil  wars  broke  out  m  England 
[1G42],  they  published  a  decree  expressive  of  their  approbation  of  the 
measures  of  parliament,  and  denouncing  capital  punishment  against  all  per- 

'  llislorii  of  the  British  Dominions  in  .Imtrica.  .       ,     .  .•         „p  tm„,„ 

»  Tiic  reasons  assigned  by  tho  House  for  this  ordinance  arc,  that  tho  plantations  of  New 

Ensinnd  are  likely  to  conduce  to  tho  propagation  of  the  gospel,  and  already     have,  oy  ino 

bIpKsiriff  of  tho  Almighty,  had  good  und  prosperous  success,  tcithout  any  public  charge  to  ma 

stnte."^ 


1 


192 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


sons  who  should  disturb  the  peace  of  the  commonwealth  by  endeavourmg  to 
raiTe  a  party  for  the  king  of  England,  or  by  d.scr.mmatmg  between  he  kmg 
a^d  the  parliament,  which  pursued  (it  was  declared  the  rue  interests  of  t  e 
Sk  as  well  as  itB  own.  Happily  for  themselves,  the  colomsts  were  unable 
to  signalize  their  predilection  by  more  active  interference  in  the  contest; 
nnd  with  a  prudent  regard  to  their  commercial  interests,  they  gave  free 
Ses^  into  their  harbours  to  trading  vessels  from  the  ports  m  possession  of 
e  Svalists.  They  had  likewise  the  good  sense  to  decline  an  invitation  they 
eceivld  to  deput'e  John  Cotton,  and  others  of  their  ministers,  to  attend, 
!,s  provincial  delegates,  the  celebrated  Assembly  of  Divines  convoked  at 

^^'e™^^^^^^    by  the  privileges  that  were  conferred  on  tl^e.-n,  they  pursued 
the  cultivation  of  their  soil  with  unremitting  ardor;  and  their  wealth  and 
opulatlon  rapidly  increased.     From  the  continent  they  began  to  extend 
hJ^r  occupation  to  the  adjacent  islands ;  and  one  planter,  m  part.cidar,  hav- 
g  obtained  a  grant  of  Martha's  Vineyard,  Nantucket,  and  the  Ehzabe, 
iinds,  laid  the  foundation  there  of  settlements  that  afterwards  proved 
hiohlv  serviceable  to  the  conversion  and  civilization  of  tlie  Indians.     But  a 
co'itcLporaueous  attempt  which  they  made  to  extend,  if  not  their  settle- 
ments,  at  least  their  principles,  in  another  quarter  of  the  continent,  was  at- 
ended  with  unfortunate  results.     The  colonists  of  Virgima  were  ii^  general 
stanch  royalist.  ;  and,  with  little  concern  for  the  substance  of  religion,  pro- 
fesed  a  stvong  attachment  to  the  forms  and  institutions  of  the  churcn  of 
England.     Yef,  as  we  have  seen,  they  received,  even  as  early  as  the  reign 
of  James,  an  accession  to  their  numbers,  composed  of  persons  who  ha.i 
imbibed  Puritan  sentiments,  and  were  fugitives  from  ecc  esiastical  perse- 
cution in  Britain.     A  deputation  from  this  class  of  the  Virgmian  planters 
had  been  lately  sent  to  Boston  to  represent  their  destitution  of  proper  minis- 
"rs,  and  soli/it  a  supply  of  pastors  from  the  New  England  churches.    In 
(onpliance  with  this  request,  three  clergymen  were  selected  to  repair  as 
,nis.  onaries  to  Virginia,  and  furnished  with  recommendatory  letters  ft-om  the 
gorenlor  of  Massachus'etts  to  Sir  William  Berkeley.     [1642.]     On  their 
arrival  in  Virginia,  tliey  began  to  preach  in  various  parts  ot  the  country,  and 
th'^  people  flocked  to  hear  Uiem  with  an  eagerness  that  might  have  been 
product  ve  of  important  consequences.     But  the  Piu;itan  principles,  as  we 
L  the  political  sintiments,  of  die  colonists  of  New  England  were  too  much 
ihe  objects  of  aversion  to  Sir  William  Berkeley,  to  admit  of  his  pa  rona?. 
hein-  afforded  to  an  enterprise  intended  and  adapted  to  propagate  their  m- 
iucnce  among  hk  own  people.     So  far  from  conriply.ng  with  the  desire  of 
is  brother  governor,  he  issued  a  proclamation,  by  which  all  persons  .ho 
Lll  not  conform  to  the  ceremonial  of  the  church  of  England  were  con,- 
nianded  straightway  to  depart  from  Virginia.     The  preachers  accord.ns:!;. 
;:;:;med  to  l.  EWanC  •  and  thus  was  laid  the  foundatron  o    a  jca^^^^^^^^^ 
^vl.ich  long  subsisted  between  the  tuo  oldest  provmces  cf  North  An  ni  .1. 
The  disappointment  occasioned  by  this  fruitless  attempt  to  es  al.i.sh  ., 
iVicndh-  connection  with  the  sister  colony  of  Virginia  was  counterbalancod 
iu  the'foUowinp  year  [1G43]  by  an  hnportant  eveia  '"/l^'^/.^f  ^ff  "'    I 
New  En.,land  settlements  ;  -  the  formation  of  a  league  by  which  they  Nvci 
knit  together  in  a  federal  union  that  greatly  augmented  their  security  a 
pLwer.     The  Narragansct  Indians  had  by  this  time  reflected  ntjmsurejm 
-J  jjyn;j,i„^„n     jsj^^i.    Hazard, 


CHAP.  Ill  ] 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  CONFEDERACY. 


193 


the  policy  of  their  conduct  towards  the  Pequods  ;  and  the  hatred  which  they 
formerly  cherished  against  this  tribe,  being  extinguished  in  the  destruction 
of  its  objects,  was  succeeded  by  an  angry  jealousy  of  those  strangers  who 
obviously  derived  the  chief  and  only  lasting  advantage  which  the  conflict 
lad  yielded.     They  saw  the  territories  of  their  ancient  rivals  occupied  by 
1  much  more  formidable  neighbour ;  and  mistaking  their  own  inability  to  im- 
prove  their  condition  for  the  effect  of  fraud  and  injustice  on  the  part  of  the 
colonists,  who  were  rapidly  surpassing  them  in  number,  wealth,  and  power, 
thev  began  to  complain  that  the  plunder  of  the  Pequods  had  not  been  fairly 
divided,  and  concerted  measures  with  some  of  the  neighbouring  tribes  for 
■1  .reneral  insurrection  of  the  Indians  against  the  English.   Their  designs  had 
ad'vanced  but  a  little  way  towards  maturity,  when  they  were  detected,  m 
consequence  of  an  emergent  quarrel  with  another  tribe,  which  they  pursued 
with  an  imprudent  indulgence  of  that  inordinate  appetite  for  present  revenge 
which  seemed  fated  to  disconcert  and  defeat  their  political  views.     The 
colonists,  from  the  groundless  murmurs  they  found  themselves  exposed  to, 
md  which  proved  only  the  rooted  dislike  of  the  savages,  were  sensible  of 
their  own  danger,  without  yet  being  aware  of  its  extent,  or  feeling  themselves 
".  thorized  to  anticipate  by  defensive  hostility  some  more  certain  indication 
of  it ;  when,  fortunately,  they  were  invited  to  act  as  mediators  between  two 
contending  tribes.  The  Narragansets,  having  conceived  some  disgust  against 
a  neiehbouring  chief,  employed  an  assassin  to  kill  him  ;  and,  faihng  in  this 
attempt,  plunged  into  a  war,  with  the  declared  intention  of  exterminating 
the  whole  of  his  tribe.     This  tribe,  who  were  at  peace  wiUi  the  English, 
implored  the  protection  of  the  Massachusetts  government,  which  agreed  to 
interpose  in  their  behalf.     The  Narragansets,  apprized  of  this  transaction, 
recollecting  the  terrible  punishment  inflicted  on  the  Pequods,  and  conscious 
that  they  themselves  justlv  merited  a  similar  visitation,  were  struck  with  dis- 
may, and,  throwing  down  their  arms,  acceded  to  a  treaty  of  peace  oictated 
to  'them  by  the  Eughsh.     When  their  knmediate  apprehensions  subsided, 
tliey  showed  so  little  regard  to  the  performance  of  tlieir  paction,  that  it  was 
not  till  the  colonists  made  a  demonstration  of  readiness  to  employ  force  that 
they  sullenly  fulfilled  it. 

Alarmed  by  such  indications  of  fickleness,  dislike,  and  furious  passion, 
and  ascertaining  by  dint  of  inquiry  the  design  that  had  been  recently  pro- 
posed and  entertained  of  a  general  conspiracy  of  the  Indians,  —  the  authori- 
ties of  Massachusetts  conceived  the  defensive  project  of  providmg,  by  a 
mutual  concert  of  the  colonies,  for  the  common  danger  whrh  they  might 
expect  to  encounter  at  no  distant  day,  when  the  savages,  instructed  by  ex- 
perience, would  sacrifice  their  private  feuds  to  combined  hostility  against  a 
race  of  strangers  whose  progressive  advancement  seemed  to  minister  occa- 
sion of  increasing  and  incurable  jealousy  to  the  whole  Indian  race.  Having 
composed,  for  this  purpose,  a  plan  which  was  framed  m  imitation  ot  the 
i)ond  of  union  between  the  Dutch  provinces,  and  which  readily  suggested 
itself  to  some  leading  personages  among  the  colonists  who  had  resided  witli 
the  Brownist  congregation  in  Holland,  they  communicated  it  to  the  neigh- 
bouring setUements  of  New  Plymouth,  Connecticut,  and  New  Haven,  bv 
which  it  was  cordially  embraced.  These  four  colonies,  accordingly,  entered 
into  a  league  of  perpetual  confederacy,  offensive  and  defensive.  [^'«y  M' 
1643.]  The  instrument  of  confederation  between  them  announced  that  their 
respective  inhabitanis  had  all  come  into  these  paris  vj  America  wiin  j/tc  some 
VOL.  1.  25  * 


194 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


errand  and  aim,  to  advance  the  Christian  religion,  and  enjoy  the  liberty  of 
their  consciences  with  purity  and  peace.  It  was  stipulated,  that  the  con- 
federates  should  thenceforth  be  distinguished  by  the  title  of  The  United 
Colonies  of  New  England  ;  that  each  province  should  remain  a  separate 
and  distinct  municipal  association,  and  retain  independent  jurisdiction  within 
its  own  territory  ;  that  in  every  war,  offensive  or  defensive,  each  of  tlie 
confederates  should  furnish  its  quota  of  men,  money,  and  provisions,  at  a 
rate  to  be  fixed  from  time  to  time  in  proportion  to  the  population  of  the 
respective  communities  ;  that  a  council,  composed  of  two  commissionerg 
from  each  province,  should  be  annually  convoked  and  empowered  to  delib- 
erate  and  decide  on  all  points  of  common  concern  to  the  confederacy ;  and 
that  every  resolve,  sanctioned  by  the  approbation  of  six  of  the  commis- 
sioners, should  be  binding  on  all  the  associated  provinces.  Every  province 
renounced  the  right  of  protecting  fugitive  debtors  or  criminals  from  the  legal 
process  of  the  particular  community  which  they  might  have  wronged  and 
deserted.  The  State  of  Rhode  Island,  which  was  not  included  in  this  con- 
federacy, petitioned  a  few  years  after  to  be  admitted  into  it ;  but  her  request 
was  refused,  except  on  the  condition,  which  she  declined,  of  merging  lier 
separate  existence  in  an  incorporation  with  the  colony  of  New  Plymoutli, 
Thus  excluded  from  the  benefit  of  the  federal  union,  and  in  a  maqner  disso- 
ciated from  the  other  States,  the  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island  and  Provi- 
dence endeavoured  to  promote  their  separate  security  by  conciliating  the 
friendship  of  the  Indians  ;  and  the  humane  and  courteous  policy  which  this 
purpose  taught  them  to  pursue  proved  remarkably  successful.^ 

The  colonists  have  been  reproached  with  arrogating  the  prerogative  of 
sovereignty  in  this  transaction,  —  which,  doubtless,  wears  all  the  features  of 
a  direct  approach  to  political  independence.  Yet  it  was  a  measure  that 
could  hardly  be  avoided  by  a  people  surrounded  with  enemies,  and  aban- 
doned to  their  own  guidance  and  resources,  in  a  territory  many  thousand 
miles  distant  from  the  seat  of  the  government  that  claimed  supreme  dominion 
over  them.  Of  a  community  so  situated  every  progressive  step  in  social 
advancement,  whether  consisting  in  the  enlargement  of  its  numbers  or  the 
concentration  of  its  resources,  or  otherwise  tending  to  increase  its  power 
and  promote  its  security,  was  a  step  towards  national  independence.  Nothint; 
but  some  curiously  politic  system,  or  such  a  series  of  events  as  might  have 
kept  the  various  settlements  continually  disunited  in  mutual  jealousy  and 
consequent  weakness,  could  have  secured  their  protracted  existence  as  a 
dependent  progeny  of  England.  But  whatever  effects  the  transaction  which 
we  have  remarked  may  have  silently  produced  on  the  course  of  American 
sentiment  and  opinion,  and  however  likely  it  may  now  appear  to  have 
planted  tlie  seminal  idea  of  independence  in  the  minds  of  the  colonists,  it 
was  regarded  neither  by  themselves  nor  by  their  English  rulers  as  indicating 
pretensions  unsuitable  to  their  condition.  Even  after  the  Restoration,  the 
commissioners  of  the  federal  union  were  repeatedly  noticed  and  recognized 
in  the  letters  and  official  instruments  of  Charles  the  Second  ;  and  the  leas^iie 
itself,  with  some  alterations,  subsisted  till  very  near  the  era  of  the  British 
Revolution.  A  few  years  after  its  establishment,  the  principal  object  which 
engaged  its  deliberations  and  exertions  was  the  religious  instruction  of  tlie 
Indians,  —  an  object  which  was  pursued  in  cooperation  with  the  society  in- 
s(>fi;*pf{  \\\'  pf)fliaf»^,f>ri}  |»i  Ri'jfojrj  (fjj.  nrona"'3t!n''  the  ""nsMol  in  New  Enc'snd. 

•"inrrriise  Mathers  AVu»  England  Troubles-     Weal.     Hutcliiiwon.     Pitkin's  Histury. 
'  liutciiiuiiun. 


CHAP.  Ill]         COINAGE  OF  MONEY  BY  MASSACHUSETTS. 


195 


itkin's  History. 


While  the  colonists  were  thus  employed  in  devising  measures  calculated 
to  guard,  confinri,  and  mature  their  institutions,  the  parliament  enacted  an 
ordinance  of  which  the  principle  menaced  those  institutions  with  an  entire 
overthrow.  [1643.]  It  appointed  the  Earl  of  Warwick  governor-in-chief, 
and  lord  high  admiral  of  all  the  British  colonies,  with  a  council  of  five  peers 
and  twelve  commoners  to  assist  him  ;  it  empowered  him,  in  conjunction  with 
his  associates,  to  investigate  the  actual  condition  of  the  colonies;  to  require 
the  production  of  their  patents  and  records,  and  the  personal  attendance  and 
testimony  of  any  of  their  inhabitants  ;  to  remove  governors  and  other  provin- 
cial magistrates  ;  to  replace  them  by  proper  successors  ;  and  to  delegate  to 
these  new  functionaries  as  much  of  the  power  conferred  on  himself  as  he 
should  think  proper.  This  ordinance,  which  created  an  authority  that  might 
have  new-modelled  all  the  provincial  governments,  and  abrogated  all  their 
charters,  was  not  sufFered  to  remain  wholly  inoperative.  To  some  of  the 
colonial  commonwealths  the  parliamentary  council  extended  protection,  and 
even  granted  new  patents. ^  Happily  for  Massachusetts,  either  the  peculiar 
favor  and  indulgence  of  which  she  was  deemed  worthy,  or  the  absorbing 
interest  of  the  great  struggle  with  which  England  was  shaken,  prevented  any 
interference  with  her  institutions,  until  a  period  when  her  provincial  assem- 
bly was  able,  as  we  shall  see,  to  employ  defensive  measures  that  eluded  the 
undesirable  interposition  without  disputing  the  formidable  authority  of  the 
parliamentary  council. 

Various  disputes  had  arisen  of  late  years  between  the  inhabitants  of  New 
England  and  the  French  settlers  in  Acadia  or  Nova  Scotia.     These  differ- 
ences were  now  [1644]  adjusted  by  a  treaty  between  a  commissioner  for 
the  king  of  France  on  the  one  part,  and  John  Endicott,  governor  of  JSTeto 
England,  and  the  rest  of  the  magistrates  there,  on  the  other.**  The  colonists 
had  already  debarred  themselves  from  recognizing  the  king  as  a  distinct  au- 
thority from  the  parliament ;  and  they  probably  found  it  difficult  to  explain 
to  the  other  contracting  parties  to  what  denomination  of  sovereign  power 
they  owned  allegiance.     This  state  of  things,  as  it  engendered  practices,  so 
it  may  have  secretly  fostered  sentiments,  that  savored  of  independence. 
A  practice  strongly  denoting  pretension  to  sovereign  authority  was  adopted 
a  few  years  after,^  when  the  increasing  trade  of  the  colonists  with  the  West 
Indies,  and  the  quantity  of  Spanish  bullion  that  was  conveyed  through  this 
channel  into  New  England,  induced  the  provincial  authorities  to  erect  a  mint 
for  the  coinage  of  silver  money  at  Boston.    The  coin  was  stamped  with  the 
name  of  New  England  on  the  one  side ;  of  Massachusetts,  as  the  principal 
settlement,  on  the  other  ;  and  with  a  tree,  as  the  symbol  of  national  vigor 
and  increase.     Maryland  was  the  only  other  colony  that  ever  presumed  to 
coin  money  ;  and,  indeed,  this  prerogative  has  been  always  regarded  as  the 
peculiar  attribute  of  sovereignty.  "  But  it  must  be  considered,"  says  one  of 
the  New  England  historians,  "  that  at  this  time  there  was  no  king  in  Israel." 
In  the  distracted  state  of  the  mother  country,  it  might  well  be  judged  unsafe 
to  send  bullion  there  to  be  coined  ;  and  from  the  uncertainty  respecting  the 
form  of  government  which  would  finally  arise  out  of  the  civil  wars,  it  might 
reasonably  be  apprehended  that  an  impress  received  during  their  continuance 
would  not  long  retain  its  currency.     The  practice  gave  no  umbrage  what- 
ever to  the  English  government.    |t  received  the  tacit  allowance  of  the  par- 
Chalmers.   The  people  of  Maine  solicited  the  protection 


9. 

■■i  . 

m 


Journals  of  the  House  of  Lords. 
of  tho  coimoil  in  16.'J1.      Hazard. 
'  Hutchinson. 


In  1652. 


196 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


lianient,  of  Cromwell,  and  even  of  Charles  the  Second,  during  twenty  years 
of  his  reign.  1 

The  separation  of  the  two  branches  of  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts 
naturally  gave  rise  to  some  disputes  respecting  the  boundaries  of  jurisdiction 
in  a  constitution  not  yet  matured  by  practice.  But  what  precedent  could 
not  supply,  the  influence  of  the  provincial  clergy  was  able  to  acconipli&li. 
1 1G44.]  By  common  consent,  all  the  ministers  were  summoned  to  attend 
the  session  of  the  assembly,  and  the  points  at  issue  being  submitted  to  them, 
their  decision  was  honored  with  immediate  and  universal  acquiescence.- 
But  in  the  following  year  [1645],  a  dispute  more  violent  in  its  nature,  and 
less  creditable  and  satisfactory  in  its  result,  was  occasioned  in  this  common- 
wealth by  the  intolerance  which  we  have  already  noted  in  its  original  insti- 
tutions. With  the  growing  prosperity  and  importance  of  the  provincial  so- 
ciety,  the  value  of  its  political  franchises  was  felt  to  be  proportionably  aug- 
mented ;  and  the  increasing  opulence  and  respectability  of  the  dissenters 
seemed  to  aggravate  the  hardship  of  the  disfranchisement  to  which  they  were 
subjected.  Some  of  these  persons,  having  proceeded  with  violence  to  as- 
sume the  privileges  from  which  they  were  excluded  by  law,  and  disturbed 
an  election  by  their  interference,  were  punished  by  Winthrop,  the  deputy- 
governor,  who  vigorously  resisted  and  defeated  their  pretensions.  They 
complained  of  this  treatment  to  the  General  Court  by  a  petition  couched  iii 
very  strong  language,  demanding  leave  to  impeach  the  deputy-governor  be- 
fore the  whole  body  of  his  fellow-citizens,  and  to  submit  to  the  same  tribunal 
the  consideration  of  tlieir  general  sufferings,  as  well  as  of  the  particular 
severities  they  had  experienced  from  Winthrop.  The  grievances  under 
which  they  labored  were  enumerated  in  the  petition,  which  contained  a 
forcible  remonstrance  against  the  injustice  of  depriving  them  of  tlie  rights  of 
iVeemen,  because  tliey  could  not  conscientiously  unite  with  the  congrega- 
tional churches,  or  when  they  solicited  admission  into  them  were  arbitrarily 
rejected  by  the  ministers.  They  contended  that  either  the  full  rights  of 
citizenship  should  be  communicated  to  them,  or  that  they  should  no  longer 
be  required  to  obey  laws  to  which  they  had  not  given  assent,  to  contribute 
to  the  maintenance  of  ministers  from  whose  labors  they  derived  no  advan- 
tage, or  to  pay  taxes  imposed  by  an  assembly  in  which  they  were  not  repre- 
sented. The  court  was  so  far  moved  by  the  petition,  or  by  the  respecta- 
bility of  its  promoters,  that  Winthrop  was  commanded  to  defend  hini- 
.self  publicly,  before  the  magistrates,  from  tlie  charges  which  it  advanced 
against  him. 

On  the  day  appointed  for  his  trial,  he  descended  from  his  official  seat  on 
the  bench,  he  being  one  of  the  magistrates,  and,  placing  himself  at  the  bar 
in  presence  of  a  numerous  assemblage  of  the  inhabitants,  he  addressed  hiui- 
.self  to  explain  and  vindicate  his  conduct.  Having  clearly  proved  that  the 
proceedings  for  which  he  was  impeached  were  sanctioned  by  law,  and  that 
ilie  sole  object  of  them  was  to  maintain  the  existing  institutions,  by  the 
I'xercise  of  the  authority  confided  to  him  for  this  purpose,  he  concluded  an 
excellent  harangue  in  the  following  terms  :  —  "  Though  1  be  justified  before 
men,  yet  it  may  be,  the  Lord  hath  seen  so  much  amiss  in  my  administration 
as  calls  me  to  be  humbled  ;  and,  indeed,  for  me  to  have  been  thus  charged 
by  men  is  a  matter  of  humiliation,  whereof  I  desire  to  make  a  right  use  be- 

fuiiicr  spit  in  lior  face,  she  is  to  be  a.^hamea. 


fore  the  Lord. 


Ti- 
ll 


Miriam'i: 
*  Hutchiruun. 


I'sid 


CHAP.  Ill]        IMPEACHMENT  AND  DEFENCE  OF  WINTHROP. 


197 


ived  no  advan- 


Tlien  desiring  leave  to  propose  some  considerations  by  which  he  hoped  to 
rectify  the  opinions  of  the  people  on  the  nature  of  government :  «  The 
questions,    he  observed,  "that  have  troubled  the  country  have  been  about 
,lie  authority  of  die  magistracy  and  the  liberty  of  the  people.    It  is  you  who 
have  called  us  unto  this  office  ;  but  being  thus  called,  we  have  our  authority 
from  God.     Magistracy  is  the  ordinance  of  God,  and  it  hath  the  image  of 
God  stamped  upon  it ;  and  the  contempt  of  it  has  been  vindicated  by  God 
with  terrible  examples  of  his  vengeance.     I  entreat  you  to  consider,  that, 
wten  you  choose  magistrates,  you  take  them  from  among  yourselves   men 
subject  unto  like  passions  with  yourselves.     If  you  see  our  infirmities   re- 
flect on  your  own,  and  you  will  not  be  so  severe  censlirers  of  ours      The 
covenant  between  us  and  you  is  the  oath  you  have  exacted  of  us,  which  is 
to  this  purpose,  that  we  shall  govern  you  and  judge  your  causes  according 
to  God  slates  and  the  particular  statutes  of  the  land,  according  to  our  bett 
skill.    As  or  our  skill,  you  must  run  the  hazard  of  it ;  and  if  there  be  an 
error  only  therein,  and  not  in  the  will,  it  becomes  you  to  bear  it.  Nor  would 
I  have  you  to  mistake  in  the  point  of  your  own  liberty.     There  is  a  libertv 
of  corrupt  nature,  which  is  affected  both  by  men  and  beasts,  to  do  what 
they  list.     1  his  liberty  is  inconsistent  with  authority  ;  impatient  of  all  re- 
straint (by  this  liberty  sumus  omnes  deteriores),  't  is  the  grand  enemy  of 
truth  and  peace,  and  all  the  ordinances  of  God  are  bent  against  it  "  But 
there  is  civd,  a  moral,  a  federal  Hberty,  which  is  the  proper  end  and  object 
of  authority  ;  it  is  a  hberty  for  that  only  which  is  just  and  good.     For  this 
hberty  you  are  to  stand  with  the  hazard  of  your  very  hves  ;  and  whatsoever 
crosses  it  is  not  authority,  but  a  distemper  thereof.     This  liberty  is  main- 
tained in  a  way  of  subjection  to  authority  ;  and  the  authority  set  over  you 
will,  m  all  admmistrations  for  your  good,  be  quietly  submitted  unto  by  all 
but  such  as  have  a  disposition  to  shake  off  the  yoke,  and  lose  their  true  lib- 
erty by  their  murmuring  at  the  honor  and  power  of  authority." 

The  circumstances  in  which  this  address  was  delivered  recall  the  most 
uneresting  scenes  of  Greek  and  Roman  story,  while  in  the  wisdom,  piety, 
and  dignity  that  it  breathes,  it  resembles  the  magnanimous  vindication  of  a 
judge  ol  Israel.     Winthrop  was  not  only  acquitted  by  the  judicial  sentence 
ot  the  court  and  the  approving  voice  of  the  public,  but  recommended  so 
strongly  to  the  esteem  of  his  fellow-citizens  by  this  and  all  the  other  indi- 
cations of  his  character,  that  he  was  chosen  governor  of  Massachusetts 
every  year  after  as  long  as  he  lived.^  [1646.]  His  accusers  incurred  a  pro- 
portional degree  of  public  displeasure;  their  petition  was  rejected,  and 
several  ot  the  chief  promoters  of  it  were  severely  reprimanded,  and  adjudged 
to  make  open  acknowledgment  of  their  fault  in  seeking  to  subvert  the  funda- 
mental lavys  of  the  colony.     Refusing  to  acknowledge  that  they  had  acted 
amiss,  aiul  still  persisting  in  their  clamor  for  an  alteration  of  the  law,  with 
very  indiscreet  threats  of  complaining  to  theparliament,  they  were  punished 

Tl'illi'i,,? H.HrJ/^""'^''"''"'''  ^'T  ^v"T  ?'"'¥')  continually  exem7lTfi^dlh71,;;^ihird- 
/  ,„w  •/', ;  I  i  "TJ  ""T  *'"'?''  ""^  "f  '**  "*'*'■' '/  «'  *«  '^'•''"^A  lightness,  't  is  to  he  con- 
tmvcd;  tfit  he  thr^tgh  madness,  't  is  to  he  pitied  ;  if  through  malice,  't  Is  to  be  forgiven.    Ono 

m  "s!r  vf "'  ''''"  ''"•  '""?  '"»"'«!«;r''  """^'»'  i"-^vill  townnk  IiIb  porson,  atlenfth  wrote  to 
SovP  nnr     7*'r""J'".«  o?yoursolf  hath  overcome  me."  At  his  t'hird  election  to  the  office 

tfZZ^'l.  i?".';''"'^''' '"  «si'««'-l' toli'B  fellowoitizens,  that  he  had  hitherto  accepted  with 
V«Zc^i,'  i  ''T-'"'  ';y,^^'"ch  tl'oy  had  acknowledsed  his  services,  and  could  no 

Zf.   LT,T         "■  ''VT",  "^  •'""'••  '".""^  '^'"'''  "*" '"«  '"^'  •i"  '«  «»id  ««  have  expressed 

■r  •,  i,  L,  " T'T     ".'"..''r'  r""?  *r  '»f '«?:«"'-'^-     "*--  •-'^'''th,  in  1649,  wrt.  deeply  and  uni- 

alike  iS  'S:;ld  in"place     "    "'        '"'  '^  "''"  ""  '""""■  "*"  "'^  '"^'''^^  ""^  '^'  ^"* 


198 


HISTOIU    OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


N' 


_ } 


with  fine  or  imprisonment.     Most  of  them  were  known  or  believed  to  in- 
cline  to  the  ecclesiastical  form  of  presbytery  ;  and  as  this  peculiar  constitu- 
tion was  also  affected  by  the  prevailing  party  in  the  English  House  of  Com- 
mons  the  menace  of  a  complaint  to  parliament  excited  general  anger  and 
alarm'.    A  deputation  of  the  malcontents  having  made  preparation  to  sail  for 
England,  and  given  significant  hints  of  the  changes  they  hoped  to  procure 
by  their  machinations  in  the  parent  state,  some  of  tliem  were  placed  under 
arrest,  and  their  papers  were  seized  and  examined.     Among  these  papers 
were  found  petitions  to  Lord  Warwick,  urging  a  forfeiture  of  the  provincial 
charter,  the  introduction  of  a  Presbyterian  establishment,  and  of  the  whole 
code  of  English  jurisprudence,  into  the  provincial  institutions,  together  witli 
various  other  innovations,  which  were  represented  as  at  once  accordant  witli 
legislatorial  wisdom  and  justice,  and  conducive  to  the  important  object  of 
securing  and  enlarging  the   sovereign  authority  of  the  parliament  over  the 
colony.     The  discovery  of  the  intolerance  contemplated  by  these  persons 
served  to  exasperate  the  intolerance  which  they  themselves  were  experienc- 
ing  from  the  society  of  which  they  formed  but  an  insignificant  fraction. 
The  contents  of  their  papers  excited  so  much  resentment,  that  not  a  voice 
was  raised  against  the  iniquity  of  the  process  by  which  the  documents  had 
been  intercepted  ;  and  the  alarm  was  increased  by  the  manifest  impossibility 
of  preventing  designs  so  dangerous  from  being  still  pursued.     The  ardor  of 
the  public  sentiment,  as  well  as  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  subject  that  ex- 
cited it,  introduced  this  all-prevalent  topic  into  the  pulpit  ;  and  even  John 
Cotton  was  so  far  heated  and  transported  by  the  contagion  of  passionate 
zeal,  as  to  declare,  in  a  sermon,  "  that,  if  any  one  should  carry  writings  or 
complaints  against  the  people  of  God  in  this  country  to  England,  he  would, 
doubtless,  find  himself  in  the  predicament  of  Jonah  in  the  vessel."    This 
was  a  prediction  to  which  a  long  voyage  was  not  unlikely  to  give  at  least  a 
seeming  fulfilment.     In  effect,  a  short  time  after,  certain  deputies  from  the 
petitioners,  having  embarked  for  England,  were  overtaken  by  a  violent  storm; 
whereupon,  the  sailors,  recollecting  the  prediction  that  had  gone  abroad,  and, 
happily,  considering  the  papers,  and  not  the  bearers  of  them,  as  the  offend- 
ing part  of  the  shipment,  insisted  so  vehemently  on  casting  all  obnoxious 
writings  overboard,  that  the  deputies  were  obliged  to  commit  their  creden- 
tials to  the  waves.     Yet,  when  they  arrived  in  England,  they  did  not  fail  to 
prosecute  their  mission  ;  but  the  attention  of  the  parliamentary  leaders  at 
that  time  being  deeply  engaged  with  more  important  matters,  and  "Winslow 
and  Hugh  Peters,  on  behalf  of  the  colony,  actively  laboring  to  traverse  the 
designs  of  the  applicants,  they  obtained  litde  attention  and  no  redress. * 

From  the  painful  survey  of  intolerance  and  contentious  zeal  for  the  forms 
of  religion,  it  is  pleasing  to  turn  to  the  substantial  fruits  of  Christian  sentiment 
displayed  in  those  memorable  exertions  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians, 
that  originated  in  the  same  year  that  witnessed  so  much  dispute  and  ani- 
mosity. [1G46.]  The  circumstances  that  promoted  the  emigrations  to  New 
Engia'nd  had  operated  with  especial  force  on  the  ministers  of  the  Puritans ; 
and  so  many  ol  these  spiritual  directors  had  accompanied  the  other  settlers, 
that,  among  a  people  who  derived  less  enjoyment  from  the  exercises  of  piety, 
the  numbers  of  the  clergy  would  have  been  reckoned  exceedingly  burden- 
some, and  very  much  dlsproportioned  to  the  wants  of  the  laity.  This  cn- 
lumstance  was  highly  favorable  to  the  promotion  of  religious  habits  among 

~~"  »  Mather.     Nfol.     llulchinson.     Chulmers. 


ClIAP.  Ill] 


JOHN   ELIOT. 


199 


as  the  offend- 


ihe  colonists,  as  well  as  to  the  extension  of  their  settlements,  in  the  planta- 
tion of  which  the  cooperation  of  a  minister  was  accounted  indispensable. 
It  contributed  also  to  suggest  and  facilitate  missionary  labor  among  the 
neighbouring  heathens,  to  whom  the  colonists  had  associated  themselves  by 
superadding  the  ties  of  a  common  country  to  those  of  a  common  nature. 
Wiiile  the  people  at  large  were  progressively  extending  their  industry,  and 
subduing  by  culture  the  rudeness  of  desert  nature,  the  ministers  of  religion 
with  earnest  zeal  aspired  to  an  extension  of  their  peculiar  sphere  of  useful- 
ness ;  and  at  a  very  early  period  entertained  designs  of  redeeming  to  the 
lioiuinion  of  piety  and  civility  the  neglected  wastes  of  human  life  and  char- 
acter that  lay  stretched  in  savage  ignorance  and  idolatry  around  them.  John 
Kliot,  one  of  the  ministers  of  Roxbury,  a  man  whose  large  soul  glowed  with 
the  intensest  flame  of  holy  charity,  was  deeply  penetrated  with  a  sense  of 
this  duty,  and  for  some  time  had  been  laboriously  qualifying  himself  to  over- 
come the  preliminary  difficulty  by  which  its  performance  was  obstructed. 
He  had  now  by  diligent  study  attained  such  acquaintance  with  the  Indian 
language  as  enabled  him  not  only  to  speak  it  with  fluency,  but  to  facilitate  the 
acquisition  of  it  to  others,  by  the  construction  and  publication  of  a  system 
of  Indian  Grammar.  Having  completed  his  preparatory  inquiries,  he  began, 
iuthe  close  of  this  year  [October,  1G46],  a  scene  of  pious  labor  which  has 
been  traced  with  great  interest  and  accuracy  by  the  ecclesiastical  historians 
of  New  England,  and  still  more  minutely,  we  may  believe,  in  that  eternal 
record  where  alone  the  actions  of  men  obtain  their  just,  their  final,  and  ever- 
lasting proportions.  It  is  a  remarkable  feature  in  his  long  and  arduous  ca- 
reer, that  the  spirit  and  energy  by  which  he  was  supported  never  incurred 
the  slightest  abatement,  but,  on  the  contrary,  manifested  a  steady  and  con- 
tinual increase.  He  confidently  relied  on  its  unfailing  endurance  ;  and  always 
referring  it  to  divine  infusion,  felt  assured  of  its  derivation  from  a  fountain 
incapable  of  being  wasted  by  the  most  liberal  communication.  Every  thing 
he  saw  or  knew  occurred  to  him  in  a  religious  aspect  ;  every  faculty,  and 
every  acquisition  that  he  derived  from  the  employment  of  his  faculties,  was 
received  by  him  as  a  ray  imparted  to  his  soul  from  that  supreme  source  of 
sentiment  and  intelligence  which  was  the  object  of  his  earnest  contemplation 
and  continual  desire.  As  he  was  one  of  the  holiest,  so  was  he  also  one  of 
the  happiest  and  most  beloved  of  men.  When  he  felt  himself  disabled  from 
preaching  by  the  infirmities  of  old  age,  he  proposed  to  his  parishioners  of 
Roxbury  to  resign  his  ministerial  salary ;  but  these  good  people  unanimously 
declared  that  they  would  willingly  pay  the  stipend,  for  the  advantage  and 
honor  of  having  him  reside  among  them.  His  example,  indeed,  was  the 
most  valuable  part  of  his  ministry  among  Christians  ;  his  life,  during  many 
years,  being  a  continual  and  manifest  effusion  of  soul  in  devotion  to  God 
and  charity  to  mankind. 

The  mild,  persuasive  address  of  Eliot  soon  gained  him  a  favorable  audi- 
ence from  many  of  the  Indians  ;  ^  and  having  successfully  represented  to 
them  the  expediency  of  an  entire  departure  from  their  savage  habits  of  life, 
lie  obtained  from  the  General  Court  a  suitable  tract  of  land  adjoining  to  the 
settlement  of  Concord,  in  Massachusetts,  where  a  number  of  Indian  families 
began,  under  his  counsel,  to  erect  fixed  habitations  for  themselves,  and  where 
they  eagerly  received  his  instructions,  both  spiritual  and  secular.  It  was 
not  long  before  a  violent  opposition  to  these  innovations  was  excited  by  the 

'  See  Note  Vll.,  at  tlie  end  of  the  volume. 


s;l 


1,1 


If 


200 


III.STOUV  OF  KOUTH   AMl-RICA. 


[BOOK  II, 


powwows,  or  Indian  priests,  who  threatened  death,  and  other  inflictions  of 
the  vengeance  of  tlieir  idols,  on  all  who  should  emhrace  Christianity.  The 
menaces  and  artifices  of  these  persons  caused  several  of  the  seeming;  prose- 
iytes  to  draw  back,  but  induced  others  to  separate  themselves  entirely  from 
the  society  and  converse  of  the  main  body  of  their  countrymen,  and  court 
ihe  advantage  of  a  closer  association  with  that  superior  race  of  men  who 
showed  themselves  so  generously  willing  to  diffuse  and  communicate?  the  ca- 
j)acity  and  benefits  of  their  own  improved  condition.  A  considerable  mjm- 
l)er  of  Indians  resorted  to  the  land  allotted  to  them  by  the  provincial  gov- 
ernnient,  and  exchanged  their  wild  and  barbarous  habits  for  the  modes  of 
civilized  life  and  industry.  Eliot  was  continually  amotig  them,  instructing, 
iminiating,  and  directing  them.  They  felt  his  superior  wisdom,  and  saw  him 
continually  and  serenely  happy  ;  and  there  was  nothing  in  his  exterior  con- 
dition that  indicated  sources  of  enjoyment  from  which  they  were  necessarily 
debarred.  On  the  contrarj^,  it  was  obvious,  that  of  every  article  of  merely 
selfish  comfort  he  was  wilhng  to  divest  himself,  in  order  to  communicate  to 
them  a  share  of  what  he  esteemed  the  only  true  riches  of  an  immortal  being. 
The  women  in  the  new  settlement  learned  to  spin  ;  the  men  to  dig  and  u\\ 
the  ground  ;  and  the  children  were  instructed  in  the  English  language,  and 
taught  to  read  and  write,  or,  as  the  Indians  expressed  themselves,  to  get 
news  from  paper,  and  mark  their  thoughts  on  it. 

As  the  numbers  of  domesticated  Indians  increased,  they  built  a  town  by 
the  side  of  Charles  River,  which  they  called  JSTatick  ;  and  they  desireil 
Kliot  to  frame  a  system  of  municipal  government  for  tliem.  He  directed 
their  attention  to  the  counsel  that  Jethro  gave  to  Moses  ;  and,  in  conformity 
with  it,  they  elected  for  themselves  rulers  of  hundreds,  of  fifties,  and  ol  tens. 
The  provincial  government  also  established  a  tribunal,  which,  without  as- 
suming jurisdiction  o'/er  them,  tendered  the  assistance  of  its  judicial  medi- 
ation to  all  who  might  be  willing  to  refer  to  it  the  adjustment  of  their  more 
(lifHcult  or  important  controversies.  In  endeavouring  to  extend  their  mis- 
sionary influence  among  the  surrounding  tribes,  Eliot  and  the  associates  of 
his  labors  (men  hke-minded  with  himself)  encountered  a  variety  of  success;, 
corresponding  to  the  visible  varieties'of  human  character,  and  the  invisible 
predeterminations  of  the  divine  will.  Many  persons  expressed  the  utmost 
abhorrence  and  contempt  of  Christianity  ;  some  made  a  hollow  profession 
of  willingness  to  learn,  and  even  of  conviction,  — with  the  view,  as  it  after- 
wards proved,  of  obtaining  the  tools  and  other  articles  of  value  that  were 
furnished  to  every  Indian  who  proposed  to  embrace  the  habits  of  civilized 
life.  In  spite  of  great  discouragement,  the  missionaries  persisted  ;  and  the 
difficulties  that  at  first  mocked  their  efforts  seeming  at  length  to  vanish  under 
an  influence  at  once  mysterious  and  irresistible,  their  labors  were  crowned 
with  astonishing  success.  The  character  and  habits  of  the  lay  colonists  pro- 
moted the  efficacy  of  these  pious  exertions,  in  a  manner  which  will  be  forci- 
bly appreciated  by  all  who  have  examined  the  history  and  progress  of  mis- 
sions. Simple  in  their  manners,  devout,  moral,  and  industrious  in  their 
conduct  and  demeanour,  they  enforced  the  lessons  of  the  missionaries  by 
flemonstrating  their  practicability  and  beneficial  effects,  and  exhibited  a 
model  of  life,  which,  in  point  of  refinement,  was  not  too  elevated  for  Indian 
imitation. 

While  Eliot  and  an  increasing  company  of  associates  were  thus  em})Ioyed 
in  tilt?  province  of  Massachusetts,   Thomas  Mayhew,  a  man  who  combined 


:HAP.  ni  ]        MISSIONARY  LABORS  AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 


201 


(lie  gentlest  manners  witli  the  most  ardent  and  enthusiastic  spirit,  together 
with  a  few  coadjutors,  diligently  prosecuted  the  same  design  in  Marth-  's 
Vineyard,  Nantucket,  and  the  Elizabeth  Islands,  and  the  territory  compre- 
hended in  the  Plyjuoulh  patent.   Abasing  themselves  that  they  might  elevate 
their  species  and  promote  the  divine  glory,  and  counting  their  work  their 
waf  '.  they  labored  with  their  own  hands  among  tliose  Indians  whom  they 
pers>    '  J  to  forsake  savage  habits  ;  and  zealously  employing  ail  the  influ- 
ence they  acquired  to  the  communication  of  moral  and  spiritual  improve- 
ment, they  beheld  their  exertions  rewarded  by  the  happiest  results.     The 
( haracter  and  manners  of  Mayhew  were  singularly  calculated  to  excite  the 
tenderness,  no  less  than  the  veneration,  of  the  objects  of  his  benevolence. 
His  address  derived  a  penetrating  interest  from  that  earnest  concern  and 
high  and  holy  value  which  he  manifestly  entertained  for  every  member  of 
the  family  of  mankind.     Many  years  after  his  death,  the  Indians  could  not 
hear  his  name  mentioned  without  shedding  tears  and  betraying  transports  of 
grateful  emotion.     Both  Eliot  and  Mayhew  found  great  advantage  in  the 
p,actice  of  selecting  the  most  docile  and  ingenious  of  their  Indian  pupils,  and 
by  especial  attention  to  their  instruction,  qualifying  them  to  act  as  school- 
masters among  their  countrymen.     To  a  zeal  that  seemed  to  increase  by 
exercise  they  added  insurmountable  patience  and  admirable  prudence  ;  and 
steadily  fixing  their  view  on  the  glory  of  the  Most  High,  and  declaring,  that, 
whether  outwardly  successful  or  not  in  promoting  it,  they  felt  themselves 
blessed  and  happy  in  pursuing  it,  —  they  found  its  influence  sufficient  to  light 
them  through  Uie  darkness  of  every  perplexity  and  peril,  and  finally  conduct 
them  to  a  degree  of  success  and  victory  unparalleled',  perhaps,  since  that 
era  when  the  miraculous  endowments  of  the  apostolic  ministry  caused  multi- 
tudes to  be  converted  in  a  day.     They  were  not  hasty  in  urging  the  Indians 
to  embrace  improved  institutions  ;  they  desired  rather  to  lead  them  insensibly 
forward,  —  more  especially  in  the  establishment  of  religious  ordinances. 
Those  practices,  indeed,  which  they  accounted  likely  to  commend  them- 
selves by  their  obviously  beneficial  efiects  to  the  natural  understanding  of 
men,  they  were  not  restrained  from  recommending  to  their  early  adoption  ; 
and  trial  by  jury  very  soon  superseded  the  savage  modes  of  determining 
right  or  ascertaining  guilt,  and  contributed  to  improve  and  refine  the  sense 
of  equity.     In  the  dress  and  mode  of  cohabitation  of  the  savages  they  also 
introduced,  at  an  early  period,  alterations  calculated  to  form  and  develope  a 
sentiment  of  modesty,  of  which  the  Indians  were  found  to  be  grossly  and 
universally  deficient.    But  all  those  practices  which  are,  or  ought  to  be,  ex- 
clusively the  fruits  of  renewed  nature  and  divine  light,  they  desired  to  teach 
entirely  by  example,  and  by  diligently  radicating  and  cultivating  in  the  minds 
of  their  flocks  the  principles  out  of  which  alone  such  visible  fruits  of  piety 
can  lastingly  and  beneficially  grow.     It  was  not  till  the  year  1660,  that  the 
first  Indian  church  was  founded  by  Eliot  and  his  fellow-laborers  in  Massa- 
chusetts.    There  were  at  that  time  no  fewer  than  ten  settlements  within  the 
province,  occupied  by  Indians  comparatively  civilized. 

Eliot  had  occasionally  translated  and  printed  various  approved  theological 
fiissertations  for  the  use  of  the  Indians  ;  and  at  length,  in  the  year  1664,  the 
Bible  was  printed,  for  the  first  time,  in  one  of  the  native  languages  of  the 
New  World,  at  Cambridge,  in  Massachusetts.'     This,  indeed,  was  not  ac- 

'  1  havo  sicii  a  ropy  <if  this  edition  oftlic  Rii)li'  in  tlip  lil)riiry  of  the  late  George  Chalmers, 
li  is  a  tjeiuiiillii  jjiftc  of  lyju'jjruiihv.     Miiny  laiiitr  jnibiii utious  had  alrcaJy  isaucd  from  tho 

VOL.  1.  '       26 


202 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


complishcd  without  the  assistance  of  pecuniary  contributions  from  the  mother 
country.  The  colonists  had  zealously  and  cheerfully  cooperated  ^yith  their 
ministers,  and  assisted  to  defray  the  cost  of  their  charitable  enterprises ;  but 
\hc  increasing  expenses  threatened  at  last  to  exceed  what  their  narrow  mean., 
were  competent  to  afford.  Happily,  the  tidings  of  this  great  work  excited 
a  kindred  spirit  in  the  parent  state,  where,  in  the  year  1649,  there  was 
formed,  by  act  of  parliament,  a  Society  for  propagating  the  Gospel  in  Xeu 
England,  whose  cooperation  proved  of  essential  service  to  the  missionary 
cause.  This  society,  dissolved  at  the  Restoration,  was  afterwards  reestab- 
lished by  a  charter  from  Charles  the  Second,  obtained  by  the  exertions  of 
the  pious  Richard  Baxter  and  the  influence  of  the  illustrious  Robert  Boylo, 
who  thus  approved  himself  the  benefactor  of  New  England  as  well  as  of 
Virginia.  Supported  by  its  ample  endowments,  and  the  Uberal  contributions 
of  llieir  own  fellow-colonists,  the  American  missionaries  exerted  theniselves 
with  such  energy  and  success  in  the  work  of  converting  and  civilizing  tiic 
savages,  that,  before  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  were  col- 
lected in  the  province  of  Massachusetts  more  than  thirty  congregations  of 
Indians,  comprising  upwards  of  three  thousand  persons,  reclaimed  from  a 
gross  barbarism  and  degrading  superstition,  and  advanced  to  the  comfort  and 
respectability  of  civilized  life,  and  the  dignity  and  happiness  of  worshipper,. 
of  the  true  God.  There  were  nearly  as  many  converts  to  religon  and 
civility  in  the  islands  of  Massachusetts  Bay  ;  there  were  several  Indian  con- 
gregations in  the  Plymouth  territories  ;  and  among  some  of  tlic  tribes  thai 
still  pursued  their  wonted  style  of  roving  life  there  was  introduced  a  con- 
siderable improvement  in  civil  and  moral  habits.  Several  Indians  received 
education  at  Harvard  College  ;  from  which,  in  the  year  1G65,  one  of  their 
number  obtained  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts. 

Among  the  various  difficulties  that  obstructed  the  improvements  which 
the  missionaries  attempted  to  introduce  into  the  temporal  condition  of  the 
Indians,  it  was  found  that  the  human  constitution  had  been  greatly  deterio- 
rated by  ages  of  savage  life.    Unaccjuainted  with  moderation,  and  accustomed 
to  vibrate  between  intense  toil  and  sluggish  supineness,  the  Indians  at  once 
relished  indolence  and  loathed  the  even  tenor  of  tranquil  exertion.  Habits  of 
alternate  sloth  and  activity,  indulged  from  generation  to  generation,  seemed 
to  have  gradually  imparted  a  character  or  bias  to  their  animal  faculties, 
scarcely  less  fixed  and  inveterate  than  the  depraved  hue  of  the  negro  body, 
and  to  have  deeply  impaired  the  capacity  of  continuous  application.    In 
every  employment  that  demanded  steady  labor,  the  Indians  were  found  un- 
equal to  the  Europeans.    The  first  missionaries  and  their  immediate  succes- 
sors sustained  this  discouragement  without  shrinking,  and  animated  their 
converts  to  resist  or  endure  it.    But  at  a  later  period,  when  it  appeared  that 
the  taint  which  the  Indian  constitution  had  received  continued  to  be  propa- 
gated among  descendants  educated  in  habits  widely  different  from  those  of 
their  forefathers,  many  persons  began  too  hastily  to  apprehend  that  the  un- 
perfection  was  incurable  ;  and  missionary  ardor  was  abated  by  the  very  cir- 
cumstance that  most  strongly  solicited  its  revival  and  enlargement.    In  con- 
currence with  this  cause  of  decline,  the  ardent  gratitude  awakeried  m  tlie 
first  converts  was  chilled  in  its  transmission  to  succeeding  generations  ;  and 
the  consequence  unhapi)ily  was,  that  a  considerable  abatement  ensued  of  tiie 


fisrlile  pri'88  of  New  England 
—  vti|  iJterai  r.nd  Mry  iiu  ' 
"  that  God's  altaru  nciu  nut 


One  of  tin)  first  wus  a  nuw  metrical  trnnslation  of  tliu  rsalins, 

l(*^;iIK.        1  (J   litis    U:r-i    iinputrtdOn    iliv  ».*-■».    .-..jj—.a, ui—iii.-     j 

our  [lolisliinga."      OlJiuixon. 


CHAP,  in  ]         SYNOD  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  CHURCHES. 


203 


derations  ;  and 
t  ensued  of  the 


piety,  morality,  and  industry  of  the  Indian  communities 
claimed  from  savage  life.     The  members  of  these  con 


that  had  been  re- 
conmiunities  were  de- 
pressed by  many  mortifying  circumstances  incident  to  their  condition,  being 
exposed  to  the  aversion  and  contempt  of  the  mass  of  their  race,  from  which 
tliey  were  socially  cut  off,  though  still  visibly  allied  to  it  by  their  color  ;  while 
from  the  same  color  and  other  qualities,  even  when  kindly  treated,  they  were 
rei'arded  with  little  respect  by  the  generality  of  the  white  colonists,  who  con- 
sidered them  rather  as  children  and  inferiors  than  as  men  and  equals.  Yet 
the  missionary  work  was  never  entirely  abandoned,  nor  its  visible  fruits  suf- 
fered wholly  to  disappear.  Amidst  occasional  decline  and  revival,  the  New 
Kngland  missions  have  been  always  pursued  ;  and  converts  to  piety  and 
civility  have  continued  to  attest  their  beneficial  efficacy  upon  the  Indian 

rflCG* 

Having  alreddy  transgressed  considerably  the  march  of  time,  in  order  to 
exhibit  a  brief  but  unbroken  view  of  the  foregoing  scene  of  missionary  labor, 
we  now  return  to  follow  more  leisurely  the  general  stream  of  affairs  in  New 
England. 

Shortly  after  the  dissensions  which  wo  have  remarked  in  the  year  1646, 
the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  recommended  the  convocation  of  a 
synod  of  the  churches  of  New  England,  in  order  to  frame  a  uniform  scheme 
of  church  discipline  for  all  the  provincial  congregations.  The  proposal  was 
resisted  by  several  of  the  churches,  which  expressed  apprehension  of  the 
arbitrary  purposes  and  superstitious  devices  which  might  be  promoted  by 
the  dangerous  practice  of  convocating  synods.  But  at  length,  the  persuasion 
generally  prevailing  that  an  assembly  of  this  description  possessed  no  posi- 
tive authority,  and  that  its  functions  were  confined  to  the  tendering  of  coun- 
sel, the  second  synod  of  New  England  was  convoked  at  Cambridge.  [1648.] 
The  confession  of  faith  that  had  recently  been  published  by  the  Assembly 
of  Divines  at  Westminster  was  thoroughly  examined  and  unanimously  ap- 
proved. Three  of  the  most  eminent  of  the  provincial  ministers.  Cotton, 
Partridge,  and  Mather,  were  then  appointed  to  prepare  a  model  of  disci- 
pline for  the  New  England  churches.  The  Platform  of  Church  Discipline^ 
which  they  composed  accordingly,  and  presented  to  the  synod,  after  many 
long  debates,  received  general  approbation  and  almost  universal  acquies- 
cence.^ 

A  dispute  had  for  some  time  prevailed  between  Massachusetts  and  Con- 
necticut respecting  a  commercial  tax  imposed  by  the  legislature  of  Connect- 
icut, and  which  operated  with  very  questionable  equity  and  most  unquestion- 
able disadvantage  on  the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts.  [1649.]  Having 
complained  to  the  commissioners  of  the  confederated  provinces,  and  not 
obtaining  redress  as  speedily  as  they  deemed  themselves  entitled  to  expect, 
the  legislative  authorities  of  Massachusetts  issued  aa  ordinance  imposing  a 
retaliatory  duty  not  only  on  goods  imported  from  Connecticut,  but  on  im- 
portations from  all  the  other  States  of  the  confederation.  This  unjust  pro- 
ceeding could  be  defended  only  by  superior  strength  ;  an  advantage  which 

'  Dau-hreaking  of  the  Gospel  in  Mu>  EnglandT^ShepheTd'a  Clear  Sunshine  of  the  (gospel 
upan  the  Indians.  Eliot's  and  Mayhew's  Letters.  Mayhew's  Indian  Converts.  Whitfield  s 
Discimry  of  the  present  State  of  the  Indians.  Of  these,  and  of  various  other  works  on  the 
same  subject,  copies  exist,  partly  in  the  Rcdcross-street  Library  of  London,  and  partly  m  the 
Advocate's  Library  of  Edinburgh.  Baxter's  Life.  Mother.  Neal.  Hutchinson.  Pcirccs 
History  of  Harvard  University.  The  Lidiaii  tribes  within  the  Connecticut  territory  proved 
rfimarkably  indocile.  Some  individuals  were  converted  ;  but  no  Indian  church  was  ever 
B,illi(!red  in  this  State.    Trumbull. 

«  Neal. 


204 


IIISTOKY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


so  tnanifostly  resided  with  Massachusetts,  that  the  other  confederates  had 
nothing  to  onpose  to  it  but  an  appeal  to  those  principles  of  equity  which 
one  of  their  own  number  had  already  set  the  example  of  disregarding. 
Hapi)ily  for  them,  and  for  herself,  their  ally,  though  liable  to  bo  betrayed 
into  error  by  resentment  and  partiality,  was  not  intoxicated  with  conscious 
power.  They  presented  a  remonstrance  to  the  (Jeneral  Court  of  Massa- 
t  iiusetts,  desiring  it  "  seriously  to  consider  whether  such  proceedings  agree 
with  the  law  of  love,  and  the  tenor  of  the  articles  of  confederation."  On 
receiving  this  remonstrance,  the  government  of  Massachusetts,  superior  to 
the  moan  slmmo  of  acknowledging  a  fault,  consented  to  suspend  the  obnox- 
ious ordinance.'    [1650.] 

But  Massachusetts,  in  the  following  year  [1051],  was  engaged  m  contro- 
versy  with  a  power  more  formidable  to  her  than  she  ^yas  to  her  confeder- 
ates, and  much  less  accessible  to  sentiments  of  moderation  and  forbearance. 
The  Long  Parliament,  having  now  established  its  authority  in  England,  was 
determined  to  exact  an  explicit  recognition  of  it  from  all  the  foreign  depen- 
dencies of  the  state,  and  even  to  introduce  such  recognition  into  the  charters 
and  oflicial  stylo  and  procedure  of  subordinate  communities.  A  mandaic 
was  accordingly  transmitted  to  the  governor  and  assembly  of  Massachusetts, 
requiring  them  to  send  their  charter  to  London  ;  to  accept  n  new  patent 
from  the  keepers  of  the  liberties  of  England  ;  and  to  express  in  all  puhlic 
writs  and  judicial  proceedings  the  dependence  of  the  provincial  authorities 
on  those  existing  depositaries  of  supreme  power  in  the  parent  state.  This 
connnand  excited  the  utmost  alarm  in  the  colony  ;  nor  could  all  the  attach- 
ment  of  the  people  to  the  cause  of  the  parliament^  reconcile  them  to  a  sur- 
render of  the  title  under  which  their  settlements  and  institutions  had  been 
formed,  and  which  had  never  obstructed  their  obedience  to  the  authoriiies 
that  now  proposed  to  revoke  it.  The  parliament,  indeed,  had  no  more 
ri^ht  to  supersede  the  original  patent  of  the  colony,  than  to  require  the  city 
of  London,  or  any  of  the  other  corporations  of  England,  to  submit  their 

'  HiiH-liiiison.  (.•h'aFrniTS'.  Anolhor  disniitc,  which  orciirrcul  iibi.ut  three  yeiirs  nftci^hctwrnn 
Mnswirhnsotls  iind  the  otiier  confi-dftrntod  .StiitoH,  is  rchitt-a  with  grcnt  minuteness,  and  I  think 
with  no  Hiniill  injustice  iind  piirtiiility,  by  the  respectahkt  historian  of  Connecticut.  In  Kw;),,! 
(lis. ovcry  was  supposed  to  liiive  l>eeii  iiiiido  of  ii  conspiracy  between  Stiiyvesant,  the  governor 
of  the  Uijtrli  colony  nfterwards  called  New  York,  and  tlie  Indians,  for  the  externiinatioii  oi  il,o 
F-ndi-'h  The  evi'dence  of  this  sanguinary  project  (which  Stuyvesnnt  indignantly  disclaimcih 
was  iudtfcd  sutttcient,  and  tho  resolution  bf  a  general  war  embraced  by  all  the  commissions 
of  the  union  except  those  of  Mussachusetts.  The  (Jeneral  Court  of  this  province  reckonc(  the 
t.roof  inconclusive,  and  were  fortified  in  this  opinion  by  the  judgment  of  their  clergy,  which 
they  consented  to  abido  by.  To  all  tho  remonstrances  of  their  allies  thoy  answered,  that  no 
articles  of  confederation  should  induce  them  to  undertake  an  oflensive  war  which  tliev  con- 
sidered unjust,  and  in  which  th(!y  could  not  expect  the  advantage  of  divine  favor,  riie  liislo- 
rian  of  Connecticut,  not  content  with  rejirobatinj;  this  infringement  of  the  articles  of  imion, 
indignantly  censures  tho  scruples  of  Massaciiusetts  as  insincere.  Trumbull.  But,  in  trutii,  t  lo 
evid.iic!  «'f  the  Dutch  plot  labored  under  very  serious  defects,  which  were  much  more  nmlly 
weighed  by  the  peoi)le  of  Massachusetts  than  by  the  inhabitants  of  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven,  exasperated  by  frequent  disputes  with  the  Dutch,  and  exposed  by  their  local  situation 
to  the  greatest  danger 'from  Dutch  hostilities.  In  the  beginning  of  tho  fidlowing  century,  the 
biiuation  of  the  provinces  was  so  fiir  reversed,  that  Massachusetts  was  compelled  to  sohcit  the 
aid  of  Connecticut  in  a  war  with  the  Indians;  and,  on  this  occasion,  Connecticut,  remote  from 
tho  scene  of  action,  at  first  refused  her  aid,  unon  scruples  (which  she  afterwards  nsr.rfaino.l 
to  be  groundless)  respecting  the  justice  of  tho  cause  to  which  her  support  was  desirid.- 

Truinbnll.  ,       ~  »t        w^      i      i  i     i       r 

«  Though  attached  to  the  cause  of  tlie  parliament,  the  people  of  New  Lngland  liad  so  I;t 
forgotten  their  own  wrongs,  an<l  escaped  tin;  contagion  of  the  passions  engendered  in  tlie  mil 
war,  that  the  tragical  fate  of  the  king  apj.ears  to  have  cxcit.Hl  general  grief  and  concern.  1  ho 
public  cxiiression  of  such  sentiments  would  have  been  equally  inexpedient  and  unavaiUng; 
'•ut  •hat  they  were  eiilerluliod  is  uria'iii.       ?« e  Hutchinson. 


CHAP,  ni]  FAVOR   OF   tROMWF.I.I-   TO  WAV   ENGLAND 


206 


(hartcrs  to  similiir  dissolution  and  ionovali4)n.    IJut  the  colonists  were  awaro 
,|i;,t  liin  authorities  which  issiunl  this  arbitrary  mandate  had  the  potter  to 
,  ive  it  practical  effect  ;  and,  accordingly,  dcdinhig  a  direct  collision  with 
superior  force,  they  reverted  to  the  same  policy  which  they  had  once  bo- 
fore  successfully  employed  to  counteract  the   tyrannical  designs  of  the  late 
Iviiiii; ;  and  now  succeeded  in  completely  foiling  the  leaders  of  that  parlia- 
iiimitary  assembly,  so  renowned  for  its  success,  resolution,  and  capacity. 
'['ho  (Jeneral  Court,  uistoad  of  surrendering  the  provincial  patent,  transnnt- 
,eJ  a  petition  to  tlie  parliament  against  the  obnoxious  mandate,  setting  forth, 
iluit  "  these  things  not  being  done  in  the  late  king's  time  or  since,  it  was  not 
aide  to  discern  the  need  of  such  an  injunction."     It  represented  the  au- 
thority and  understanding  on  which  the  colonists  originally  repaired  to  New 
Kiiirlaiid,  dieir  steadfast  adherence  to  the  cause  of  the  narliament  throughout 
the  civil  wars,  and  their  present  ex[)licit  recognition  of  its  suprernacy  ;  and 
prayed  that  the  people  might  not  now  be  worse  dealt  with  than  in  the  ume 
of  the  king,  and,  instead  of  a  governor  and  magistrates  annually  chosen  by 
themselves,  be  required  to  submit  to  others  imposed  on  them  against  their  w  ill. 
Tlie  General  Court  at  the  same  time  addressed  a  letter  to  "  the  Lord 
(ieiieral  Cromwell,"  for  the  purpose  of  interesting  his  powerful  mediation 
ill  tlieir  behalf,  as  well  as  of  dissuading  him  from  the  prosecution  of  certain 
measures  which  he  himself  had  projected  for  their  advantage.    The  peculiar 
(haracter  which  the  New  England  colonists  displayed,  the  institutions  they 
established,  and  their  predilection  for  the  independent  model  of  church  gov- 
eninient  which  he  himself  approved,  reconmiended  them  warmly  to  the 
tsteem  of  this  extraordinary  man  ;  and  his  favorable  regards  were  enhanced 
hv  the  recollection  of  the  project  which  he  had  conceived,  and  so  nearly 
accomplished,  of  uniting  his  destiny  with  theirs  in  America.    Nor  were  they 
at  all  abated  by  the  compassion  and  benevolence  with  which  the  colonists 
received  a  considerable  body  of  unfortunate  Scots  whom  Cromwell  banished 
to  Massachusetts  after  the  battle  of  Dunbar,  and  of  which  he  was  apprized 
by  a  letter  from  John  Cotton.     He  seemed  to  consider  that  he  had  been 
detained  in  England  for  their  interests  as  well  as  his  own  ;  and  never  ceased 
to  desire  that  they  should  be  more  nearly  associated  with  his  fortunes,  and 
more  warmly  cheered  with  the  rays  of  his  grandeur.    He  was  touched  with 
a  o^cnorous  ambition  to  be  the  author  of  an  enterprise  so  illustrious  as  the 
revocation  of  these  men  to  their  native  country  ;  and  as  an  act  of  honorable 
justice  to  them,  as  well  as  for  the  advantage  of  Ireland,  he  had  recentl) 
liroaclied  the  proposal  of  transporting  them  from  America,  and  establishing 
them  in  a  district  of  that  island,  which  was  to  be  evacuated  for  their  recep- 
tion.   In  their  letter  to  him,  the  General  Court,  alluding  to  this  scheme, 
arknowledged,  with  grateful  expressions,  the  kind  consideration  which  it 
indicated  ;  but  declined  to  comply  with  it,  or  abandon  a  land  where  they 
had  experienced  so  much  of  the  favor  of  (!od,  and  were  blessed  with  a  ftiir 
prospect  of  converting  the  neighbouring  heathens.     They  recommended, 
at  the  same  time,  their  petition  against  the  parliamentary  measures  to  his 
friendly  countenance,  and  besought  "his  Excellence  to  be  pleased  to  show 
whatsoever  God  shall  direct  him  unto,  on  the  behalf  of  the  colony,  to  the 
most  honorable  parliament."     It  is  probable  that  Cromwell's  mediation  was 
successfully  employed,  as  the  requisition  that  had  been  addressed  to  the 
(leneral  Court  was  not  urged  any  farther  ' 


liutchinson.     Hutcliiiison  »  CuiUclioH  of  Papers.    Chalmers. 


Tliu  comniisBioncrs  who 
R 


206 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II, 


The  successes  of  the  Long  Parliament  produced  or  promoted  in  its  lead- 
ins  members  a  domineering  spirit,  to  the  exercise  of  which  the  colonies 
were  peculiarly  exposed.   [1652.1]    !„  the  history  of  Virginia,  we  have  re- 
iinrked  the  laws  by  which  the  traffic  of  all  the  colonies  with  foreign  states 
was  prohibited,  and  the  martial  counsel  and  conduct  by  which  the  subjuga- 
tion  of  that  refractory  settlement  was  decreed  and  accomplished.   1  he  prov- 
ince  of  Massachusetts,  which  was  desirous,  as  far  as  possible,  to  act  in  har- 
monious concurrence  with  the  parliament,  and  was  perfectly  sincere  in  lec- 
offnizing  its  supremacy,  cooperated  with  the  ordinance  against  Virginia,  by 
prohibiting  all  intercourse  with  this  colony  till  it  was  reduced  by  the  parlia- 
mentary  forces.   But  it  was  not  over  those  settlements  alone  which  opposed 
its  supremacy  that  the  parliament  was  disposed  to  indulge  the  spirit  oi  domi- 
nation  •  and  though  Massachusetts  was  protected  from  its  undesirable  handling 
by  the  interference  of  Cromwell,  Maryland,  which  had  received  its  establish- 
nienl  from  Charles  the  First,  was  compelled  to  adniit  the  alterations  of  lis 
official  stvle  which  Massachusetts  evaded  ;  and  Rhode  Island  beheld  the 
very  form' of  government  which  it  derived  from  the  parliament  itself,  m  1643, 
suspended  by  a  warrant  of  the  council  of  state.     What  might  have  ensued 
upon  this  warrant,  and  what  similar  or  ulterior  proceedings  might  have  been 
adopted  by  the  parliament  relative  to  the  other  colonies,  were  intercepted  by 
its  own  dissolution,  and  the  convergence  of  the  whole  authority  of  the  F.ig- 
lish  commonwealth  in  the  powerful  hands  of  Oliver  Cromwell.-'    [1653.] 
.     The  ascendency  of  this  great  usurper  (the  perfidious  servant,  yet  magnani- 
mous master,  of  his  country)  proved  highly  beneficial  to  all  the  American 
colonies,  except  Maryland,  where,  unfortunately,  it  was  rendered  instru- 
mental to  much  injustice,  discord,  and  confusion.     Rhode  Island,  imme- 
diately after  his  elevation  to  the  protectorate,  resumed  the  form  of  govern- 
ment which  the  parliament  had  recently  suspended  ;  and,  by  the  decisive 
vigor  of  his  interference,  the  people  of  Connecticut  and  ^ew  Haven  were 
relieved  from  the  apprehensions  they  had  long  entertained^of  the  hostile 
designs  of  the  Dutch  colonists  of  New  York.     All  the  New  England  States 
were  thenceforward  exempted  from  the  operation  of  the  parliamentary  ordi- 
nance against  trade  with  foreign  nations  ;  and  both  their  commerce  and 
their  security  were  promoted  by  the  conquest,  which  the  protector  s  arms 
achieved,  of  the  province  of  Acadia  from  the  French.     But  it  was  Massa- 
chusetts that  occupiedjliejiighest  place  in  his  esteem  ;  and  to  the  inhabit- 

weTT^^t  t^N^  En£la"^by  Charles  llie  Second  a88«rted,  iu  their  narrative,  that  the  colonic. 
„f  MasnachusotU  mVmivA  Cromwell  to  declare  it  an  independent  state.  Hutchinson  UolUc 
tion  of  Papers.  This  is  a  very  improbable  statement,  and  was  suMested,  perhaps,  by  mis- 
rZeaentat"on  or  misapprehonHion  of  the  circumstance,  related  in  the  text.  The  pubhcation 
^Governor  Winihtois  Journal  has  now  clearly  proved  that  the  leading  men  m  Mns.nchusf  t, 
cntortninrd  from  the'^beginnim?  a  considerable    ealo.isv  of  parliamentary  jurisdiction.    "In 

64 1,"  savs  Winthrop,  "tome  of  our  friends  in  linglan<f  wrote  to  us  advice  to  send  over  son,. 
to  HO  i.it  L  us  in  the'  parliament,-  giving  us  hopes  that  wo  might  obtain  much ;  but,  consul,. 

la  I.H  I  it,  we  declined  the  motion  for  this  consVleration,- that,  if  we  should  pn   ourselv.. 

mder  the  protection  of  the  parliament,  we  must  then  bo  subject  to  all  such  laws  as  hoy  sho 
make,  or,  it  least,  such  a.  they  might  impose  u,»n  us  ;  in  which  course,  though  thcv  si  o  .1 
intend  our  irood,  yet  it  might  prove  very  prejudicial  to  us."  Hence  it  is  obvious,  that  the 
people  of  N.'W  England,  in  ncknowlcd-ring  the  supremacy  of  parliament,  had  respect  to  it.  m.t 
Jw  ft  legislative  bo.fy,  but  as  ndministerrng  the  functions  of  supreme  executive  power  11. 
never  willingly  adniitte.I  that  the  mother  coiintrv  possessed  a  legislative  control  o^ ««>'«"■  ' 
ihaf,  in  forsalcing  her  sl.ores,  they  left  behind  tfiem  an  authority  capable  of  obstrucUng  or.l.- 

feating  the  objects  of  their  migration.  .       .  •      u    t  i  -  r«»f«n     Fin,tln. 

»  This  year,  Ma..m,hus,:tt5  l^-t  i?=  ^minr.r.t  prr.-.cher  and  patriBrch,  John  Cotton.  Findin|t 
himself  dying,  ho  sent  for  the  magistrates  and  ministers  of  the  colony,  and,  with  much  solem- 
nity and  tenderness,  bade  them  farewell  for  a  while. 

*  Chalmers. 


CHAP,  in-] 


PROJECTS  FOR  REMOVAL. 


207 


nia,  we  have  re- 


mts  of  this  settlement  he  earnestly  longed  to  impart  a  dignity  of  civil  con- 
dition corresponding  to  the  elevation  which  he  believed  them  to  enjoy  in  the 
I'lvor  of  the  great  Sovereign  of  the  universe.     The  reasons  for  which  they 
I'lad  declined  his  offer  of  a  settlement  in  Ireland,  however  likely  to  obtain 
1,1s  acquiescence,  were  still  more  calculated  to  enlarge  his  regard  for  a 
neople  who  were  actuated  by  such  generous  considerations.   When  his  arms 
had  achieved  the  conquest  of  Jamaica,  he  conceived  the  project  of  trans- 
planting the  colonists  of  Massachusetts  to  that  island  [1655]  ;  and,  with  this 
view,  he  represented  to  them,  that,  by  estabhshing  themselves  and  their 
iirinc'iples  in  the  West  Indies,  thev  would  carry  the  sword  of  the  gospel  into 
llie  very  heart  of  the  territories  of  popery,  and  that  consequently  they  ought 
to  deem  themselves  as  strongly  invited  to  this  ulterior  removal,  as  they  had 
been  to  their  original  migration.  He  endeavoured  to  incite  theiri  to  embrace 
this  project  by  assurances  of  the  countenance  and  support  which  he  would 
extend  to  them,  and  of  the  amplest  delegation  of  the  powers  of  government 
in  their  new  settlement,  as  well  as  by  descanting  on  the  rich  productior.=i  of 
the  torrid  zone,  with  which  their  industry  would  be  rewarded  ;  and  vvith  these 
considerations  he  blended  an  appeal  to  their  conscience,  in  pressing  them 
to  fulfil,  in  Iheir  own  favor,  the  promise  of  the  Almighty  to  make  his  people 
the  head,  and  not  the  tail.^    He  not  only  urged  these  views  upon  the  agents 
•md  correspondents  of  the  colonists  in  England,  but  despatched  one  of  his 
own  confidential  offiters  to  Massachusetts  to  solicit  their  compliance  with  his 
proposal.     But  the  colonists  were  exceedingly  averse  to  abandon  a  country 
where  they  found  themselves  happy  and  in  possession  of  a  sphere  of  mcreas- 
incr  usefulness  and  virtue  ;  and  the  proposal  was  the  more  unacceptable  to 
them  from  the  unfavorable  reports  they  received  of  the  climate  of  Jamaica. 
The  (General  Court,  accordingly,  returned  an  address,  declining,  m  the  name 
of  their  fellow-citizens,  to  embrace  the  protector's  offer  [1656],  and  withal 
heseeching  his  Highness  not  to  impute  their  refusal  to  indifference  to  his 
service,  or  an  ungrateful  disregard  of  his  concern  for  their  welfare.^    Thus, 
happily  for  themselves,  were  the  colonists,  on  two  several  occasions,  de- 
terred from  acceding  to  tlie  proposals  of  Cromwell  for  the  advancenient  of 
their  welfare  and  dignity.     Had  they  removed  to  Ireland,  they  would  have 
incurred  in  the  sequel  a  diminution  both  of  happiness  and  liberty  ;  had  they 
proceeded  to  Jamaica,  they  would  have  been  exposed,  amidst  the  preva- 
lence of  negro  slavery,  to  circumstances  highly  unfavorable  to  piety  and 
virtue.     In  the  mind  of  Cromwell,  a  vehement  ardor  was  singularly  com- 
bined with  the  most  profound  and  deliberate  sagacity  ;  and  enthusiastic  senti- 
ments were  not  unfrequently  blended  with  politic  considerations,  m  propor- 
tions which  it  is  little  likely  that  he  himself  was  aware  of,  or  that  any  remote 
ppectator  of  his  actions  can  accurately  adjust.     It  is  obvious,  on  the  one 
hand,  that  his  propositions  to  the  colonists  were  connected  with  the  securer 
establishment  of  his  own  dominion  in  Ireland  and  the  preservation  ot  his 
conquest  in  the  West  Indies.     But  it  is  equally  certain,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  colonists  incurred  neither  his  displeasure,  nor  even  abatement  ot 

~i~ilc  alludnd,  I  suppose,  to  Dontcrononiy  xxyjii.,  13.  «„„„„  .„  „ 

«  Ilutcliinson.  Cfinlmors.  Hazard.  A  similar  answer  was  returned  by  New  Haven  to  a 
.inuh  applicaUon  from  the  protector.  Trumbull.  There  were  not  wanting  some  wild  spmt« 
nmong  tll^^olonists,  who  reUed  Cromwell's  proposals^  The  notonous  y2"„'''wl  ?o  som2 
the  insurrection  of  the  Fiftk  Monarchy  Mm  in  England  after    h«  Restoration  was  for  some 

....  »  «  .•'         .1  ..;!--i  ...:<i.  "  ....-••.  rxF  vonlnta  thi>rn  fo  unite  in  a  Bcneme 

time  an  innabitam  or  -nitni,  nms  jirrvniit-a  rrMf?  ■  j ■  ■■ W "  .u      i,..— ,   „»/!  mtar 

..f  rmi!?r..tion  to  the  West  Indies.    But  the  design  was  discouraged  by  the  clergy,  and  inter 
cppted  by  the  magistrates.    Oldmixon. 


208 


III3T0RY  OF  KORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  a. 


hi,  rordlal  reeard,  by  thus  refusing  to  promote  schemes  on  which  he  was 
srondv  bent.  Nay,  so  powerfully  had  they  captivated  his  steady  heart  that 
hey  retS  his  (i^or,  even  while  their  intolerance  d.scredued  the  .ude- 
pSent  principles  which  he  and  they  united  m  professing  ;  and  rione  of  the 
?onSits  against  them,  with  which  he  was  long  assailed  by  the  Anabaptists 
nnd  Quakers,  whose  conduct  and  treatment  in  the  colony  we  are  now  to 
consider,  could  ever  deprive  the  people  of  the  place  they  had  gained  m  the 

^'m°co'onis^s^'had  been  of  late  years  involved  occasionally  in  hostilities 
^vilil  some  of  the  Indian  tribes,  and  in  disputes  with  the  I  utch,  by  wjose 
machinations  they  suspected  thai  the  Indians  were  prompted  to  attack  them. 
But  these  events  were  productive  of  greater  alarm  than  injury  ;  and  by  far 
the  most  serious  troubles  with  which  the  colonists  were  mfested  arose  from 
religious  dissensions.     Of  all  the  instances  of  persecution  that  deform  the 
history  of  New  England,. the  most  censurable  m  its  principle,  Uiough  hap- 
nilv  also  the  least  inhuman  in  the  severity  to  which  it  mounted,  was  the 
reatment  inflicted  on  the  Anabaptists  by  the  government  of  Massachusetts 
The  first  apparition  of  these  sectaries  in  die  province  occurred  in  the  year 
1G51   when,  to  the  great  astonishment  and  concern  of  the  commumty,  seven 
or  eight  persons,  of  whom  the  leader  was  one  Obad.ah  Holmes    professed 
the  Bapust  tenets,  and  separated  from  the  congregation  to  which  they  had 
ureviously  belonged,  protesting  that  they  could  no  biiger  take  counse   or 
par  ake  divine  ordinances,  with  unbaptized  men,  as  Uiey  pronounced  all  the 
other  inhabitants  of  the  province  to  be.     The  peculiar  doctnne  which  thus 
unexpectedly  sprung  up  was  at  that  time  regarded  with  extreme  aversion  and 
jealousy,  on  account  olf  the  horrible  enormities  wherewith  the  first  pofessors 
if  it  in  t'ermany  had  associated  its  repute  ;>  and  no  sooner  did  Hobnes  and 
his  fiiends  establish  a  Baptist  conventicle  in  Massachusetts,  than  complaints 
of  their  conduct,  as  a  scandalous  and  intolerable  nuisance,  came  pouring  into 
the  General  Court  from  all  quarters  of  the  colony.  •   ,     .  , 

From  the  tenor  of  these  complaints,  it  is  manifest  that  the  minds  of  the 
colonists  were  strongly  impressed  with  the  recollection  of  the  icentK)us  sen- 
timents  and  infamous  practices  by  wliich  the  wretched  Boccold  and  his  in- 
sane followers  at  Munster  had  sullied  and  discredited  the  Baptist  tenets; 
and  that  the  bare  profession  of  these  tenets  was  calculated  to  awaken  sus- 
picions  of  the  grossest  immorality  of  conduct.     Holmes  was  accused  of 
having  dishonored  the  Almighty,  not  only  by  dividing  his  people  and  resisting: 
his  ordinance,  but  by  the  commission  of  profligate  impuriUes,  and  the  gross 
indecency  with  which,  it  was  alleged,  the  rite  distinctive  of  h.s  sect  was 
udmiuistored.     It  is  admitted  by  the  provmcial  historians,  ^I'^t  no  sufficient 
evidence  was  adduced  in  support  of  these  latter  charges.      The  Court  re- 
fused to  hearken  to  the  plea  of  liberty  of  conscience  in  behalf  of  Holmes 
and  his  followers,  but,  in  the  first  instance,  exerted  its  authority  no  iartier 
against  their  persons,  than  to  adjudge  that  th.7  should  desist  from  t  .r 
unchristian  separation  ;  and  they  were  permitted  to  retire,  having  first,  ho«- 
over,  nubliclv  declared  that  they  were  determmed  to  pursue  the  dictates  ot 
their  conscience,  and  to  obey  Cod  rather  than  man.    borne  time  after,  ibey 
were  apprehended  on  a  Sunday,  while  attemlmg  the  ministry  ot  one  Uark^- 

'TA^^u^^ot't^on'^lii^lW'tf  Charltstlu  Fifth.    Theprimitive  Anabaptists  l.nvc  Loon  nt 
lutjons  of  human  st'Dtiment  and  opinion. 


CHAP-  I"  ] 


THE   BAPTISTS. 


209 


a  Baptist,  from  Rhode  Island,  who  had  come  to  propagate  his  tenets  in 
Massachusetts.  The  constables  who  took  them  into  custody  carried  them 
to  one  of  the  Congregational  churches,  where  Clarke  put  on  his  hat  as  soon 
as  the  clergyman  began  to  pray.  Clarke,  Holmes,  and  another  were  sen- 
tenced to  pay  small  fines,  or  to  be  flogged  ;  and  thirty  lashes  were  actually 
nflicted  on  Holmes,  who  resolutely  persisted  in  choosing  a  punishment  that 
\vould  enable  him  to  evince  the  constancy  with  which  he  could  suffer  for  the 
richts  of  conscience  and  the  defence  of  what  he  conceived  to  be  truth.  A 
law  was  at  the  same  time  passed,  subjecting  to  banishment  from  the  colony 
every  person  who  should  openly  condemn  or  oppose  the  baptism  of  infants, 
—who  should  attempt  to  seduce  others  from  the  practice  or  approbation  of 
infant  baptism,  —  or  ostentatiously  depart  from  a  church  when  that  rite  was 
administered,  —  "  or  deny  the  ordinance  of  the  magistracy,  or  their  lawful 
i/Wii  or  authority  to  make  icar.''^ ' 

^From  these  last  words,  it  seems  that  the  Baptists  (naturally,  or  at  least 
naturally  accounted,  inimical  to  the  authority  of  their  oppressors)  either  held, 
(ir  were  reputed  to  hold,  along  with  the  proper  tenets  from  whence  they 
derived  their  denomination,  principles  opposed  to  the  acknowledgment  of 
madsterial  power  and  authority.  In  addition  to  this,  we  are  assured  by 
Cotton  Mather,  that  it  was  the  practice  of  the  Baptists,  in  order  to  multiply 
their  partisans,  and  manifest  their  contempt  for  the  ecclesiastical  institutions 
of  the  colonists,  to  admit  the  fellowship  of  all  persons  whom  the  established 
churches  in  New  England  had  excommunicated  for  licentiousness  of  con- 
duct and  even  to  appoint  such  persons  administrators  of  the  sacramental 
rites.  Yet,  even  with  these  and  other  extenuating  considerations,  it  is  im- 
possible to  acquit  the  government  of  Massachusetts  of  having  violated  in 
this  instance  the  rights  of  conscience,  and  molested  men  for  the  fidelity  with 
which  they  adhered  to  what  they  firmly  believed  to  be  the  will  of  God,  in 
relation  to  a  matter  purely  ecclesiastical.^  The  greediness  with  which  every 
collateral  charge  against  the  Baptists  was  received  in  the  colony,  and  the 
passionate  impatience  with  which  their  claim  of  toleration  was  rejected, 
forcibly  indicate  the  illiberality  and  delusion  by  which  their  persecutors  were 
governed  ;  and  may  suggest  to  the  Christian  philosopher  a  train  of  reflec- 
tions, no  less  instructive  than  interesting,  on  the  self-deceit  by  which  men 
( ommonly  infer  the  honesty  of  their  convictions,  and  the  rectitude  of  their 
proceedings,  from  that  resentful  perturbation  which  far  more  truly  indicates 
a  latent  consciousness  of  injustice  and  inconsistency. 

It  is  mortifying  to  behold  such  tares  spring  up  in  a  field  already  so  richly 
productive  of  missionary  exertion  and"  other  fruits  of  genuine  and  exalted 
piety.  The  severities  that  were  employed  proved  in  the  sequel  incom- 
petent to  restrain  the  spread  of  the  Baptist  tenets  ;  though  for  the  present 
the  professors  of  these  doctrines  appear  to  have  either  desisted  from  holding 
separate  assemblies,  or  to  have  retired  from  Massachusetts.  Some  of  them 
repaired  to  England,  and  complained  to  Cromwell  of  the  persecution  they 

'  Mather.    Neal.  ,     ■      l 

'  The  Bantistg  who  were  exilrd  fnun  Massarhiisetts  wore  allowed  to  settle  in  the  colony 
nf  Plymouth  (Hutchinson),  — whence  it  may  bo  inferred  that  they  did  not  in  reality  profess 
(iLStKey  were  supposed  hv  thi:  people  of  Miissachusetts  to  do)  principles  adverse  to  civil  mb- 
iirdinfition.  This  charge "ajcuinst  them  probably  oria;inaled  in  the  extravagance  of  a  few  of 
ilicirown  number,  and  the  impatience  and  injustice  of  their  adverwiries. 

The  government  of  MassachusettM  was  by  no  means  inquisitorial  in  its  intolerance.  Dun- 
8ter,  the  first  president  of  Harvard  CoUeae,  was  deprived  of  this  office,  not  for  entertamvng. 
i/ul  iur  rufuslng  to  dewst  from  lettrhing,  the  BaptJBt  toncU  which  he  imd  ciniiraeed.      Teirca 


VOL.    I, 


27 


R 


210 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II, 


had  undersone  ;  but,  instead  of  espousing  their  sentunent,  he  rejected  their 
suDDSioCand  applauded  the  conduct  of  the  provincial  authorities.^ 

The  treatment  which  the  Quakers  experienced  in  Massachusetts  was  much 
more  severe,  but  certainly  much  more  justly  provoked.     It  is  difficult  for 
,Ts   in  the  calm  and  rational  deportment  of  the  Quakers  of  the  present  age, 
o  recoenize  the  successors  of  those  wild  enthusiasts  who  first  appeared  in 
he  North  of  England,  about  the  year  1644,  and  received  from  the  derision 
of  the  world  the  title  which  they  afterwards  adopted  as  their  sectarian  de- 
nomination.    In  the  mind  of  George  Fox,  the  collector  of  this  sect  and  the 
founder  of  its  system  of  faith,  there  existed  a  singular  mixture  of  ChnsUan 
sentiment  and  doctrinal  truth  with  a  deep  shade  of  error  and  delusion. 
Profoundly  pious  and  contemplaUve,  but  constitutionally  visionary  and  hypo- 
chondriacal,  he  at  first  suspected  that  the  peculiarities  of  his  mental  impres- 
sions might  be  derived  from  some  malady  which  human  science  or  friendly 
suggestion  could  remove  ;  and  an  old  clergyman,  to  whom  he  applied  or 
counsel,  advised  him  to  attempt  a  cure  of  what  was  spiritual  m  his  disorder 
by  singing  psalms,  and  of  what  was  bodily  by  smoking  tobacco.      Fox  re- 
iected  both  parts  of  the  prescription,  as  unsuitable  to  his  condition,  because 
disagreeable  to  his  taste  ;  and  being  now  convinced  that  others  were  inca- 
pable of  understanding  his  case,  he  took  it  entirely  into  his  own  hands,  an 
Resolved  to  study,  chlrish,  and  cultivate  the  vague,  mysterious  motions  of 
his  spirit, -in  short,  to  follow  the  impulse  of  his  restless  humor  as  far  as 
it  would  ead  him.    Unsuspicious  of  morbid  mfluence,  or  of  the  deceit  fulness 
of  his  own  imagination,  he  yielded  implicit  credence  to  every  suggestion  of 
his  mind,  mistook  every  impulse  for  inspiration,  and  was  grven  up  in  an 
amazing  degree  to  delusions,  which,  by  prayer  to  the  Almighty    he  nngh 
Tve  been  enabled  to  overcome  and  dispe  .     Yet  the  powerfd  hold  ^vh.ch 
the  Scriptures  had  already  taken  of  his  mmd,  and  the  strong  determ.imtion 
towards  solid  and  genuine  piety  which  his  spirit  thence  derived,  prevente 
him  from  personally  wandering  into  the  same  monstrous  extravagance  which 
the  conduct  of  many  of  his  associates  and  disciples  too  soon  disclosed.   In 
his  Journal  (one  of  the  most  curious  and  interesting  productions  of  the  hu- 
man mind),  he  has  faithfully  related  the  influence  which  his  tenets  produced 
on  the  sentiments  and  conduct  both  of  himself  and  his  foUovyers.    Th>s 
singular  record  displays,  in  many  parts,  a  wonderful  depth  of  thought  and 
keenness  of  penetration,  together  with  numberless  examples  of  that  delusion, 
bv  which  its  author  mistook  a  strong  perception  of  wrong  and  disorder  m 
human  nature  and  civil  society  for  a  supernatura  vocation  and  power  to  rec- 
tifv  whatever  he  deemed  ami.s.    He  relates  with  deliberate  approbation  va- 
riou8  instances  of  contempt  of  decency  and  order  in  his  own  conduct,  and 
of  insane  and  disgusting  outrage  in  that  of  his  followers  ;  and  though  h 
reprobates  the  freSzy  of  some  whom  he  denominates  Ranters,  it  is  not  easy 
to  discriminate  between  the  extravagance  which  he  sanctions  and  tha  which 
he  condemns.     Amidst  much  darkness,  there  glimmers  a  bright  and  beaij- 
tiful  ray  of  religious  truth  ;  many  passages  of  Scripture  are  iflustratcd  with 
happy  sagacity!  and  labors  of  zeal  and  piety,  of  courage  and  integrity,  are 
recorded,  that  would  do  honor  to  the  ministry  of  an  inspired  apostle.    Ihat 
his  personal  character  was  elevated  and  excellent  in  an  unusual  degree  ap- 
pears  from  the  impression  it  produced  on  the  minds  of  all  who  approacl  ed 
Kim.     Penn  and  Barclay,  inparticda^^ 
'  Uutciiinaon. 


*  Fox's  Journal. 


fiiAP.  in.] 


THE  QUAKERS. 


211 


,,idcd  talents  and  accomplishments  of  the  first  order,  regarded  Fox  with  the 
'warmest  love  and  veneration.^  He  was,  perhaps,  the  only  founder  of  any 
lilieious  sect  or  order,  in  whom  no  lust  of  power,  no  lurking  sentiment  of 
'  Ifish  or  ambitious  aspiration,  was  ever  discovered. 

It  was  this  man  who  first  embraced  and  promulgated  those  tenets  which 
1 1\  e  subsisted  ever  since  as  the  distinctive  principles  of  Quaker  doctrine, 
Ithat  the  Holy  Spirit,  instead  of  operating  (as  the  generality  of  Christians 
I  elieve  it  in  all  ordinary  cases  to  do)  by  insensible  control  of  the  bent  and 
exercise  of  our  faculties,  acts  by  direct  and  cognizable  impulse  on  the  spirit 
nf  man  ;  that  its  influence,  instead  of  being  obtained  in  requital  or  accom- 
naiiiment  of  believing  prayer  to  God,  is  procured  by  an  introversion  of  the 
'litellectual  eye  upon  the  mind,  where  it  already  resides,  and  in  the  stillness 

,k1  watchful  attention  of  which  the  hidden  spark  will  blaze  into  a  clear  in- 
ward light  and  sensible  flame  ;  and  that  the  Holy  Spirit,  instead  of  simply 

nening  the  minds  of  men  to  understand  the  Scriptures  and  receive  their 

'  .       _. A  A^ao  r^r^r,■•ratT  inctriiptinn  indfinfindp.ntiv  of  the  written 


n 


testimony,  can  and  does  convey  instruction  independently  of  the  written 
^^ord,  — and  communicate  knowledge  which  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  pages 
„f  holy  writ.     The  Quaker  regulations  with  respect  to  plainness  of  speech 
nd  apparel,  abstinence  from  music  and  other  amusements,  and  general  sim- 
plicity of  manners,  are  too  well  known  and  too  little  pertinent  to  our  pur- 
pose to  require  that  they  should  here  be  particularly  described.     We  may, 
however,  with  propriety  remark,  that  the  precepts  injunctive  of  plainness  of 
mnarel  received  very  early  a  practical  interpretation  in  some  respects  contra- 
lictorv  of  their  own  intendment.    Forbidden  to  court  an  arrogant  distinction 
hv  fineness  of  apparel,  he  Quakers  soon  procured  to  themselves  a  distmction, 
diculous  indeed,  yet  of  great  and  mixed  importance,  by  adopting  and  re- 
Sns  the  plainest  garb  exemplified  by  the  taste  ess  fashion  of  one  par- 
u lar  age  ;  and,  instead  of  the  modesty  of  simple  attire,  challenged  the 
n  ral  me  by  ostentatious  adherence  to  a  sectarian  nmform  or  livery 
fh  doctrinal  errors  to  which  we  have  alluded  have  never  been  renounced 
by  the  Quakers,  though  their  practical  influence  has  long  smce  abated,  and, 
d    d,  had  considerably  declined  before  the  end  of  that  century  m  the  mid- 
e  of  which  they  arose.     In  proportion  as  they  have  been  cultivated  and 
act  c2  regarded,  has  been  the  progress  of  the  sect  into  pestilent  heresy 
opin  on,  wild  delusion  of  fancy,  and  outrageous  extravagance  of  conduc 
Iport  on  IS  they  have  subsided  into  mere  theoretical  speculation,  has 
K  the  ascendency  which  real  piety  or  rational  and  philosophical  principle 
lias  obtained  over  the  minds  of  the  Quakers. 

t'ven  in  the  present  day,  we  behold  the  evil  influence  of  those  erroneous 
doc  fnes,  in  the  frequenlly  silent  meetings  of  the  Quakers,  in  the  hcense 
S  h  they  give  to  wLen  to  assume  the  office  of  teachers  m  their  church 
an    in  the  rejection  of  the  sacraments  so  distinctly  msUtuted  and  enjoined 
"scripture. •'But  when  the  doctrines  of  Quakerism  were  first  Promulgated, 
e  eff/cts  which  they  produced  on  many  of  their  votaries  ^^r  ^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
influence  to  which  modern  history  restricts  them,  ^^^  T^^^^^  {^%^Xnd Tt 
of  a  rational  and  calculating  age  fmds  it  easy  to  conceive.     In  England   at 
that  time,  the  minds  of  men  were  in  a  state  of  feverish  «g»tajion  and  ex^^^^^^^^ 
ment,  inflamed  with  the  rage  of  innovation,  strongly  ^'"^"/^  .^^f ^/f J'""! 
sentiment,  and  yet  strongly  averse  to  restraint.     The  bands  t^a^^^^^  l°"g  ^^ 
pressed  liberty  of  sjeechjeingju^^ 
"^       '  See  Note  VIII.,  at  the  uad  of  Uio  volume. 


a. 


212 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


on^erly  broached,  and  many  fantastic  notions  that  had  been  vegetating  ,n  the 
Sdcnnie  shade  of  locked  bosoms  were  abruptly  brought  to  hght ;  an 
al  Tese  were  presented  to  the  souls  of  men  roused  and  whetted  by  c.v.l 
war   kindled  by  great  alarms  or  by  vast  and  indeterminate  designs,  and  lat- 
erW  so  accustomed  to  partake  or  contemplate  the  most  surprising  changes, 
hat  with  them  the  distinction  between  speculation  and  certainty  was  con- 
s  derably  effaced.    The  Presbyterians  alone,  or  neany  alone,  were  generally 
ling  to  submit  to,  as  well  as  to  impose,  restramt  on  the  lawless  license  ol 
'  eculation  ;  and  to  them  the  doctrines  of  Quakerism,  from  their  eariest 
;  nouncement,  were  the  objects  of  unmixed  disapprobation  and  even  abhoj- 
nce      But  to  many  other  persons,  this  new  scheme,  opening  a  wide  field 
7enthusiastic  conjecture,  and  presenting  itself  without  the  restrictive  ac- 
companiment of  agreed,  exhibited  irresistible  attractions,  and  it  rapidly 
absorbed  a  great  variety  of  human  character  and  feeling. 

Before  many  years  had  elapsed,  the  numbers  of  the  Quakers  were  en- 
larged,  and  their  tenets,  without  being  substantially  altered,  were  moulded 
,to  a  more  systematic  shape,  by  such  an  accession  o  philosophical  votaries, 
•      in   he  car  y  ages  of  thi  church,  Christianity  itself  derived  from  the  «re- 
teiued  adoption  and  real  adulteration  of  its  doctrines  by  the  d.sciples  of  ,he 
\lexandrian  school  of  Platonic  philosophy.  But  it  was  the  wildest  tind  most 
intlmsLstic  visionaries  of  the  age,  whom  Quakerism  counted  among  us  ear- 
ies   votaries,  and  to  whom  it  afforded  a  sanction  and  stimulus  to  the  boldest 
excursions  o   unregulated  thought,  and  a  principle  that  was  adduced  to  con- 
secrate the  rankest  absurdity  of  conduct.     And,  accordingly,  these  sec^- 
'xns   who  have  always  professed  and  inculcated  the  maxims  of  mv.oable 
;;''   -who,  not  many  years  after,  were  accounted  a  society  of  phdo- 
o  hfcal  deists,  seeking  to  pave  the  way  to  a  schenie  of  naiural  rehg^on, 
bv  allegorizing  the  distinguishing  articles  of  the  Christian  faith,  -and  who 
eno'v    n  general  remarkable^or  a  guarded  composure  of  language,  an 
'  aborate  stillness  and  precision  of  demeanour,  and  a  peculiar  remoteness 
fom  every  active  efforl  to  make  proselytes  to  their  distinctive  tenet., - 
vTe,  in  the  commencement  of  their  sectarian  history,  the  most  impetuous 
ealo  s  and  inveterate  disputers  ;  and  in  their  eagerness  to  proselytize  the 
void   and  to  launch  tesl'imony  from  the  fountain  of  oracular  truUi,  ^vh,ch 
Ty  supposed  to  reside  within  their  own  bosoms,  against  a  regular  ministry 
whicl    t'h^-y  called  a  priesthood  of  Baal,  and  against  the  sacraments  u Inr 
ey  terried  carnal  and  idolatrous  observances,  many  o    them  commme 
7most  revolting  blasphemy,  indecency,  and  disorderly  outrage.^     Ihe 
unfavorable  impression  which  these  actions  created  long  survived  the  ex- 
tinction  of  the  frenzy  and  folly  that  produced  them.  ,   ,      „  u 

wSe,  in  pursuance  of  their  determination  to  proselytize  the  who^  world, 
some  of  he  Quakers  travelled  to  Rome,  in  order  to  illuminate  the  pope, 
and  oU  ei^^^to  Constantinople,  for  the  purpose  of  f"ven.ng  the  Grand  lur. 
-a  arv  of  them  embarked  for  America  and  established  themselvc  m 
Hhnde  llnd,  whore  persons  of  every  religious  (Protestan^HemMnin^ 

lownll'H  %atr  Trials.     Tim  ....  ...ppy  rr»....  ""^  •'".'•"^'^  '  '"V'f  „  "^  '  L  "  d  °f  he  volmmv 

„„...  rncr.    So.no  particular  t.f  hi.  In-n/.y  nro  related  .n  Not.!  Vir,  al «"°  ''j^'J"  °'^,  ,,, 

II.,  livod  to  roca..t  l.i.  ern.rH,  ....d  eve,,  write  .e,.H.b  y  .n  -l^f^  «:.«  II.^ ^'l^^^-^^^^        a* 

ihio  lii.ui  incrcnBi.ie  ii.  reHpfcu.i.iiiiy,  i.i.d  were  yri  niagnnni."'--  .  ..s-t-Bi-  -"  lu-Rut.        ^ 
L  iHiliraild  ««Hod^^^^^^^        man  who  f.'ud  done  sueh  d.Hserv.co  to  their  cau.e. 


CHAP,  in  ] 


THE  QUAKERS. 


213 


were  permitted  to  settle  in  peace,  and  no  one  gave  heed  to  the  sentiments 
or  practices  of  his  neighbours.    From  hence  they  soon  made  their  way  into 
the  Plymouth  territory,  where  they  succeeded  in  persuading  some  of  its  in- 
liabitants  to  embrace  the  doctrine  that  a  sensible  experience  of  inward  light 
and  spiritual  impression  was  the  meaning  and  end  of  Christianity,  and  the 
essential  characteristic  of  its  votaries,  —  and  to  oppose  all  regulated  order, 
forms,  and  discipline,  whether  civil  or  ecclesiastical,  as  a  vain  and  judaizing 
substitution  of  the  kingdom  of  the  flesh  for  the  kingdom  of  the  spirit.     On 
iheir  first  appearance  in  Massachusetts  [.Tuly,  1656],  where  two  male  and 
six  female  Quakers  arrived  from  Rhode  Island  and  Barbadoes,  they  found 
that  the  reproach  entailed  on  their  sect  by  the  insane  extravagance  of  some 
of  its  members  in  England  had  preceded  their  arrival,  and  that  they  were 
regarded  with  the  utmost  terror  and  disUke  by  the  great  bulk  of  the  people. 
They  were  instantly  arrested  by  the  magistrates,  and  diligently  examined 
for  what  were  considered  bodily  marks  of  witchcraft.     No  such  indications 
having  been  found,  they  were  sent  back  to  the  places  whence  they  came, 
bv  the  same  vessels  that  had  brought  them,  and  prohibited  with  threats  of 
severe  punishment  from  ever  again  returning  to  the  colony.     A  law  was 
passed  at  the  same  time,  subjecting  every  ship-master  importing  Quakers  or 
Quaker  writings  to  a  heavy  fine  ;  adjudging  all  Quakers  who  should  intrude 
into  the  colony  to  stripes  and  labor  in  the  house  of  correction,  and  all  de- 
fenders of  their  tenets  to  fine,  imprisonment,  or  exile. 

The  four  associated  States  adopted  this  law,  and  urged  the  authorities  of 
Rhode  Island  to  cooperate  with  them  in  stemming  the  progress  of  Quaker 
opinions  ;  but  the  assembly  of  this  settlement  wisely  replied,  that  they  could 
not  punish  any  man  for  declaring  his  mind  with  regard  to  religion  •  that  they 
were  much  incommoded  by  the  presence  of  the  Quakers,  and  the  tendency 
of  their  doctrines  to  unsettle  the  relations  of  mankind  and  dissolv  e  the  bonds 
of  society  ;  but  that  they  found  that  the  Quakers  delighted  to  encounter 
persecution,  speedily  sickened  of  a  patient,  uncontradicting  audience,  and 
had  already  begun  to  loathe  Rhode  Island  as  a  scene  in  which  their  talent 
of  heroic  endurance  was  ingloriously  buried.^  It  is  much  to  be  lamented 
that  the  counsel  insinuated  in  this  good-humored  reply  was  not  embraced. 
The  penal  enactments  resorted  to  by  the  other  settlements  served  only  to 
inflame  the  impatience  of  the  Quaker  zealots  to  carry  their  ministry  into 
places  that  seemed  to  them  to  stand  so  greatly  in  need  of  it ;  and  the  per- 
sons "  who  had  been  disappointed  in  their  first  attempt  returned  almost  im- 

'  Gordon  and  otiier  writers  have  rcprest-ntcd  the  letter  from  Rhode  Island  to  Massachusetts 
as  conveying  a  dignified  rebuke  of  intolerance,  and  have  quoted  a  passage  to  this  effect,  which 
thoy  have  found  somewhere  else  than  in  the  letter  itself  We  shall  find,  in  the  sequel,  that  the 
forljcarance  exerted  by  the  government  of  that  province  towards  the  Quakers  did  not  -ast 
many  years. 

Roger  Williams,  who  contributed  to  found  the  State  of  Rhode  Island,  endeavoured,  some 
years  after  this  period,  to  extirpate  the  Quaker  heresy,  by  challenging  certain  of  the  lenders 
iif  the  sect,  who  had  come  from  England  on  a  mission  to  their  brethren,  to  hold  a  public  dispu- 
tation with  him  on  their  tenets.  They  eagerly  accepted  his  challenge  ;  and  their  historians 
assure  us,  that  the  disputation,  which  lasted  for  several  days,  ended  "  in  a  clear  conviction 
of  the  envy  and  prejudice  of  the  old  man."  Gough  and  SewcU's  History  of  the  Quakers.  It 
is  more  probable,  that,  like  other  public  disputations,  it  ended  as  it  began.  Williams  never 
iloubtcd  that  it  had  issued  in  his  own  favor,  nnd  signalized  his  triumph  by  publishing  a  book 
liiiiriiie  the  incourtcoiis  Wile  of  George  Fox  tiigeed  out  of  his  Burrow;  to  which  Fox  promptly 
replied  by  a  publiriition  entitled,  J]  JVcw  England  Firebrand  quenched,  being  an  Answer  to  a 
hjmg,  slanderous  Book  by  one  Roger  Williams,  confuting  his  blasphemous  Assertions.  Eliot  a 
S'fie  England  Biography. 

»  Except  one  of  the  women,  Mary  Fisher,  who  travelled  to  Adrinnople,  and  had  an  inter- 
view with  the  Cjrand  Vizier,  by  whom  she  was  received  with  courteous  rcppict.     Bishop,  the 


m 


■fc 


t«J 


'214 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


mediately  to  Massachusetts,  and,  dispersing  themselves  through  the  colony, 
beffan  to  proclaim  their  mystical  notions,  and  succeeded  m  communicating 
them  to  some  of  the  inhabitants  of  Salem.     They  were  soon  jomed  by 
Marv  Clarke,  the  wife  of  a  tailor  in  London,  who  announced  tha  she  had 
forsaken  her  husband  and  six  children  in  order  to  convey  a  message  from 
heaven,  which  she  was  commissioned  to  deliver  to  New  England.     Instead 
of  ioinine  with  the  provincial  missionaries  m  attempts  to  reclaim  the  neigh- 
bouring savages  from  their  barbarous  superstition  and  profligate  immoralities, 
or  themselves  prosecuting  separate  missions  with  a  like  intent,  the  apostles 
of  Quakerism  raised  their  voices  in  vilification  of  every  thing  that  was  most 
hidily  approved  and  revered  in  the  doctrine  and  practice  of  the  provincial 
churches.     Seized,  imprisoned,  and  flogged,— they  were  again  dismissed 
with  severer  threats  from  the  colony,  and  again  they  returned  by  thu  first 
vessels  they  could  procure.     The  government  and  a  great  majority  of  the 
colonists  were  incensed  at  their  stubborn  pertinacity,  and  shocked  at  the  im- 
pression  which  they  had  already  produced  on  some  mmds,  and  which  threat- 
ened to  corrupt  and  subvert  a  system  of  piety,  whose  establishment,  fruition, 
and  perpetuation  supplied  their  fondest  recollections  their  noblest  enjoy- 
nientrand  most  energetic  desire.     New  punishments  were  introduced  into 
the  legislative  enactments  against  the  intrusion  of  Quakers  and  tlie  profes- 
sion of  Quakerism  [1657]  ;  and,  in  particular ,  the  abscission  of  an  ear  was 
added  to  the  former  ineffectual  severities.     Three  male  Quaker  preachers 
endured  the  rigor  of  this  cruel  law.  ,       ,     .  .  ,  -i-         , 

But  all  the  exerUons  of  the  provincial  authorities  proved  unavailing,  and 
seemed  rather  to  stimulate  the  zeal  of  the  obnoxious  sectaries  to  brave  tiie 
dan-er  and  court  the  glory  of  persecution.     Swarms  of  Quakers  descended 
upon  the  colony  ;  and,  violent  and  impetuous  in  provoking  persecution, - 
calm,  resolute,  and  inflexible  in  sustaming  it,  — they  opposed  their  power 
of  enduring  cruelty  to  their  adversaries'  power  of  mflicting  »t ;  and  not  only 
inuhiplied  their  converts,  but  excited  a  considerable  degree  of  favor  and  pity 
in  the  minds  of  men,  who,  detesting  the  Quaker  tenets,  yet  derived  from 
their  own  experience  a  peculiar  sympatliy  with  tlie  virtues  of  heroic  patience, 
constancy,  and  contempt  of  danger.     When  the  Quakers  were  committed 
to  the  house  of  correction,  they  refused  to  work;  when  they  incurred  pecu- 
aiary  fines,  they  refused  to  pay  them.    In  Uie  hope  of  enforcing  compliance 
with  its  milder  requisitions,  die  court  adjudged  two  of  those  contumacious 
persons  to  be  sold  as  slaves  in  the  West  Indies  ;  but  as  even  this  dismal 
prospect  could  not  move  their  stubborn  resolution,  the  court,  instead  of  exe- 
cuting its  inhuman  threat,  reverted  to  the  unavailing  device  of  banishing  them 
beyond  its  jurisdiction.    [1658.]    It  was  by  no  slight  provocations  that  the 
Quakers  attracted  these  and  additional  severities  upon  themselves.    Wen 
trembled  for  the  faith  and  morals  of  their  families  and  their  friends,  when 
they  heard  the  blasphemous  denunciations  that  were  uttered  against  the  wor- 
ship of  ''a  carnal  Christ,''  and  when  they  beheld  the  frantic  and  indecent 
outrages  that  were  prompted  by  the  mystical  impressions  which  the  Quakers 

CLuakir  inliiU^'^'Eiijeh^d'Ji^ed,  obsorves,  tliat  slie  fared  bettor  among  heathens  tlian  her 
uSa  cBd  faSng  p^fo«8ing  Cf,ri^  He  was  perhaps  not  aware  that  the  Turks  reg« 

^^^1.0  noV^ons  a"  iiS.iircd.     But  whether  insane  or  not,  sf.e  wai.  not  altogether  d.vcste^oi  a 
XSJ  regard  to'^her  own  «.fcty.;  for  "  when  they  asked  her  what  ^.e  U.ought  o    J 

trophet  Mahomet,  she  nmde  a  cautious  reply,  that  she  •'"^^  '""V""'^,,,  .^S  dS 
^u?ker,displav<ylles«PJ^nce.a.ul.xpor.e^ 

^"hraSofLrdwlSdseaiuie-EngVbh"^^^^^^^^^^ 
Turkish  authorities  with  the  bastinado. 


CHAP.  Ill  ] 


THE  QUAKERS. 


216 


inculcated  and  profe  ;sed  to  be  guided  by.  In  public  assemblies  and  in 
crowded  streets,  it  was  the  practice  of  some  of  the  Quakers  to  denounce 
tiie  most  tremendous  manifestations  of  divine  wiath  on  the  people,  unless 
lliey  forsook  their  carnal  system.  One  of  them,  named  Faubord,  conceiving; 
tliat  he  experienced  a  celestial  encouragement  to  rival  the  faith  and  imitate 
the  sacrifice  of  Ab.aham,  was  proceeding  with  his  own  hands  to  shed  the 
blood  of  his  son,  when  his  neighbours,  alarmed  by  the  cries  of  the  lad,  broke 
into  the  house  and  prevented  the  consummation  of  this  blasphemous  atrocity. 
Others  interrupted  divine  service  in  the  churches  by  loudly  protesting  that 
tliese  were  not  the  sacrifices  that  God  would  accept ;  and  one  of  them  illus- 
trated this  assurance  by  breaking  two  bottles  in  the  face  of  the  congregation, 
exclaiming,  "  Thus  will  the  Lord  break  you  in  pieces  !  "  They  declared 
tiiat  the  Scriptures  were  replete  with  allegory,  that  the  inward  light  was  tl»e 
only  infallible  guide  to  religious  truth,  and  that  all  were  blind  beasts  and 
liars  who  denied  it. 

The  female  preachers  far  exceeded  their  male  associates  in  folly,  frenzy, 
and  indecency.     One  of  them  presented  herself  to  a  congregation  with  her 
lace  begrimed  with  coal-dust,  announcing  it  as  a  pictorial  illustration  of  the 
black  pox,  which  Heaven  liad  commissioned  her  to  predict  as  an  approach- 
ing judgment  on  all  carnal  worshippers.     Some  of  them  in  rueful  attire  per- 
ambulated the  streets,  proclaiming  tlie  speedy  arrival  of  an  angel  with  a 
drawn  sword  to  plead  with  the  people  ;  and  some  attempted  feats  that  may 
seem  to  verify  the  legend  of  Godiva  of  Coventry.    One  woman,  in  particu- 
lar, entered  stark  naked  into  a  church  in  the  middle  of  divine  service,  and 
desired  the  people  to  take  heed  to  her  as  a  sign  of  the  times,  and  an  em- 
blem of  the  unclothed  state  of  their  own  souls  ;  and  her  associates  highly 
extolled  her  submission  to  the  inward  light,  that  had  revealed  to  her  the  duty 
of  illustrating  the  spiritual  nakedness  of  her  neighbours  by  the  indecent  ex- 
hibition of  her  own  person.     Another  Quakeress  was  arrested  as  she  was 
making  a  similar  display  in  the  streets  of  Salem.  The  horror,  justly  inspired 
by  these  insane  enormities,  was  inflamed  into  the  most  vehement  indignation 
by  the  deliberate  manner  in  which  they  were  defended,  and  tlie  disgusting 
profanity  with  whicii  Scripture  was  linked  in  impure  association  with  notioris 
and  behaviour  at  once  ridiculous  and  contemptible.     Among  other  singu- 
larities, the  Quakers  exemplified  and  inculcated  the  forbearance  of  even  the 
slightest  demonstration  of  respect  to  courts  and  magistrates  ;  they  declared 
that  governors,  judges,  lawyers,  and  constables  were  trees  that  cumbered 
the  ground,  and  presently  must  be  cut  down,  in  order  that  the  true  light 
might  have  leave  to  shine  and  space  to  rule  alone  ;  and  they  freely  indulged 
every  sally  of  distempered  fancy  which  they  could  connect,  however  ab- 
surdly, with  the  language  of  the  Bible.     A  Quaker  woman,  who  was  sum- 
moned by  the  provincial  court  to  answei  for  some  extravagance,  being 
desired  to  tell  where  she  lived,  refused  to  give  any  other  answer  than  that 
she  lived  in  God,  "for  in  him  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being." 
Letters  replete  witli  coarse  and  virulent  railing  were  addressed  by  other 
members  of  the  sect  to  the  magistrates  of  Boston  and  Plymouth.   Such  was. 
the  inauspicious  outset  of  the  Quakers  in  America,  —  a  country,  where,  a 
few  years  after,  under  the  guidance  of  sounder  judgment  and  wiser  sentnnent 
and  purpose,  they  were  destined  to  extend  the  empire  of  piety  aiid  benevo- 
lence, and  to  found  establishments  that  have  been  largely  productive  of  hap- 
piness anu  Virtue. 


til 


216 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMr.P.UA. 


[BOOK  II. 


It  has  been  asserted  by  some  of  the  modem  apologists  of  the  Quakers, 
that  these  frantic  excesses,  which  excited  so  much  m(hgnation  and  pro- 
«hice(l  such  tragical  consequences,  were  committed,  not  by  genuine  Qua- 
kers but  by  the  Ranters,  or  wild  separatists  from  the  (Quaker  body.  Of 
these  Ranters,  indeed,  a  very  large  proportion  certainly  betook  themselves 
to  Vmerica  ;  attracted  chiefly  by  the  glory  of  enduring  persecution, —  but 
in  some  instances,  perhaps,  by  the  hope  of  attaimng  among  their  brethren 
in  that  country  a  distinction  from  which  they  were  excluded  in  England  by 
the  established  preeminence  of  George  Fox.»  It  is  certam,  however,  thai 
I  lie  persons  whose  conduct  we  have  particularized  assumed  the  name  of 
(Quakers,  and  traced  all  their  absurdities  to  the  peculiar  Quaker  principle  of 
searching  their  own  bosoms  for  sensible  admonitions  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
independent  of  the  Scriptural  revelation  of  divine  will.  And  many  scan- 
dalous  outrages  were  committed  by  persons  whose  profession  of  Quaker 
principles  was  recognized  by  the  (Quaker  body,  and  whose  sufferings  are 
related,  and  their  frenzy  applauded,  by  the  pens  of  Quaker  writers.-' 

Exasperated  by  the  repetition  of  these  enormities,  and  the  extent  to  which 
the  contagion  of  their  radical  principle  was  spreading  in  the  colony,  the  magis- 
irates  of  .Massachusetts,  in  the  close  of  this  year  [1658],  introduced  into  the 
assembly  a  law,  denouncing  the  punishment  of  death  upon  all  Quakers  re- 
turning  'from  banishment.     This  legislative  proposition  was  opposed  by  a 
considerable  party  of  the  colonists  ;  and  various  individuals,  who  would  have 
hazarded  their  own  lives  to  extirpate  the  heresy  of  the  Quakers,  solemnly 
protested  aj^ainst  the  cruelty  and  iniquity  of  shedding  their  blood.     It  was 
at  first  rejected  by  the  assembly  ;  but  finally  adopted  by  the  narrow  majoriiy 
of  a  single  voice.     In  the  course  of  the  two  following  years  [1659, 16601, 
this  barbarous  law  was  carried  into  execution  on  three  separate  occasions, 
—  when  four  Quakers,  three  men  and  a  woman,  were  put  to  death  at  Boston. 
It  does  not  appear  that  any  of  Uiese  unfortunate  persons  vv^re  guilty  of  the 
outrages  which  the  conduct  of  their  brethren  in  general  had  associated  with 
the  profession  of  Quakerism.     Oppressed  by  the  prejudice  created  by  the 
frantic  conduct  of  others,  they  were  adjudged  to  die  for  returning  from  ban- 
ishment and  continuing  to  preach  the  Quaker  doctrines.     In  vain  the  court 
entreated  them  to  accept  a  pardon  on  condition  of  abandoning  for  ever  the 
colony  from  which  they  had  been  repeatedly  banished.     They  answered  by 
reciting  the  heavenly  call  to  continue  there,  which,  on  various  occasions, 
they  affirmed,  had  sounded  in  their  ears,  in  the  fields  and  in  their  dwellings, 
distinctly  syllabling  their  names,  and  whispering  their  prophetic  office  and 
the  scene  of  its  exercise.^  When  they  were  conducted  to  the  scaffold,  their 

■  '  One  of  the  most  noted  of  these  separiitists  w.ia  John  Perrot,  who,  in  order  to  convert  the 
pope,  hud  nmdo  a  journey  to  Italy,  where  he  was  conhncd  for  some  time  as  a  lunatic,  lliis 
UsrcutUm  greatly  LdoJvd  him  to  the  Quakers,  and  exalted  him  so  much  in  h.s  own  esteem, 
(hat  he  h.-an  to  consider  himself  more  enlightened  than  George  I  ox.  He  preyailed  w,  h  a 
ronsideral.le  party  among  the  (iuakers  to  refrain  from  shaving  their  beards,  and  to  rejcet  lli« 
nraoti.e  of  uncovering  their  heads  in  the  act  of  nruycr,  as  a  vain  formality.  Fox  Living  sue 
1  reded,  l.y  dint  of  great  exertions,  in  stemming  these  innovations,  Perrot  repaired  to  Aiiiericii, 
where  he' appears  to  have  multiplied  his  absurdities,  and  propagated  them  among  he  Quakers 
to  an  amazing  extent.  Various  missions  were  undertaken  by  George  Fox  »nd  "»l'cr  KngMi 
Quakers  to  r.^^  hum  their  brethren  in  America  from  the  errors  of  Perrot,  who  finally  aban- 
doned everv  pretence  to  Quakerism,  and  became  a  strenuous  assertcr  of  all  the  doctrines  and 
observances  against  wliich  he  had  formerly  borne  testimony.      Cough  and  Sewell. 

»  Sec  Note  IX  ,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  „         c     •  i-  .1      .i,.. 

■■>  The  first  Quakers,  instend  of  following  the  injunction  of  our  Saviour  to  his  apostles  th,.l 

...},„„   j  ;„   ,.„p  ,.itv  iljov  uhoiild   (lee   to  another,  seem  to  have  found  strong  atlrac- 

ildiii  in" the'  prospect  of  persecution.    One  of  those  who  were  put  to  death  in  Massachusttu 


CIIAI'.  Ill  ] 


THE  ULAKERS. 


217 


demeanour  expressed  unquenchable  zeal  and  courage,  and  their  dying  dec- 
larations breatiied  in  general  a  warm  and  aflerting  piety.' 

Tiiese  executions  excited  much  clamor  against  the  government ;  many 
persons  were  offended  by  the  exhibition  of  severities  against  which  the  estab- 
lislmient  of  the  colony  itself  seemed  intended  to  bear  a  perpetual  testimony  ; 
iiri{l  many  were  touched  with  an  indignant  compassion  for  the  sufferings  of 
the  Quakers,  that  effaced  all  recollection  of  the  indignant  disgust  which  the 
|iriiiciples  of  these  sectaries  had  previously  inspired.  The  people  began 
to  flock  in  crowds  to  the  prisons,  and  load  the  unfortunate  Quakers  wiili 
(loinonstrations  of  kindness  and  pity.  The  magistrates  at  first  attempted  to 
combat  the  censure  they  had  provoked,  and  published  a  vindication  of  their 
proceedings,  for  the  satisfaction  of  their  fellow-citizens  and  of  their  friends 
ill  other  countries,  who  united  iu  blaming  them  ;  but  at  length  the  rising  sen- 
liments  of  humanity  and  justice  attained  such  general  and  forcible  preva- 
lence, as  to  overpower  all  opposition.  On  the  trial  of  Leddra,  the  last  of 
the  sufferers,  another  Quaker,  named  Wenlock  Clitistison,  who  had  been 
haiiislied  with  the  assurance  of  capital  punishment  in  case  of  his  return,  came 
boldly  into  court  with  his  hat  on,  and  reproached  the  magistrates  for  shed- 
iling  innocent  blood.  He  was  taken  into  custody,  and  soon  after  brought 
10  trial.  Summoned  to  plead  to  his  indictment,  he  desired  to  know  by  what 
law  the  court  was  authorized  to  put  him  on  the  defence  of  his  life.  When 
the  last  enactment  against  the  Quakers  wars  cited  to  him,,  he  asked,  who  em- 
powered the  provincial  authorities  to  make  that  law,  and  whether  it  were  not 
repugnant  to  the  jurisprudence  of  England.  The  governor  answered,  with 
little  regard  to  sense  or  propriety,  that  an  existing  law  in  England  appointed 
Jesuits  to  be  hanged.  But  Christison  replied,  that  they  did  not  even  accuse 
him  of  being  a  Jesuit,  but  acknowledged  him  to  be  a  Quaker,  and  that  there 
was  no  law  in  England  that  made  Quakerism  a  capital  offence.  The  court, 
iievertlieless,  overruled  his  plea,  and  the  jury  found  him  guilty.  When  sen- 
tence of  death  was  pronounced  upon  him,  he  desired  his  judges  to  consider 
nliat  they  had  gained  by  their  cruel  proceedings  against  the  Quakers.  "  For 
the  last  man  that  was  put  to  death,"  said  he,  "  here  are  five  come  in  his 
room  ;  and  if  you  have  power  to  take  my  life  from  me,  God  can  raise  up 
ilie  same  principle  of  life  in  ten  of  his  servants,  and  send  them  among  you 
in  my  room,  that  you  may  have  torment  upon  torment."  The  magnanimous 
demeanour  of  this  man,  who  seems  to  have  been  greatly  superior  in  under- 
standing to  the  bulk  of  his  sectarian  associates,  produced  an  impression 
which  could  not  be  withstood.  The  law  now  plainly  appeared  to  be  unsup- 
ported by  public  consent,  and  the  magistrates  hastened  to  interpose  between 
die  sentence  and  its  execution.  Christison  and  all  the  other  Quakers  who 
vere  m  custody  were  forthwith  released  and  sent  beyond  the  precincts  of 
the  colony  ;  and  as  it  was  impossible  to  prevent  them  from  returning,  only 
the  minor  punishments  of  flogging  and  reiterated  exile  were  employed.  Even 

(ieclart'd,  that,  as  ho  was  holding  the  plougli  in  Yorkshiro,  he  was  directud  by  a  heavenly  voice 
to  leave  hi><  wife  and  children,  and  repair  to  Barbadoes  ;  but  hearing  of  the  baniEhnient  of  the 
(Itiakcrs  from  New  England,  and  oi  the  severe  piini»hnientB  inflicted  on  persons  returning 
lliere  after  bunishmcnt,  he  began  to  ponder  on  the  probability  of  his  receiving  a  spiritual  direc- 
lion  to  proceed  thither,  and  very  soon  after  received  it  accordingly.  Tomkins's  and  Ken- 
iI.iU'b  Lives,  Serrifa,  nnd  Dyin^'Sayinirs  of  the,  Quuliirs. 

The  woman  who  was  executed  was  Mary  Dyer,  who,  twenty  years  before,  had  been  a  fol 
lower  of  Mrs.  Ilutchiniion  and  «  disturber  of  New  England. 

There  is  a  striking  resemblance  between  the  dyiiifr  iieliaviour  of  these  Quaker  martyrs 


y»i 


:l 


*  i, 


i.iid  the  sulilinic  scciic  delineated  in  2  Muccubei'K,  vi.  uud  vii, 
VOL.    I.  28 


218 


IIiaTOllY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


these  penal  rijrors  were  relaxed  in  nroporl.on  as  the  demeanour  o    the  (^ua 
Icrs  b^eca  no  more  quiet  and  orderly  ;  and  in  tlu,  fiv.t  year  after  the  reslora- 
Sof  Cmrles  the  Second,  the  h.flietion  of  flogging  was  suspended  by  ^ 
er  V^inho  king  to  Governor  Endicott'  and  the  other  .nag..trates  of  ,1,.> 
New  KnSmd  settlen.ents,  re.juiring  that  no  Quakers  should  thenceforward 
m'dergo  any  corporal  punislunent  in  An.er.ca,  but,  .f  charged  w.th  o  l.nces 
I  at  were  rickouod  deserving  of  such  severity    they  should  be  remuicd  f„, 
S  t^«  Enghmd.     Happily  the  moderation  of  the  prov.nc.al  government  wa, 
0  e  steady  and  durable  than  the  policy  of  the  king,  who  retracted  Ins  u.ier- 
position  in  behalf  of  the  (iuakers  in  the  course  ol  the  foUown.g  year. 
^  Tirpersecution  thus  happily  dosed  was  not  equally  severe  ny    the  Now 
KnglanJ  States  ;  the  Quakers  suffered  most  m  Massachusetts  and  1  lymoulh, 
ad  comparatively  little  in  Connecticut  and  Now  Haven.     It  was  only  „, 
Massachisetts  that  the  inhun.an  law  inflicting  capUa    punishment  upon  then 
u^s  ever  carried  into  oflect.«    At  a  subsequent  period,  the  laws  relating  ,o 
Zahondiluakcrs  were  so  far  revived,  that  Quakers  disturbing  relig.oi. 
alfemblies,  or  violating  public  decency,  were  subjected  to  corporal  clmsUse. 
meat     Bu   little  occasion  ever  again  occurred  of  executing  these  sever,  le.; 
1  e  wild  excursions  of  the  Quaker  spirit  having  generally  ceased   and  ,  o 
Quakers  gradually  subsiding  into  a  decent  and  orderly  submission  to  all  the 
Lws  except  sucfi  as  related  to  tlic  militia  and  the  support  of  the  clergy, - 
irthe'r  scrupL  as  to  which,  the  provincial  legislature,  with  reciprocal 
moderation,  consented  to  indulge  them.'  ,    .         ,  •       .   r 

Duri  g  the  long  period  that  had  now  elapsed  since  the  commencement  of 
the  cWil  war  in  Britain,  the  New  England  provinces  experienced  a  steady 
and  vigorous  growth,  in  respect  both  of  the  numbers  o   their  inhabitants  an 
t he  eXnt  of  their  t^rritorid  occupation.     The  colonists  were  surrounde 
ith  abundance  of  cheap  and  fertile  land,  and  secured  m  the  enjoyment  o 
ha    ecclesiastical  estateSvhich  was  the  object  of  their  supreme  desire,  an 
of  civil  and  political  freedom.    They  were  exempted  from  the  payment  of 
all  tixes  except  for  the  support  of  their  internal  government,  which  was  con- 
d  ctedwith  great  economy;  and  they  enjoyed  the  extraordinary  pnve.e 
importing  commodities  imo  England  free  from  the  duties  which  all  other 
i.n,;Xs  v^ere  constrained  to  pay.     By  the  favor  of  Cromwell,  too,  the 

,on  rolnte*  tl.at  he  l.ml  «'•«";.';"*[. ^7"  „„'aX^^^^  people  would  leave  out  Mr 

oontHininj  an  intimation  tiia  "    '^  J.ng  J^^  J  '"■^'^ '^^^X^.d  P,  Xct  him  to  this  oliice  as 

er.ilTcd'''  ^:^^r^  oftUX'^Z;  in  the  your  l(iG5.  leaving  behind  .,., 
""i  Sis  Uwll\i"nrv:Sme'.l  ii  Connecticut,  wa.  embraced  by  the  a..cmbly  of  .hi. 
,.  v?nce.  l^M^h  X!' d  udg:.d  that  "No  tbod  -^•"¥"«,«ti^jf -'^-^  ^"^  "^  ^""''"'  ^^^"■ 
'••*3  VS::i  'l^^t-Hutc^JrCh^lmr  l£i%h.n"^       OUlmixon.  .ho  entertain. 

1 1«  iloctrinal  and  hwtorical  Summary  l.r<tix,,i  to   ''««"'"""''     ..    •  ,       ,,     tt„„k,.rs  or  iIm 
to  Maftsaciiusetts,  iu^lead  of  Connecticut. 


CHAP  III] 


REHTORATION   OF   CHARLES   II. 


219 


ordinnnces  by  which  tlie  Long  Pnrliaiuent  had  restricted  their  ronimerco 
were  not  eulorced  ;  und  thoy  continued  to  trade  wherever  they  pleased. 
\lii)ost  all  the  peculiar  circumstances,  which  thus  combined  to  promote  the 
prosperity  of  New  England  during  tlie  suspension  of  monarchy,  contributed 
proportionally   to  overcast   the   prospects  awakened   by   the   Kestoration. 
There  was  the  strongest  reason  to  expect  an  abridgment  of  commercial  ad- 
vantages, and  to  tremble  for  the  security  of  religious  and  political  freedom. 
Various  other  circumstances  conspired  to  retard  the  recognition  of  the  royal 
aiitlioritv  in  New  England.     On  the  death  of  Croniwell,  the  colonists  were 
successively  urged  to  recognize,  first,  his  son  Richard  as  protector,  after- 
wards, the  Long  Parliament,  which  for  a  short  lime  resumed  its  ascendency, 
and  subsequently,  the  Connnittee  of  Safety,  as  the  legitimate  organs  of  sove- 
reign power  in  England.    But,  doubtful  of  the  stability  of  any  of  these  forms 
of  government,  they  prudently  declined  to  commit  themselves  by  positive 
declaration.    In  the  month  of  July  [ICGO],  a  vessel,  on  board  of  which  were 
Generals  Whalley  and  Goffe,  two  of  the  late  king's  judges,  arrived  with  in- 
lelligence  of  the  restoration  of  Charles  the  Second  ;  but  no  authoritative  or 
official  communication  of  this  event  was  received  ;  and  England  was  repre- 
sented as  being  in  a  very  unsettled  and  distracted  condition.    Massachusetts 
had  no  inducement  to  imitate  Virginia  in  a  premature  declaration  for  the 
king  ;  and  while  farther  intelligence  was  anxiously  expected,  Whalley  and 
(Joffe  were  permitted  to  travel  through  the  province,  and  accept  the  friendly 
civilities  which  many  persons  tendered  to  tliem,  and  with  which  Charles 
afterwards  bitterly  reproached  the  colonists.^ 

At  length,  authentic  tidings  were  obtained  that  the  royal  authority  was 
firmly  estabhshed  in  England  [December,  1G60],  and  that  complaints  against 
the  colony  of  Massachusetts  had  been  presented,  by  various  royalists,  Qua- 
kers, and  other  enemies  of  its  policy  or  institutions,  to  the  privy  council  and 
the  houses  of  parliament.     The  General  Court  was  straightway  convened, 
and  an  address  voted  to  tlie  king,  in  which,  witli  considerable  ability,  and 
with  that  conformity  which  they  studied  to  the  language  of  Scripture,  the 
colonists  justified  their  whole  conduct,  tendered  assurances  of  a  dutiful  at- 
tachment to  their  sovereign,  and  entreated  his  protection  and  favor,  which 
they  professed  to  expect  the  more  confidently  from  one,  who,  having  been 
himself  a  fugitive,  was  no  stranger  to  the  lot  and  the  feelings  of  exiles. 
Having  vindicated  their  proceedings  against  the  Quakers,  by  an  exposition 
of  tlie  heretical  doctrines  that  were  introduced,  and  of  the  seditious  and. in- 
decent excesses  that  were  committed  by  tliese  sectaries,  they  expressed 
their  entire  readiness  and  earnest  desire  to  defend  themselves  against  every 
other  charge  that  already  had  been,  or  in  future  might  be,  preferred  against 
them.     "  Let  not  the  king  hear  men's  words,"  they  said  ;  "  your  servants 
are  true  men,  fearers  of  God  and  the  king,  and  not  given  to  change,  zeal- 
ous of  government  and  order,  orthodox  and  peaceable  in  Israel.     We  are 
not  seditious  as  to  the  interest  of  Cssar,  nor  schismatics  as  to  matters  of 
religion.     We  distinguish  between  churches  and  their  impurities  ;  between 
a  living  man,  though  not  without  sickness  and  infirmity,  and  no  man.  Irregu- 
larities either  in  ourselves  or  others  we  desire  may  be  amended.    We  could 
not  live  without  the  worship  of  God  ;  we  were  not  permitted  the  use  of  pub- 
lic worship,  without  such  a  yoke  of  subscription  and  conformity  as  \ve  could 
not  consent  unto  without  sin.     That  we  might,  therefore,  enjoy  divine  wor- 


I    llnti'liin<inn,      C!>i>lincrs. 


220 


HISTORY  OP  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


ship  without  human  mixtures,  without  offence  either  to  God,  or  man,  or  our 
consciences,  we,  with  leave,  but  not  without  tears,  departed  from  our  coun 
r  kindred  and  fathers'  houses,  into  this  Patmos."  they  assim.  ated  their 
ecession  from  England  to  that  of  "  the  good  old  non-conformist  Jacob  » 
from  Syria  ;  but  dec'Jared  that  "  the  providential  exception  of  us  thereby 
from  the  late  wars  and  temptations  of  either  party  we  account  as  a  favor 
from  God."  They  solicited  the  king  to  protect  their  ecclesiastical  and  civil 
institutions,  protesting  that  they  considered  the  chief  value  of  the  latter  to 
consist  in  their  subservience  to  the  cultivation  and  enjoyment  of  religic.i. 

A  similar  address  was  made  to  parliament ;  and  letters  were  written  to 
Lord  Manchester,  Lord  Say  and  Seal,  and  other  persons  of  distinction, 
who  were  known  to  be  friends  of  the  colony,  soliciting  their  interposition  m 
its  behalf.     Leverett,  the  agent  for  the  colony  at  London,  was  mstructed,  at 
the  same  time,  to  use  every  effort  in  order  to  procure  a  continuance  of  the 
exemption  from  customs  which  the  colonists  had  hitherto  enjoyed.     But  he- 
fore  he  had  time  to  make  any  such  vain  attempt,  the  parliament  had  already 
established  the  duties  of  tonnage  and  poundage  over  every  portion  of  the  era- 
nire.     This  disappoimment  was  softened  by  a  gracious  answer  which  was 
returned  by  the  king  to  the  provincial  address,  and  was  accompanied  by  an 
ordeTfor  the  apprehension  of  Whalley  and  Goffe.     [1661.1      So  prompt  a 
display  of  good-will  and  confidence  excited  general  satisfaction ;  and  a  day 
of  thanksgiving  was  appointed,  to  acknowledge  the  favor  of  Heaven  in  mov- 
in-  the  heart  of  the  king  to  incline  to  the  desires  of  the  people.     With  re- 
gard to  Whalley  and  Goffe,  the  provincial  authorities  were  greatly  perplexed 
between  the  obligation  of  a  duly  which  it  was  impossible  to  decline,  and 
their  reluctance  to  betray  to  a  horrible  fate  two  men  who  had  lately  been 
members  of  a  government  acknowledged  and  obeyed  by  the  whole  British 
empire,  who  had  fled  to  New  England  as  an  inviolable  sanctuary  from  royal 
vengeance,  and  were  recommended  to  the  kindness  of  the  colonists  by  letters 
from  the  most  eminent  ministers  of  the  Independent  persuasion  in  the  parent 
state.     It  is  generally  supposed,  and  is  sufficiently  probable,  that  intimation 
was  privately  conveyed  to  the  fugitive  regicides  of  the  orders  that  had  been 
received  ;  and,  although  warrants  for  their  apprehension  were  issued,  and  by 
the  industry  of  the  royalists  a  diligent  search  for  their  persons  was  mstituted, 
they  were  enabled,  by  the  assistance  of  their  friends,  by  dexterous  evasion 
from  place  to  place,  and  by  strict  seclusion,  to  end  their  days  m  New 

^' But"  the  apprehensions  which  the  colonists  had  originally  entertained  of 
danger  to  their  civil  and  ecclesiastical  institutions  were  speedily  reawakened 
by  intelligence  that  reached  them  from  England  of  the  industrious  malignity 
which  was  exerted  in  circulating  the  most  unfavorable  representations  of  then- 
conduct,  of  the  countenance  that  these  representations  received  horn  the 
king,  and  of  the  vindictive  and  tyrannical  designs  against  them  which  gen- 

"tMiithcf      Nciniutchiimon.     Chalmers.     Small  as  was  the  number  of  royaliHts  in  M«s- 
«n.hui    it  WM  too  S  OB  To  enable  the  people  to  afford  permanent  shelter  to  Goffe  an 
uSyBuTnTw  Haven  there  were  no  royalmts  at  all ;  and  even  those  who  disappro  c,l 
.  J  tie^re"  nZn  Jthe  regicides  regarded  it^with  more  "^  ^^wTvfn^ll  l^-ncil 
the  error  of  noble  and  aeneroiis  minds.     Lcet,  the  Bovernor  of  New  Haven,  and  Ins  <  o  no m, 
when  .mnmoncd  by  tho%ursucni  of  Goffo  and  Whaflev  to  assist  .n  the  «PP"'hons,on  oMi 
fir  rron  nn  ed  ahnndnnel  of  time  in  deliberating  on  the  extent  of  their  powers,  and  then  pro- 
rested^dm"  in  amatterof  such  importance,  they  eould  not  art  without  »•'•;  "i;«  «/"";;; 
:  ..Til,    tL  ,„v,.li..  mirsners.  incensed  at  this  answer,  desired  the  governor  to  declare  at  on 
^hetiler  he  owned  an.i  honored  the  king  ;  to  win.!,  he  repi,...l, "  '^V.-  ..o  honor  hm  ^^J'- 
we  have  tender  consciences,  and  wish  first  to  know  whether  be  vv  ill  own  us.        i  rumuim, 


CHAP.  I"  ]  MASSACHUSJETTS   ASSERTS   HER  RIGHTS. 


221 


eral  opinion  ascribed  to  the  court.     It  was  reported  that  their  commercial 
intercourse  with  Virginia  and  the  West  India  Islands  was  to  be  cutoff; 
that  three  frigates  were  preparing  to  sail  from  England,  in  order  to  facilitate 
ilie  introduction  of  arbitrary  power  ;  and  that  this  armament  was  to  be  ac- 
companied by  a  governor-general,  whose  jurisdiction  was  to  extend  over  all 
the  North  American  plantations.  Apprehensions  of  these  and  other  changes 
at  length  prevailed  so  strongly  in  Massachusetts,  as  to  produce  a  public 
measure  of  very  remarkable  character.  ^  The  General  Court,  having  pro- 
,  laimed  the  necessity  of  promoting  unity  of  spirit  and  purpose  among  the 
colonists  for  tlie  vindication  of  their  provincial  hberties,  in  consistence  with 
a  dutiful  recognition  of  the  paramount  authority  of  England,  appointed  a 
committee  of  eight  of  the  most  eminent  persons  in  the  State  to  prepare  a 
report,  ascertaining  the  extent  of  their  rights  and  the  limits  of  their  obedi- 
ence; and  shortly  after  [May,  1661],  the  Court,  in  conformity  with  the  re 
port  of  the  committee,  framed  and  published  a  series  of  declaratory  resolu- 
tions expressive  of  their  solemn  and  deliberate  judgment  on  those  important 
subjects.    It  was  declared  that  the  patent  (under  God)  is  the  original  com- 
pact and  main  foundation  of  the  provincial  commonwealth,  and  of  its  insti- 
tutions and  policy ;  that  the  governor  and  company  are,  by  the  patent,  a 
body  politic  empowered  to  confer  the  rights  of  freemen  ;  and  that  the  free- 
men so  constituted  have  authority  to  elect  annually  their  governor,  assistants, 
representatives,  and  all  other  officers ;  that  the  magistracy,  thus  composed, 
hath  all  requisite  power,  both  legislative  and  executive,  for  the  government 
of  all  the  people,  whether  inhabitants  or  strangers,  without  appeal,  except 
against  laws  repugnant  to  those  of  England  ;  that  the  provincial  government 
is  entided  by  every  means,  even  by  force  of  arms,  to  defend  itself  both  by 
land  and  sea  against  all  jpersons  attempting  injury  to  the  province  or  its  in- 
habitants ;  and  tliat  any  imposition  injurious  to  the  provincial  community, 
and  contrary  to  its  just  laws,  would  be  an  infringement  of  the  fundamental 
rights  of  the  people  of  New  England.     This  firm  and  distinct  assertion  of 
provincial  rights  was  accompanied  with  a  recognition  of  the  duties  to  which 
ilie  people  were  engaged  by  their  allegiance,  and  which,  it  was  declaratorily 
announced,  consisted  in  preserving  the  colony  as  a  dependency  of  the  Eng- 
lish crown,  and  preventing  its  subjection  to  any  foreign  prince  ;  in  defend- 
ing, to  the  utmost  of  their  power,  the  king's  pprson  and  dominions  ;  aiid  in 
maintaining  the  dignity  and  prosperity  of  the  king  and  people,  by  punishing 
crimes,  and  by  propagating  the  gospel.^ 

These  proceedings  disclose  without  disguise  or  ambiguity  the  alarming 
suspicions  which  the  colonists  entertained  of  the  character  and  policy  of 
tlieir  new  sovereign,  and  the  firm  determination  witli  which  they  clung  to  the 
dear-bought  rights  of  which  they  anticipated  an  attempt  to  bereave  them. 
How  far  they  are  to  be  considered  as  indicating  a  settled  purpose  to  resist 
tyrannical  aggression  by  force  is  a  matter  of  uncertain  conjecture.  It  is  not 
improbable  tliat  the  authors  of  them  hoped,  by  strongly  proclaiming  their 
rights,  and  suggesting  the  extremities  which  an  attempt  to  violate  them  would 
legally  warrant  and  might  eventually  provoke,  to  deter  the  king  from  awak- 
ening, in  the  commencement  of  his  reign,  the  recollection  of  a  contest  which 

"Hutchinson.  Clmhni'rs.  During  tbo  subHistence  of  Uie  Coinmonwoalth  in  England,  J«>hn 
Kliot,  the  inisBionary,  on  one  occasion,  so  far  overstepped  his  proper  functions  as  to  publish  n 
little  treatise  against  inonnrchical  govc^rnnicnt.  The  General  Court  of  Massachusetta  now 
deemed  it  expedient  to  cite  him  before  them  U)  answer  for  this  impugnation  of  regal  authority. 
Kiioi  ackiiowiedged  Uiut  ho  hud  acted  rashly  and  cuipabJy ;  and,  desiring  forgiveness,  ob- 
tained it.  s  * 


222 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


J  r  .  1  ♦^  k;«  fnthpr  and  which,  if  once  rekindled,  even  to  an 

had  proved  ff^^' ^«  f'^^^^^^^^^^  c^roversy  with  an  infant  colony  implied, 
extent  so  >•"'«  ^''^tsrunequaK  by  presenting  an  occasion  of  revival  and. 
""^**'-  T^  nassiot  Sly  ^extinguished  in  England.  If  such  were  the 
exercise  °  P^^^^^' -JS  the  soundness  of  them  was  approved  by  the 
v.ews  °f  ^^'^/[X  '^'el;  tf^^^^^  the  provincial  authorities,  in  order  to  niani- 
rra  duSs5,ordi^^^^^^^^  to  the  parent  state,  issued  injunctions  for  the  pur- 
test  a  dutiiui  su^o^"'""  ^  \  Whalley,  and  pubhcly  announced  that  no 
suit  and  «PP'-«*?«"^'f  "l^r",^?  FiXnd  and  flying  from  her  tribunals, 

nTre^'rritS  in  :  X  that  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^         ^^  ^^^T^  T^' 

of  the  EngHsh  crown,  the  General  Court  caused  the  kmg  to  be  soemny 
ot  tl  e  ^"6"^"  .'^'r';  ' .  V  1  :„„e  and  severe  en  lord.  They  published, 
r.t™:l°Vm:  :  or£ancr°p™ing  all  dLrdeHy  behaviour  o„  ,he 
at  tlie  same  umc,  nnrtirular  that  none  should  presume  to  drink 

huS,;"  £3  "wVc^^Mltradded  .'he  hauf,  in  ,n  especU, 
his  ^^ajesiy  s  ntai^  ,^  iniuiction  the  most  alien  to  the  sentiments  and 
S?s  oVSekfng^'and  impS  to  him  on  no  b^ter  grounds  than  that  drink- 
b  S  healths  va  prohibited  by  the  statutes  of  his  colony  of  Massacliuseus, 
Thif  senseless  practice  had  been  offensive,  on  account  of  its  heathen  or.gm 
to  he  more  sc^pulous  of  the  Puritan  planters,  who  were  desirous  m  all 
things  tHtudy  a  iLral  and  exclusive  conformity  to  the  revealed  will  of  God, 
Td  nccount'ng  nothing  unworthy  of  human  regard  that  afforded  occas.on 

fStt  et tt^t  t  VZs  regulSn,  yet^lmost  all  of  then,  were 
cSour^haUhe  restoration  of  royal  authority  should  not  be  signalized  by 
aTri  nnnh  over  any,  ev^n  the  least  important,  of  the  provincial  constitutions 
IntXence  having  arrived  soon  after  of  the  progress  of  the  complaints  that 
were  foXually  exhibited  to  the  privy  council  against  the  colony  and  an 
Tder  'uhe  same  time  being  received  from  the  king  that  deputies  should  be 
sent  fo  thwith^o  England  to  make  answer  to  those  complaints,  the  Court 
^mZ  imporLt  duty  to  Simon  Bradstreet   one  of  h^^^^^^^^ 

A  T^i,«  Nnrton  one  of  the  ministers  of  Boston.  uecemoer,  looi.j 
Tle/e  atn^s "':;■  instmclcd  ,o  vindicate  .he  loyaUy  and  justify  .he  co„d,« 
„r  Z  tnlonv  •  to  discover,  if  possible,  what  tvere  .he  designs  which  the 

^:::A^^^^  sustain^y  detention  of  their  persons  or  other 

"tSeTf.;m^Te\tor  and  resolution  which  the  necent  conduct  of  the 
pro'Jindtlgovrnment  displayed,  or  from  the  -deration^ 
sellors  bv  whom  Charles  was  then  surrounded,  promoted  bjr  the  intiuen  e 
wS  Lord  Say  and  some  other  eminent  persons  employed  m  behalf  of  the 
colonv  the  ageL  were  received  with  unexpected  favor,  and  were  soon  en- 
abefto  return  to  Boston  [1662]  with  a  letter  from  the  king,  confirming 
th^nrovinciTcharter%nd  promising  to  renew  it  under  the  great  seal,  when- 
the  provincial  cnarier,  h^  ^j  .,„„;,„^'-  ^he  royal  letter  likewise  announced  an 


.l:-  f „i;<.r  cltniilfl  lift  desired 

ever  viJ!3  «"«"'a!!-.;-  -  -- 


»  Huicliiniion.    CImlnitri. 


CHAP,  mi 


ROYAL  LETTER  TO  MASSACHUSETTS. 


223 


imnesty  for  whatever  treasons  had  been  committed  during  the  late  troubles, 
'   all  persons  but  those  who  were  attainted  by  act  of  parliament,  and  who 


had  fled,  or  might  hereafter  fly,  to  New  England.     But  it  contamed  other 
latters  by  no  means  acceptable  to  the  colonists.    It  required  that  the  Gen- 
"lal  Court  should  pronounce  all  the  ordinances  that  had  been  enacted  during 
the  abeyance  of  royalty  invalid,  and  forthwith  revise  them  and  repeal  every 
one  that  might  seem  repugnant  to  the  royal  authority ;  that  the  oath  of  alle- 
sriance  should  be  duly  administered  to  every  person  ;  that  justice  should  be 
distributed  in  the  king's  name  ;  that  all  who  desired  it  should  be  permitted 
to  use  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  to  perform  their  devotions  accord- 
ing to  the  ceremonial  of  the  church  of  England  ;  that,  in  the  choice  of  the 
governor  and  assistants,  or  counsellors,  of  the  colony,  the  only  qualifications 
^0  be  regarded  should  be  wisdom  and  integrity,  without  any  reference  to 
peculiarities  of  religious  faith  ;  and  that  all  freeholders  of  competent  estates, 
and  not  immoral  in  their  lives,  should  be  admitted  to  vote  in  the  election  of 
officers,  civil  and  military,  Vvhatever  might  be  their  opinions  with  respect  to 
forms  of  church-government.     "  We  cannot  be  understood,"  it  was  added, 
"hereby  to  direct  or  wish  that  any  indulgence  should  be  granted  to  Qua- 
kers, whose  principles  being  inconsistent  with  any  kind  of  government,  we 
have  found  it  necessary,  with  the  advice  of  our  parliament  here,  to  make  a 
sharp  law  against  them,  and  are  well  content  you  do  the  like  there."  ^ 

However  reasonable  some  of  the  foregoing  requisitions  may  now  appear, 
the  greater  number  of  them  were  highly  disagreeable  to  the  persons  to  whom 
they  were  addressed.    The  colonists  considered  themselves  entitled  to  main- 
tain tlie  form  of  polity  in  church  and  state,  which  they  had  fled  to  a  desert  m 
order  to  cultivate,  without  the  intrusion  and  commixture  of  different  princi- 
ples ;  and  they  regarded  with  the  utmost  jealousy  the  precedent  of  an  inter- 
ference with  their  (bndamental  constitutions  by  a  prince,  who,  they  were 
firmly  persuaded,  was  aiming  at  present  to  enfeeble  the  system  which  he 
waited  only  a  more  convenient  season  to  destroy.  To  comply  with  the  royal 
iniunctions,  they  apprehended,  would  be  to  introduce  among  their  children 
tlie  spectacles  and  corruptions  which  they  had  incurred  the  mightiest  sacri- 
fices in  order  to  withdraw  from  their  eyes  ;  and  to  throw  open  every  office 
in  the  state  to  Roman  Catholics,  Socinians,  and  every  heretic  and  unbe- 
liever who  might  think  power  worth  the  purchase  of  a  general  declaration 
that  he  was  (according  to  his  own  unexamined  interpretation  of  the  term)  a 
Christian.    The  king,  never  deserving,  was  never  able  to  obtain,  credit  with 
Ills  subjects  for  good  faith  or  moderation  ;  he  was  from  the  beginnirig  of 
his  rei-^n  suspected  of  a  predilection  for  the  church  of  Rome  ;  and  the 
various  efforts  which  he  made  to  procure  a  relaxation  of  the  penal  laws  against 
the  Protestant  dissenters  in  England  were  jealously  and  censoriously  regarded 
hy  all  these  dissenters  themselves,  —with  the  solitary  exce;>tion  of  the  Qua- 
kers, who  considered  the  other  Protestants  and  the  Catholics  as  nearly  on 
a  level  with  each  other,  and  were  made  completely  the  dupes  of  the  artifices 
by  which  Charles  and  his  successor  endeavoured  to  introduce  the  ascendency 
of  the  Catholic  church  under  the  preliminary  guise  of  universal  toleration. 
Of  all  the  fequisitions  in  the  royal  letter,  the  only  one  that  was  comphed 

'  Hutchinson.  Boikimp.  The  royal  invitation  to  porsrcnte  the  duakers  was  difregnrdecl 
l,y  the  government  of  MaWhu.etts.  Whether  from  Kroatcr  deference  to  the  king  «•  pleasure 
or  from  «ome  other  cause,  the  government  of  Rhode  Island  in  the  y«%«^^' P»««f„";!.%?f 

_     outlawry  against  the  diiakers  for  refusing  to  bear  arms.       ColltcHons  of  the  Matsachusttts  H%»- 

^S     iutUAil  Sociiiy. 


224 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


however,  that  ^^e  d^rection^^^^^^^^  ^^.^^  ^^^j^  ^^  ^^^^.^^^  ^^ 

'7'r:iZiolee^^r^^^^  The  treatment  which  the  pro- 

•'"   1  ntnts  experienced  from  their  countrymen,  it  is  pain  ul,  but  neces- 

irto^elateS  ill-humor  which  some  of  tiie  requisitions  provoked 

':z  uiLt^te,^^^  -^— r;  -ir  z^'sStith^  tt  c 

fully  acknowledged  ^^  «  .^P^Sd  a  pres^^^  deliverance,  but  which  still 
from  which  the  ^^o-yXj^^^^^^  ^^  TpHnce  -ho  visibly  abetted  every 
nnpended  over  it  from  "'^  d«s'S"^  increased  their  unpopularity  by  warml v 

^uSftaf  an\reT^^^  -^  ^j^^^' 

3on  who  on  the  first  inofficial  intelligence  that  was  received  of  the  k.ng's 
fes  oration    had  ^effectually  counselled  his  fellow-citizens  to  proclaim  tl. 

::;!^rK;rUin  -  We^^^-tJi^— r^ 

fSrXtt  the^ci;  :d  T^  ^e^erms  of  the  Sng's  letter,  they 
must  blame  themsTlves  for  the  bloodshed  that  would  ensue.  Such  language 
vvas  ill  calcuE  to  soothe  the  popular  disquiet,  or  recommend  an  ungra- 
was  Ul  caicuMiuu  lu  o  i    i  actuated  by  the  most  disinter- 

cious  counsel ;  and  the  depuUe  ,  who  ^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^  ^^^^^^ 

ested  zeal  to  serve  '^'^^^l}^^^  ^^'l{'^!^^^^  the  colony,  and  heard 

f^^r^tcTittlfnofnU^^ 

the  evils,  which   t  was  not  m  "^«"  PP  endowed  with  a  robust,  philo- 

"vf  finTlLiou.  surprUe  or  repining  ;  bu.  Norton,  - »  -»  »  ^ » 
1  i   ^«iw.n»r.  cpns  h  1  tv     could  not  behold  tne   aiterea  eyi-h  oi  ins 

7Jro    hiscountry^^^  he  expressed  no  resentment,  but  sunk  inlo  a 

veS  mouriinc  that  overspread  the  province  expressed  a  late  but   ast.  ? 
remcmrance  of  his  virtue,' and  bewailed  an  ungrateful  error,  which  only 

"^Tir  roi::;  T  aTlrd  Ccelved  tl.  tidings  of  the  restoratio. 
of  rovaltv  whh  much  real  or  apparent  satisfaction.     It  was  hoped  by  the 
hh-h.a  tVlat  die  suspension  o^f  their  charter  by  the  Long   Parliament 
01  I  m^re  h  n  compensate  the  demerit  of  having  accepted  a  charter  from 
n  thoriiv-  and    hat  their  exclusion  from  the  confederacy,  of  wlicl, 
Ma  .ac  S  was   1.       ad  would  operate  as  an  additional  recommen  at.on 
to  rova   favor.    The  restored  monarchical  government  was  proclaimed  ^v  h 
ler  1  teTn  this  colony  ;  and  Dr.  John  Clarke  was  employed  as  dopim 
from  the  colon  ts  to  carry  their  dutiful  respects  to  the  foot  of  the  throno. 
LTto   elicit,  ew  charted  in  their  favor,     ^rhe  envoy  conducted  his  nego- 
jrJiion  with  a  suppleness  of  adroit  semlity  that  j^enderedjhe^^^ 

— ""-Mathe"rrHutchinw.n.     8«c  Note  X.,  at  the  end  ol  the  volume 


CHAP,  ni] 


RHODE  ISLAND  CHARTER. 


;S@5 


dearly  bought.    He  not  only  vaunted  in  courtly  strains  the  loyalty  of  the  in- 
habitants of  Rhode  Island,  of  which  not  the  slightest  proof  could  be  adduced, 
but  meeting  this  year  the  deputies  of  Massachusetts  at  court,  he  publicly 
challenged  them  to  cite  any  one  demonstration  of  duty  or  loyally  by  their 
(ODstituents  to  the  present  king  or  his  father,  from  the  period  of  their  first 
establishment  in  New  England.'     Yet  the  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island  had 
solicited  and  accepted  a  patent  from  the  Long  Parliament  in  the  commence- 
Inent  of  its  struggle  with  Charles  the  First ;  while  Massachusetts  declined 
to  make  a  similar  recognition,  even  when  the  Parliament  was  at  the  utmost 
jieieht  of  its  power  and  success.^  Clarke  succeeded  in  obtaining,  this  year'^ 
11^2],  a  charter  which  assured  to  the  inhabitants  of  Rlnjde  Island  and 
I'rovidence  the  amplesLenjoyment  of  religious  liberty,  and  most  unlimited 
concession  of  mumcipal  jurisdiction.     Certain  of  the  leading  colonists,  to- 
o^ether  with  all  other  persons  who  should  in  future  be  admitted  freemen  of 
^e  society,  were  incoroorated  by  the  title  of  the  Governor  and  Company  of 
the  English  Colony  of  Rhode  Island  and  Providence.     The  supreme  or 
legislative  pow«r  was  vefited  in  an  assembly,  consisting  of  the  governor,  as- 
sistants, and  representatives  elected  from  their  own  number  by  the  freemen. 
This  assembly  was  empowered  to  enact  legal  ordinances,  and  establish  forms 
of  eovernment  and  magistracy,  with  as  much  conformity  to  the  laws  and 
'    institutions  of  England  as  the  state  of  the  country  and  condition  of  the  peo- 
ple would  admit ;  to  erect  courts  of  justice  ;  to  regulate  the  manner  of  ap- 
pointment to  places  of  trust ;  to  inflict  all  lawful  punishments  ;  and  to  exer- 
cise the  prerogative  of  pardon.     A  governor,  deputy-governor,  and  ten  as- 
sistants were  to  be  annually  chosen  by  the  assembly  ;  and  the  first  board  of 
these  officers,  nominated  by  the  charter,  on  the  suggestion  of  the  provmcial 
acent,  were  authorized  to  commence  the  work  of  carrying  its  provisions  mto 
execution.     The  governor  and  company  were  empowered  to  transport  all 
merchandise  not  prohibited  by  the  statutes  of  the  kingdom,  on  payment  of 
the  usual  duties  ;  to  exercise  martial  law,  when  necessary  ;  and,  upon  just 
causes,  to  invade  and  destroy  the  native  Indians  or  other  enemies.     Ihe 
territory,  granted  to  the  governor  and  company  and  their  successors,  was 
described  as  that  part  of  the  dominions  of  the  British  crown  in  New  Eng- 
land, which  embraced  the  islands  in  Narraganset  Bay  and  the  countries  and 
districts  adjacent,  —  which  were  appointed  to  be  holden  of  the  maiior  of 
East  Greenwich  in  common  soccage.     The  inhabitants  and  tlieir  cluldreu 
were  declared  to  be  entitled  to  the  same  immunities  which  would  have  ac- 
crued to  them,  if  they  had  resided  or  been  born  within  the  realm.     This  is 

I  Mr.  Bancroft  has,  witiTslranginack  of  courtesy  and  correctness,  reproached  mo  with 
\mmintentcd  the  charge  1  have  preferred  against  Clarke.  I  am  incapable  of  such  dislionesty; 
and  luiccrcly  hope  that  Mr.  Bancrofts  reproach  is,  and  will  continue,  on  his  part,  a  solitary 
inmance  of  deviation  from  candor  and  rectitude. 

With  a  mixture  of  pain  and  admiration,  1  have  witnessed  the  diBpleasure  with  which  some 
«f  the  lilerati  of  Rhode  Island  have  received  my  strictures  on  Chfrke.  The  authorities  tlicy 
have  cited  prove  undeniably  that  he  was  a  true  patriot  and  excellent  man  and  well  deserviiig 
the  reverence  of  his  natural  and  national  posterity.  But  every  person  acquainted  with  his- 
tory and  human  nature  ought  U.  know  how  apt  even  good  men  are  to  be  transported  beyond 
the  line  of  honor  and  integrity,  in  conducting  such  negoUations  as  Uiat  which  was  confided  t.> 

'The  Rliode  IsUinders  had  also  presented  an  address  to  the  rulers  of  England  in  1659, 
t,b»eochia«  favor  to  themselves  as  "a  poor  colony,  an  outcast  people,  formerly  Ironi  our 
mother  nation  in  the  bishops'  days,  and  since  from  tlic  New-English  over-zealous  colonies. 
Douglass's  .Sttmm«rj/.  _  ^  _,. .„  ^^ ..«- Con- 


necticut 
VOL. 


lass  B  :)ummaru.  <.     j-  l  . 

Ithough  the  charter  was  framed  in  1662,  yet,  in  conseouence  of  a  dispiUo  between 
;ut  atiu  Rhode  Island,  it  was  not  completed  till  July,  1663. 
29 


226 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


I 


.     ..      •    »    „««f  thP  creation,  by  a  Briiish  patent,  of  an  authority  of  that 
the  first  ms tance  of  th«  «^«^^^^^^^^  i„  Rhode  Island.    Corpora- 

^^''"^rA!/5rnerV  constituted  within  the  realm,  for  the  government  of 

tions  had  b«f  .'"^f  .^'i^y  "LXa  body  politic  was  created  with  specific  powers 
colonial  plantations  ,  but  now  a  boay^  ^^^^^^  territory  itself, 

^:?^^TT"^frt^eMl^L^Z  Ltisfaction  by  the  colonist^,  .ho 
The  charter  was  receiveawung  ^^^ocratical  constitution  which 

T:;;^::Tt^^Xr:^^^^  -  pursue  the  sa^e  system  of  civil  a.d 

fail  to  sena  a  aepmy  t         &  g  "^  rpj^      ^g^e  fortunate  m  the  choice 

^uch  honor  and  vi^^^^^^^^^  ^,^  ^      f,,,„  ^^ 

1f"T§     l.Spd  beLeeT^^^  grandfather  and  Charles  the  Fir8t,3en,. 

that  had  s"^s>«^«d  bemeen  m^^  own  g  j^^^^^^  ^  charter  in  almost 

ployed  It  so  suc^^^^f""^' f' \?  t  Xh  was  granted  to  Rhode  Island.  The 
every  respect  ^^e  same  wUh  that  wh^^  Connecticut  charter  the 

most  considerable  ^^f  ^enjs  were^^^^  allegiance  and  supremacy 

governor  was  d.ected  to^^^^^^^  4,a  by  the  cfarterol 

to  the  inhabitants,  — a  »o™iy  wi  gcrupled  to  take  an  oath;  and 

Rhode  Island,  where  "^^^  ,f  .f;^a ^f  cScience  was  expressly  con- 

that,  by  the  l/^''^"'!""?  wWlf  [he  S  made  no  express  mention  of  the 
ceded  in  its  fullest  extent,  ^^'le  the  othe^^^^^^  P 

concerns  of  religion,  and  "O  <^"^%  ^""''°"  ^^  ,„„.emacv      [1662.1    Bv 

t«  hP  Jmnlied  in  the  requ  sition  of  the  oath  ot  supremacy.     l*""^-J    p) 

his  cSer  New  Haven  was  united  with  Connecticut ;  an  arrangement  who 

this  charter  i>iew  ndvc  unanimous  approbation  of  the  people  ot 

^v'  'T  r  \ltLouS  th^^^^^^^^^^  'c^esced  in  it ;  and  the  de- 

^'"'L  of  ie  Sian^^^^^^  was  indefinite  2nd  incorrect.  But  on  the 
wToH  Ive  sCmTch  atisfaction,  that  Winthrop,  on  his  return  was  re- 
Sid  ^irgr^efd  approbation  by  his  fellow-cU.zens,  and  annually  chose. 

>  Chalmcra.     Hazard.  j   ^  govcral  of  the  principal  inhabit- 

t  At  New  Haven  the  repubhcan  "Pint  wm  "?J*'''Kb  .11.     It  was  here  that  Goffe  and 
ants  declined  to  act  a«  mag.stratos  "^^^ '^^J  "f-   j^J^'^Xn  a  pwty  of 
Whalley  found  the  secured  "^y'"""' «"i^"**^Savenm^^^^^  °f  '^e  place,  preached 

coming  in  pursuit  of  them  .t?New  Haven,  D^^'^^.gf,  ^^^j  T  4), ..  Take  counsel,  exe* 
publicfy  in  favor  of  the  reg.c.des,  from  the .»"»  ^J^  nf  he  noonday  ;  hide  the  outcasts. 
F"dime^.t ;  make  thy  shadow  as  the  nj^ht  '"  'J^  ""j  JJ  "VJ^  Tee,  M^oab  ;  be  thou  a  coven 
&ay  not  him  that  wandereth  Let  ■^J"«  "";*="if  ?/,^^'^^^^^  ,hat'  Salem  and  Now  Haven 
to  them  from  the  face  of  the  spoiler.  "''7^''„  JV^  J.^.^j  L  the  Puritan  and  republican  wal 
!::;  highlv  distinguished  among  the  towns  of  Now  En^'""d  by  the  1^.^^  J  .^^^^ 

of  their  fonnde;i.,  have  so  lonp  ^'n  '""^^  *  Dwi«1^?s  desJr  pUon  of  New  Haven,  in  the  com- 
.ry.  and  Pnai^ete'rrJt'hTe'nt  ^S^on^'the  "-^^^^^^  and  agreeable  picture,  tha, 

"J^l'rrvrctt  trS^'rsti^arcrgJcgation  of  mankind.  ^^D^^^^^^ 
""  MMhcr  .elate,    that,  -^en  W-jh-^.  P--t^  P"/„,  but  also  declared 

lliro-:  ilorirtrirug^^^^^^^^  J.ra;traw^'of  Wimhrop.    Bee  Note  X.   ... 

end  of  the  volume. 
*  Matlier.     Chalmeri.     Hazard. 


CHAP.  IV.]    COMMON  INTERESTS  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  STATES.     227 

Phnde  Island,  a  model  of  government  the  most  perfectly  democratic,  to- 
?pSr  S  the  additional  singularity  of  subordinate  political  corporations 
most  Sly  disconnected  by  any  efficient  tie  or  relation  with  the  organ  of 
prPiln  authority.     All  power,  as  weU  deliberative  as  active,  was  vested 
fthe^eemen  of\e  Corporation  or  their  delegates  ;  and  the  supreme  ex- 
PPute  S^^       of  the  empfre  was  excluded  from  every  constitutional 
leans  of  interposition  or  control.     A  conformity  to  the  laws  of  England 
raoub,  was^enjoined  on  the  provincial  legislatures  ;  and  this  conformity 
was  conditioned  is  the  tenure  by  which  their  privileges  were  enjoyed  ,  but 
1  method  of  ascertaining  or  enforcing  its  observance  was  provided.     At  a 
Spfoeriod,  the  crown  lawyers  of  England  were  sensible  of  the  oversight 
Sich  their  predecessors  had  committed  ;  and  proposed  that  an  act  of  par- 
ient  should  be  obtained,  requiring  those  colonies  to  transmit  the  records 
Keir  domestic  ordinanc;s  to  Britain  for  the  inspecUon  and  consideration 
of  the  king.     But  this  suggestion  was  never  carried  mto  effect. 


Connecticut  and 


CHAPTER    IV. 

r    •    .  J  M;n;.«<.ra  to  New  England.  —  Royal  Commissioners  sent  thither.  — 

snecdng  the  Rujht  to  Maine  and  New  Ham^hire-^  J^^^^^^^^  ^^^^  ^^  ^J        and  Morala 
itingand  the  (^lony.- State  "^/f/J'^V"  „  ^f  m^^^  demanded  by  the  King- 

iibftrctr^^^^^^^ 

S  People.  -  Their  Charter  adjudged  to  be  forfeited. 
AxruoiiGH  New  England  now  [1663]  consisted  of  a  variety  of  distinct 

£  *r  .S*   want  :frrthtb,«„«  could  be  ?up*^  J--^ 
r,omher„  colonies,  where  .he  goj^rMrs^w^e^ppomted^th  r  b^Ae 


ssd 


HMTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  U 


Tjrown  or  by  proprietaries  dosely  connected  with  the  parent  Mate,  the  Act 
of  Navigation  was  very  imperfectly  executed  ;  and  fai  New  England,  where 
•he  governors  were  elected  by  the  people,  it  appears,  for  a  considerable 
ittme,  to  have  been  tntirely  disobeyed.^ 

While  the  commercial  system  of  the  English  parliament  thus  tended  to 
«nite  the  colonies  by  community  of  interest  and  opposition  to  the  parent 
-slate,  the  ecclesiastical  policy  which  now  prevailed  in  England  was  calcu- 
lated to  promote  among  the  colonists  the  remembrance  of  the  original  causes 
-of  secession  from  her  territory,  and  at  once  to  revive  their  influence,  and 
recommend  the  exercise  of  toleration  by  sympathy  with  the  victims  of  wi 
«pposite  principle.  Charles  the  Second  had  obtained  the  assistance  of  the 
Vkiglish  Presbyterians  to  his  restocation  by  express  and  solemn  promise  of 
•an  ecclesiastical  oonstttution  framed  on  a  compromise  between  Episcopalian 
'»rtd  Presbyterian  princmles  ;  but  by  the  advice,  or  at  least  with  the  cordial 
approbation,  of  Lord  Clarendon,  he  scrupled  not  to  viulate  this  engagement 
as  soon  as  he  found  himself  securely  established  on  the  tlirone.  In  conse- 
quence of  the  rigorous  execution  of  that  shameless  act  of  perfidy,  the  statute 
of  uniformity,  in  the  close  of  the  preceding  year,  about  two  thousand  of  the 
English  clergy,  the  most  eminent  of  their  order  for  learning,  virtue,  and 
piety,  were  ejected  from  the  established  church ;  and,  to  the  astonishment 
of  the  prevailing  party,  sacrificed  terapOTal  interest  to  the  dictates  of  con- 
science. They  were  afterwards  banished  to  the  distance  of  five  miles  from 
every  corporation  in  England  ;  and  many  of  them  died  in  prison  for  privately 
exercising  their  ministry  in  contravention  of  the  lafw.  WMle  the  majority 
of  them  remained  in  Britain,  to  preserve  by  their  instructions  the  decaying 
piety  of  their  native  land,  a  considerable  ttjiiiber  were  conducted  to  New 
England,  there  to  invigorate  American  virtue  by  a  fresh  example  of  con- 
scientious sacrifice,  and  to  form  a  living  and  toucliing  memorial  of  the  cruelty 
and  injustice  of  religions  intolerance.  The  merits  and  tlie  Buierings  of 
these  men  strongly  excited  the  admiration  and  sympathy  of  the  people  of 
New  England  ;  and  tliis  year  an  invitation  was  despatched  to  Dr.  John  Owen, 
•ne  of  Uie  most  eminent  scholars  and  theologians  that  the  world  has  ever 
.produced,  to  accept  an  ecclesiastical  appointment  in  Massachusetts.  Owen 
declined  to  avail  lumself  of  this  invitation,  on  account  uf  the  cloud  of  royal 
di&pleasure  which  he  perceived  to  be  gatliering  against  Massachusetts,  and 
ihe  measures  wiiich  iie  had  reason  to  believe  would  ere  long  be  adopted  for 
the  subjugation  of  its  civil  and  religious  liberties.  Other  countries  besides 
America  contended  for  the  honor  of  sheltering  this  illustrious  man  from  tlie 
persecution  of  die  ahurch  of  England,  and  for  the  liappiness  and  advantage 
expected  from  his  presence,  example,  and  coiui^els  ;  iW  his  character  was 
equal  to  his  genius  and  learning.  But  he  preferred  suiTermg  In  a  land  of  which 
he  fully  understood  the  language,  to  enjoyment  and  honor  among  a  people 
with  whom  his  communication  must  necessarily  have  been  more  restricted. 
At  a  later  period,  when  the  presidency  of  Harvard  College  was  offered  to 
him,  he  consented  to  embrace  this  sphere  of  useful  and  important  duty ; 
and  liaving  shipped  his  effects  for  New  England,  was  preparing  to  accom- 
pany them,  when  his  steps  were  arrested  by  an  order  from  Charles,  expressly 
commanding  him  not  to  depart  from  tlie  kingdom.^ 

■  iS   The  apprehension  which  the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  had  entertaincdi 
ever  sinc-fi  the  Pestorauon.  of  hostile  designs  of  the  English  government, 


Chalmen. 


*'Mmu.     HwriMMPO. 


CHAP;  FVl]:  APPOINTMBWT  OF  COMMISSIONERS  FOR  NEW  ENGLAND. 


w-hittb  hfkd  beep  confirmed  by  the  reasons  assigned  by  Dr.  Owen  for  n>- 
fusing  the  first  iwr itation  they  tendered  to  him,  was  strengthened  by  alt  the 
other  intelligeoc©  th*y  dateined  from  England.  A  ^eat  number  of  thfe 
ejected  Non-conformist  ministers  who  had  made  preparation  for  emigrating 
to  Massachusetts  now  decKned  to  settle  in  a  country  on  which  the  extreme 
of  royal  yerigeanoe  was  expected  to  descend  ;  and  at  length  the  most  positive 
information  was  received,  that  Charles  had  openly  avowedi,  that,  although  he 
wasi  willing  ta  preserve  the  provincial  charter,  he  was  nevertheless  deter- 
mined to  institute  an  inquiry  fw  the  porpose  of  ascertaining  how  far  the  pro"- 
visions  (rf  this-  charter  had  been  practically  observed.  It  was  reported  soon 
after,  that  the  king  had  associated  this  object  with  the  design  which  he 
cherished  of  provoking  a  quarrel  with  Holland  ;  and  that  for  this  double  pur- 
pose he  was  preparing  to  despatch'  an  expedition  for  the  reduction  of  th« 
Dutch  settlement  of  New  York,  and  meant  to  send  along  with  it  a  board  of ' 
commissioners  empowered  to  investigate  and  judge  (according  to  their  oww 
discretion)  all  complaints  and  disputes  that  might  exist  within  New  Englar  J, 
and  to  take  every  step  they  might  judge  necessary  for  settling  the  peace  a?.Mt 
security  of  the  country  on  a  sdid  foundation.  In  effect,  a  commission  for 
these  purposes,  as  well  as  for  the  reduction  of  New  York,  had  already  been* 
issued  by  the  king  to  Sir  Robert  Carr,  Colonel  Nichols,  George  Cartwright, 
and  Samuel  Maverick.  This  measure,  conspiring  with  the  reports  that  had 
long  prevailed  of  the  projects  harboured  by  the  court  of  England  against  the 
liberties  of  the  colonists,  was  calculated  to  strike  them  with  dismay.  They 
knew  that  plausible  pretexts  were  not  wanting  to  justify  a  censorious  view 
of  certain  parts  of  their  conduct ;  and  they  were  firmly  persuaded  that  the 
dislike  and  suspicion  with  which  the  king  regarded  them  would  never  be 
satisfied  by  any  measure  short  of  the  eiiltire  abrogatiorh  of  their  institutions. 
Various  controversies  had  arisen  between  the  different  settlements,  con- 
cerning the  boundaries  of  their  respective  terrilwies  ;  and  loud  complaintft 
\Tere  preferred  by  the  representatives  of  Mason,  and  by  Gorges,  and  other 
members  of  the  old  Council  of  Plymouth,  of  the  occupation  of  districts  and 
the  exercise  of  jurisdiction  to  which  these  complainers  pretended  a  prefer- 
able right.  The  claim  of  Mason  to  New  Hampshire,  derived  from  the  as*- 
signment  of  the  Plymouth  Council,  had  never  been  expressly  surrendered  ; 
and  Gorges's  title  to  Maine  was  confirmed  and  enlarged  by  a  grant  from  the 
late  king,  in  the  year  1639.  As  Gorges  adhered  to  the  royal  cause  in  thiB' 
civil  wars,  the  death  of  the  king  produced  the  temporary  demise  of  hrs- 
patent ;  both  he  and  Mason's  heirs  had  long  abandoned  their  projects,  in 
despair  of  ever  prosecuting  them  to  a  successful  issue.  But  now  the  resto- 
ration of  royalty  in  England  presented  them  with  an  opportunity  of  vindi- 
cating their  claims  ;  and  the  congregation  of  inhabitants  in  the  territories 
promised  advantage  from  such  vindication.  They  had  as  yet  reaped  no 
benefit  from  the  money  expended  on  their  acquisitions ;  but  they  now  em- 
brared  the  prospect,  and  claimed  tlie  right  of  the  labors  of  others,  who,  in 
ignorance  of  their  pretensions,  had  occupied  and  colonized  a  vacant  soil,  and 
held  it  by  the  right  of  purchase  from  its  native  proprietors.  In  addition  to 
this  formidable  controversy,  many  complaints  were  preferred  by  royalists, 
Quakers,  and  Episcopalians,  of  abuses  in  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  adminis- 
tration of  Massachusetts.     The  investigation  and  adjustment  of  these  com- 

nlgitl^*    OTl"     /»rtrtficr«7tit»oioa    wwrof**     trio    »\t«ir«/»irfcr»l     i*«kn0j^na      nc*e«fw«a«^.     iVxi"    ffipk    i^f\%rn\ 

commission.     But,  doubtless,  the  main  object  of  concern  to  the  English 


230 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


court  was  the  suppression  or  essential  modification  of  institutions  founded 
and  administered  on  principles  that  had  so  long  warred  with  monarchy,  and 
so  recently  prevailed  over  it.  The  colonists  readily  believed  the  accounts 
they  received  from  their  friends  in  England  of  this  hostile  disposition  of  Uieir 
sovereign  ;  and  the  proclamation  by  which  they  cautioned  the  enemies  of  his 
government  not  to  expect  shelter  in  Massachusetts  was  intended  td  remove  or 
appease  it.  When  intelligence  was  received  of  the  expected  visitation  from 
England,  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  appointed  a  day  of  solemn  fast 
and  prayer  throughout  its  jurisdiction,  in  order  to  implore  the  mercy  of  God 
under  their  many  distractions  and  troubles  ;  and  deeming  it  a  point  of  the 
highest  importance  that  the  patent  or  charter  should  be  kept  "  safe  and  se- 
cret," they  ordered  their  secretary  to  bring  it  into  court,  and  deliver  it  to 
four  of  the  members,  who  were  directed  to  dispose  of  it  in  such  manner  as 
they  should  judge  most  conducive  to  its  secure  preservation.  Aware  of  the 
profane,  licentious  manners  of  European  sailors  and  soldiers,  and  reflecting 
on  the  peculiar  strictness  of  the  provincial  laws,  the  Court  adopted  at  tlie 
same  time  the  most  prudent  precautions  for  preventing  the  necessity  of  either 
a  hazardous  enforcement  or  a  pusillanimous  suspension  of  its  municipal  or- 

QlI1fl.nC6S 

On  the  arrival  of  the  royal  armament  at  Boston  in  tlie  following  year 
[1664],  the  commissioners  exhibited  their  credentials  to  the  gov^nor  and 
council,  and  demanded,  in  the  first  instance,  that  a  troop  of  provincial  militia 
should  be  embodied  to  accompany  the  English  forces  in  the  invasion  of 
New  York.  Endicott,  the  governor,  neither  relishing  the  enterprise,  nor 
empowered  by  the  forms  of  the  provincial  constitution  to  levy  forces  with- 
out express  permission  from  the  General  Court,  judged  it  necessary  to  con- 
voke this  body  ;  but  the  commissioners,  who  had  not  leisure  to  await  its 
dehberations,  proceeded  with  the  fleet  against  New  York,  desiring  that  the 
provincial  auxiliaries  should  follow  as  quickly  as  possible,  Mid  signifying  to 
the  governor  and  council  that  they  had  much  important  business  to  transact 
with  them  on  their  return  from  New  York,  and  that  in  the  mean  time  tlie 
General  Court  would  do  well  to  bestow  a  fuller  consideration  than  they 
seemed  yet  to  have  done  on  the  letter  which  the  king  addressed  to  Uiem  two 
years  before.  The  vague,  mysterious  terms  of  this  communication  were 
certainly  calculated,  and  would  seem  to  have  been  deliberately  intended,  to 
increase  the  disquiet  and  apprehensions  of  the  colonists.  That  they  pro- 
duced this  impression  is  manifest  from  the  transactions  that  ensued  in  the 

General  Court. 

On  the  assembling  of  this  body,  it  was  declared  by  an  immediate  and 
unanimous  vote,  that  they  were  ''  resolved  to  bear  true  allegiance  to  his 
Majesty,  and  to  adhere  to  a  patent  so  dearly  obtained  and  so  long  enjoyed 
by  undoubted  right."  In  compliance  with  the  requisition  of  the  commis- 
sioners, they  equipped  a  regiment  of  two  hundred  men,  who  were  preparing 
to  embark  for  New  York,  when  intelligence  arrived  that  the  place  had 
already  surrendered,  and  that  the  junction  of  the  English  and  provincial 
forces  was  no  longer  necessary.  The  assembly  then  resumed  consideration 
of  the  king's  letter,  which  was  so  emphatically  commended  to  their  atten- 
tion ;  and  passed  a  law  extending  the  elective  franchise  to  all  the  inhabitants 
of  English  or  provincial  birth,  paying  public  rates  to  a  certain  amount,  and 
attested  by  a  minister  as  orthodox  in  Uieir  religious  principles  and  noUrn- 
'HiitchiiHoo     fi«lknap     Sullivnn.    Hazard. 


H:Mi 


[BOOK  II.        I     CHAP.  IV]      PETITION  OF  MA88ACIIU8ETTS  TO  THE  KING. 


231 


itions  founded 

nonarchy,  and 

I  the  accounts 

Qsition  of  tlieir 

enemies  of  his 

d  td  remove  or 

visitation  from 

of  solemn  fast 

mercy  of  God 

a  point  of  tlie 

"  safe  and  se- 

d  deliver  it  to 

luch  manner  as 

Aware  of  the 

,  and  reflecting 

idopted  at  the 

essity  of  either 

I  municipal  or- 

following  year 
5  governor  and 
■ovincial  militia 
he  invasion  of 
enterprise,  nor 
vy  forces  with- 
cessary  to  con- 
ire  to  await  its 
esiring  that  the 
id  signifying  to 
less  to  transact 
mean  time  the 
ition  than  they 
ed  to  them  two 
unication  were 
;ly  intended,  to 
That  they  pro- 
it  ensued  in  the 

immediate  and 
legiance  to  his 

0  long  enjoyed 
jf  the  commis- 
were  preparing 

the  place  had 

and  provincial 

id  consideration 

to  their  atten- 

1  the  inhabitants 
lin  amount,  and 
les  and  not  im- 


moral in  their  lives,  whether  within  or  without  the  pale  of  the  established 
hirrh      They  next  proceeded  to  frame  and  transmit  to  the  knig  a  petit-on 

liongly  expressive  of  their  present  apprehensions  and  their  habitual  senti.- 
Its     They  represented  at  considerable  length  the  dangers  and  d.lTuut.es 

Tev  liad  encountered  in  founding  and  rearing  their  settlenrient  ;  the  explicit 

confirmation  which  their  privileges  had  received,  both  from  the  re.gmng 

monarch  and  his  predecessor  ;  and  their  own  recognition  of  royal  authority, 
„d  willingness  to  testify  their  allegiance  in  every  righteous  way.      1  hey 

'pxcressed  their  concern  at  the  appointment  of  four  commissioners,  one  ot 
vhom  (Maverick)  was  their  known  and  professed  enemy,  who  were  vested 

.  ih  an  indefinite  authority,  in  the  exercise  of  which  they  were  to  be  guided, 
ot  by  the  known  rules  of  law,  but  by  their  own  discretion  ;  and  they  de- 
lared,  that  even  the  little  experience  which  already  they  had  obtained  of 
,he  dispositions  of  these  persons  was  sufficient  to  assure  them  that  the  powers 
onferred  by  the  commission  would  be  employed  to  the  complete  subversion 
of  the  provincial  constitution.     If  any  advantage  was  expected  from  the 
Losition  of  new  rules  and  the  infringement  of  their  liberties,  the  design, 
thev  protested,  would  produce  only  disappointment  to  its  authors  ;  for  the 
ountrv  was  so  poor,  that  it  afforded  little  more  than  a  bare  subsistence  to 
Z  inhabitants,  and  the  people  were  so  much  attached  to  their  institutions, 
1    if  deprived  of  them  in  America,  tliey  would  seek  them  in  new  and 
more  distant  habitations  ;  and  if  they  were  driven  out  of  their  present  ter- 
Htory,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  find  another  race  of  inhabitants  who  would 
be  wiling  to  sojourn  in  it.»    They  averred,  m  a  solemn  appeal  to  God,- that 
hey  came  not  into  this  wilderness  in  quest  of  ternporal  grandeur  or  advan- 
aee  but  for  the  sake  of  a  quiet  life  ;  and  concluded  in  the  following  strains 
of  earnest  anxiety  :-"  Let  our  government  live,  our  patent  live,  our  magis- 
trates live,  our  laws  and  liberties  live,  our  religious  enjoyments  live  ;  so  shall 
we  all  yet  have  farther  cause  to  say  from  our  hearts,  Let  the  king  live 

for  Gvcr  II 

Letters  suing  for  favor  and  friendly  mediation  were  addressed  at  the  same 
time  to  several  of  the  English  nobility,  and  particularly  to  the  chmce^or 
Lord  Clarendon.     But  these  applications  were  unsuccessful,     t^larendon 
was  no  friend  to  Puritan  establishments  ;  he  had  instigated,  or  at  least  cor- 
,lially  abetted,  the  existing  persecution  against  sectanes  ^f  ^^/^ /'f "7'- 
nation  in  England  ;  and  he  was  at  present  too  painful  y  sens  ble  of  iis  de- 
ining  credifwith  the  king,  to  risk  the  farther  provocation  of  his  displeasure 
by  moving  the  suit  of  a  people  whom  the  monarch  disliked,  and  opposing  a 
favorite  sdieme  of  royal  policy.     In  a  letter  to  the  provincial  fvernor  he 
defended  the  commission  as  a  constitutional  exercise  of  royal  POwer  and 
wisdom,  and  a  manifest  indication  of  his  Majesty's  grace  and  goodness  , 
and  advised  the  colonists,  by  a  prompt  ^"bmissiontcv  deprecate  the  conse- 
quences of  that  indignation  which  their  ungrateful  damor  '""f .  f  eady  ha^  e 
excited  in  the  breast'of  the  king.    The  answer  of  Charles,  Y^'i^h  was  tr  ns- 
.nitted  by  Secretary  Morrice,  to  the  petition  of  the  General  Court,  excted 
less  surprise.     It  reproached  this  assembly  with  making  unreasonable  and 
groundless  complaints  ;  represented  the  commission  as  the  only  proper  means 

•  It  ircuriouB  to  obHcrvo  the  e«pre«.ion  of  a  similar  sentiment  by  the  '"f  J|««7/ "^''iflfbar: 


252 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


of  rectifying  the  provincial  disorders  ;  and  affected  to  conmder  the  petition 
as  '*  the  contrivance  of  a  few  persons  who  infuse  jealousies  into  their  fellow, 
wjhjects  as  if  tlieir  charter  were  in  danger.'*' 

No  sooner  was  the  cuii(|uest  of  New  York  completed,^  than  the  commis- 
sioners  addrossod  themselves  to  the  discharge  of  their  civil  functions  in  New 
England.  One  of  the  first  official  acts  that  they  had  occasion  to  perform  wag 
the  iidjiistinont  of  a  dispute  respectmg  boundaries,  that  arose  out  of  the  occu- 
nation  uf  New  York.  [1665.  J  A  patent  had  been  granted  to  the  Duke  of 
York,  of  ail  the  territory  occupied  or  claimed  by  the  Dutch,  including  large 
districts  already  comprehended  in  the  charter  of  Connecticut.  A  contro- 
versy  concerning  limits  was  thus  created  by  the  act  of  the  crown,  between 
the  State  of  Connecticut  and  the  new  province  desienatcd  by  the  patent  of 
the  Duke  of  York.  Their  boundaries  were  now  adjusted  by  the  commis- 
sioners in  a  mannor  which  appears  to  have  been  highly  satisfactory  to  the 
people  of  Connecticut,  but  which  entailed  a  great  deal  of  subsequent  dis- 
pute. Another  controversy,  in  which  Connecticut  \ma  involved,  arose  out 
of  a  claim  to  part  of  its  territory  preferred  by  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  and 
other  poisons,  in  virtue  of  rights  that  had  accnied  to  themselves  or  their 
ancestors  as  members  of  the  (irand  Council  of  Plymouth.  The  commia- 
.sioners,  desirous  of  giving  satisfaction  to  both  parties,  adjudged  the  property 
of  the  disputed  soil  to  these  individual  claimants,  but  declared  that  the  muni- 
cipal government  of  the  territory  appertained  to  Connecticut.  It  appears 
nmnifestly  to  have  been  their  policy  to  detach  tlie  other  New  England  States 
from  the  obnoxious  province  of  Massachusetts,  and  to  procure  their  co- 
operation (by  the  example  of  implicit  submission  on  their  own  part,  and  the 
accumulation  of  complamts  against  that  province)  in  the  design  of  curtailing 
her  liberties  and  altering  hor  institutions.  In  the  prosecution  of  this  policy 
they  were  but  partially  successful.  The  people  of  Connecticut  received  the 
commissioners  with  frigid  respect,  and  plainly  showed  that  they  disliked 
their  mission,  and  regarded  the  cause  of  Massachusetts  as  their  own.  Nay, 
so  strongly  were  they  impressed  with  the  danger  to  their  liberties  from  the 
interposition  of  such  arbitrary  power,  that  some  disagreements,  which  had 
arisen  between  Connecticut  and  New  Haven,  and  hitherto  prevented  their 
union  in  conformity  with  the  recent  charter,  were  entirely  composed  by  the 
mere  tidings  of  the  approach  of  the  commissioners.  At  Plymouth  the  com- 
missioners met  with  little  opposition  ;  the  inhabitants  being  deterred  from 
expression  of  their  sentiments  by  a  consciousness  of  their  weakness,  and 
being  exemj)ted  from  the  apprehensions  that  prevailed  in  the  provinces  ot" 
greater  consideration  by  a  sense  of  their  insignificance. 

In  Rhode  Island  alone  was  their  insidious  policy  attended  with  success. 
There,  the  people  received  them  with  studious  deference  and  submission ; 
their  inquiries  were  answered,  and  their  mandates  obeyed,  without  a  syllable 
of  objection  to  the  authority  from  which  they  emanated  ;  and  during  their 
stay  in  this  settlement  they  wore  enabled  to  amplify  their  reports  with  num- 
berless complaints  of  injustice  and  misgovernment  alleged  to  have  been  com- 
mitted in  Massachusetts.  The  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island,  as  we  have 
seen,  gained  their  late  charter  by  a  display  of  subservience  and  devotion  to 
the  crow  n  ;  and  the  liberal  institutions  which  it  introduced  had  not  yet  had 
lime  to  form         •••■•• 

ignoble  a  tenure 

'  Huu:hini>r.i.    Chaiinor*. 


a  spirit  that  disdained  to  hold  the  enjoyment  of  liberty  by  so 
jre.     The  freedom  thus  souriouslv  becotten  was  tainted  in  its 


puriously  begotten  was  tainted  in  its 

•  See  Book  V.,  chap. 


I.,  po0t. 


(HAP.  Pf]       VIEWS  iJlf  A1/LBGIAN0B  IN  MASBACHUSETTS. 


23$ 


birth  by  principles  thnt  long  rendered  its  existence  precarioufl  ;  and  we  shall 
find  Uiese  colonists,  a  few  years  after,  abjectly  proposing  to  strip  themselves 
of  the  rights  which  they  gained  so  ill,  and  of  which  they  now  showed  them- 
selves unworthy,  by  their  willingness  to  cooperate  in  attacking  the  liberties 
of  Massachusetts.  We  must  not,  however,  discard  from  our  recollection 
that  Rhode  Island  was  yet  but  a  feeble  community,  and  that  the  unfavorable 
sentiments  with  whicb  many  of  its  inhabitants  regarded  Massachusetts  arose 
from  the  persecution  which  their  religious  tenets  had  experienced  in  this 
province.  Their  conduct  to  the  commissioners  received  the  warmest  appro- 
bation from  Charles,  who  assured  them  that  he  would  never  be  unmindful 
of  the  claims  they  had  acquired  ort  his  goodness  by  a  demeanour  so  replete 
with  loyalty  and  humility.'  In  justice  to  the  king,  whose  word  was  prover- 
bially the  object  of  very  little  reliance,  we  may  observe  that  he  never  actu- 
ally contradicted  these  professions  of  favor  for  Rhode  Island  ;  and  in  jus- 
tice to  a  moral  lesson  that  would  be  otherwise  incomplete,  we  may  here  so 
far  transgress  the  pace  of  time,  as  to  remark,  that,  when  Charles's  successor 
extended  to  Rhode  Island  the  same  tyrannical  system  which  he  introduced 
into  the  other  New  England  provinces,  and  when  the  people  endeavoured 
to  avert  the  blow  by  a  repetition  of  the  abject  pliancy  that  had  formerly 
availed  them,  their  prostration  was  disregarded,  and  their  complete  subju- 
l^ation  pursued  and  accomplislied  with  an  insolence  that  forcibly  taught  them 
to  detest  oppression  and  despise  servility. 

It  was  in  Massachusetts  that  the  commission  was  expected  to  produce  its 
most  important  effects  ;  and  from  the  difference  between  the  views  and 
opinions  entertained  by  the  English  government  and  by  the  provincial  au- 
thorities, it  was  easily  foreseen  that  the  proceedings  of  the  commissioners 
would  provoke  a  keen  and  resolute  opposition.  Among  other  communica- 
tions, which  the  commissioners  were  charged  to  convey  to  the  colonists, 
was,  that  the  king  considered  them  to  stand  in  precisely  the  same  relation 
to  him  as  the  inhabitants  of  Kent  or  Yorkshire  in  England.  Very  different 
was  the  opinion  which  the  colonists  themselves  entertained.  They  con- 
sidered, that,  having  been  forced  by  persecution  to  depart  from  the  realm 
of  England,  and  having  established  themselves  by  their  own  unassisted 
efforts  in  territories  which  they  purchased  from  the  natural  proprietors,  they 
retained  no  other  political  connection  with  their  sovereign  than  what  was 
I  reated  by  their  charter,  which  they  regarded  as  the  sole  existing  compact 
between  the  English  crown  and  themselves,  and  as  defining  all  the  particu- 
lars and  limits  of  their  obedience.  The  acknowledged  difference  of  senti- 
ment in.  religion  and  politics  between  them  and  their  ancient  rulers,  from 
which  their  colonial  settlement  originated,  and  (he  habits  of  self-government 
that  they  had  long  been  enabled  to  indulge,  confirmed  these  prepossessions, 
iind  tended  generally  and  deeply  to  impress  the  conviction,  that  their  primi- 
tive allegiance,  as  natives  of  England  and  subjects  of  the  British  crown,  was 
entirely  dissolved  and  superseded  by  the  stipulations  which  they  had  volun- 
tarily contracted  by  accepting  their  charter.  Such  opinions,  though  strongly 
(herishod,  it  was  not  prudent  distinctly  to  profess ;  but  their  prevalence  is 
attested  by  a  respectable  provincial  historian,  on  the  authority  of  certain 
manuscript  compositions  of  the  leading  persons  in  Massachusetts  at  this 
period,  which  he  had  an  opportunity  of  perusing.  The  colonists  were  not 
ihe  less  attached  to  these  notions,  from  the  apprehension  that  they  would 

'  Hutchinson.     ChaJiucn. 
VOL.   I.  30  T* 


234 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  U. 


find  as  litUe  favor  in  the  eyes  of  the  English  government  as  the  tenets  which 
had  led  to  the  persecution  and  emigration  of  their  ancestors  ;  they  were, 
indeed  quite  repugnant  to  the  principles  of  the  English  law,  which  regards 
the  allegiance  of  subjects  to  their  sovereign,  not  as  a  local  or  provincial  but 
as  a  perpetual  and  indissoluble  tie,  which  distance  of  place  does  not  sunder, 
nor  lapse  of  time  relax.  Forcibly  aware  of  these  differences  of  opinion,  of 
the  dangerous  collisions  which  might  result  from  them,  and  of  the  disadvan- 
taee  with  which  they  must  conduct  a  discussion  with  _  persons  who  sought 
nothing  so  much  as  to  find  or  make  them  offenders,  the  colonists  awaited, 
with  much  anxiety,  the  return  of  the  commissioners  to  Boston. 

The  character  and  disposition  of  these  commissioners  mcreased  the  proba- 
bility of  an  unfriendly  issue  to  their  debates  with  the  provincial  authorities. 
If  conciliation  was,  as  the  king  professed,  the  object  which  he  had  in  view 
in  instituting  tli*?  commission,  he  was  singularly  unfortunate  in  the  selection 
of  the  instruments  to  whom  the  discharge  of  its  important  duUes  was  con- 
fided.    Nichols,  indeed,  was  a  man  of  honor,  good  sense,  and  ability  ;  but 
it  was  mainly  for  the  reduction  and  subsequent  governance  of  New  York 
that  he  had  been  appointed  to  accompany  the  expedition  ;  he  remained  at 
that  place  after  its  capitulation  ;  and  when  he  afterwards  rejoined  his  col- 
leagues,  he  found  himself  unable  to  control  their  conduct,  or  repair  the 
breach  which  they  had  already  occasioned.    The  other  commissioners  were 
utterly  destitute  of  the  temper,^  sense,  and  address  which  their  office  de- 
manded  ;  and  Maverick  added  to  these  defects  an  inveterate  hostility  to  te 
colony,  which  had  induced  him  for  years  to  solicit  the  fiinctions  which  he 
now  hastened  to  execute  with  mahgnant  satisfaction.     On  their  return  to 
Boston  [April,  1665],  the  very  first  communication  which  they  addressed 
to  tlie  governor  demonstrated  the  slight  respect  they  entertained  for  the 
provincial  authorities  ;  for  they  required  that  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  pro- 
vince  should  be  assembled  to  receive  and  reply  to  their  commumcation ; 
and  when  Uie  governor  desired  to  know  the  cause  of  this  requisition,  they 
answered,  "  that  the  motion  was  so  reasonable,  that  he  who  vyould  not  at- 
tend  to  it  was  a  traitor."     Perceiving,  however,  that  this  violent  language 
served  rather  to  confirm  the  suspicions  than  to  shake  the  resolution  ol  the 
provincial  magistrates,  they  condescended  for  a  while  to  adopt  a  more  con- 
ciliating tone,  and  informed  the  General  Cou/t  that  they  h»d  favorably  rep- 
resented  to  the  king  the  promptness  with  which  his  commands  had  been 
obeyed  in  the  equipment  of  a  provincial  regiment ;  but  it  was  soon  ascer- 
tained that  they  had  actually  transmitted  a  representation  of  perfectly  oppo- 

^' Vlli^^s'li'spicions  which  the  commissioners  and  the  General  Court  recipro- 
cally  entertained  of  each  other  prevented,  from  the  outset,  any  cordial  co- 
operation between  them.  The  communications  of  the  commissioners  dis- 
play  the  most  lofty  ideas  of  their  own  aujiority  ajjepresentatives  ot  the 

*  The'ecn^rewneM  of  their  conduct  i«  atror.ly  illustrated  by  a  cage  related  at  considerable 
length  bvthrpr"vincial  historians.  They  hnALn  drinking,  ore  S«;"rd"y  mght,  m  a  ^ 
aftpr  the  hour  when,  by  the  provincial  laws,  nil  taverns  were  ordered  to  be  shut   A  constnD  . 
who  warS  th^m  not  to  infringe  the  law,  was  beaten  by  them.    Uennng  that  Ma^"".  »."«> 
ronstrie   had Telared  that  A*  would  not  have  been  deterred  bv  the.r  violence  from  do  n^ 

dm;rthey'ent'i^^r^^^  from  hi.n  '^-^'^'"''£1^'^^^^^^^^ 

king  himself,  if  he  had  found  him  drinking  in  a  public  h«"w  ?ft«r  ''^-'n^' "o  ™  ^  '^'^^'  ,. 
.i.„f  (.,.  uJ.U  I...  iriod  for  l.iffh  treuHon.  and  actually  prevailed  to  have  this  injiisliH)  (om 
miticdT  The]u"ry"relurn...da;i.€cii.l  vcrdirt ;  and  tho  court,  conmderiiiu  U...  Wurag  oiiun^.u 
andinHolcnt,  b^'ul  not  treasonable,  irrtictcd  only  a  slight  punishment,      llutchinson. 


CHAP.  IV.] 


DISPUTES  WITH  THE  COMMISSIONERS. 


236 


crown,  with  a  preconceived  opinion  that  there  was  an  indisposition  on  the 
part  of  the  General  Court  to  pay  due  respect  to  their  authority,  as  well  as 
to  the  source  from  which  it  was  derived.     The  answers  of  the  General 
Court  manifest  an  anxious  desire  to  avoid  a  quarrel  with  the  king,  and  to 
gratify  his  Majesty  by  professions  of  loyalty  and  submission,  and  by  every 
municipal  change  that  seemed  likely  to  meet  his  wishes,  without  compro- 
mising the  fundamental  principles  of  their  peculiar  polity.     They  expressed, 
at  the  same  time,  a  deliberate  conviction  of  having  done  nothing  that  merited 
displeasure  or  required  apology,  and  a  steady  determination  to  abide  by  the 
charter.     The  correspondence  gradually  degenerated  into  altercation.     At 
length,  the  commissionefs  demanded  from  the  Court  an  explicit  answer  to 
the°question,  if  they  acknowledged  the  authority  of  his  Majesty's  commis- 
sion.   But  the  Court  desired  to  be  excused  from  giving  any  other  answer 
than  that  they  acknowledged  the  authority  of  his  Majesty's  charter,  with 
wliich  they  were  niuch  better  acquainted.   Finding  that  their  object  was  not 
to  be  gained  by  threats  or  expostulations,  the  commissioners  attempted  a 
practical  assertion  of  their  pretensions ;  they  granted  letters  of  protection 
to  persons  who  were  prosecuted  before  the  provincial  tribunals  ;  and  in  a 
civil  suit,  which  was  already  determined  by  the  provincial  judges,  they  pro- 
moted an  appeal  to  themselves  from  the  unsuccessful  party,  and  summoned 
him  and  his  adversary  to  plead  before  them.    The  General  Court  perceived 
that  they  must  now  or  never  make  a  stand  in  defence  of  their  authority  ;  and 
with  a  decision  which  showed  the  high  value  they  entertained  for  their  privi- 
leges, and  the  vigor  with  which  they  were  prepared  to  guard  them,  they 
publicly  proclaimed  their  disapprobation  of  this  measure,  and  declared,  that, 
in  discharge  of  their  duty  to  God  and  the  king,  and  in  faithfulness  to  the  trust 
reposed  in  them  by  the  king's  good  subjects  in  the  colony,  tliey  must  protest 
against  the  proceedings  of  the  commissioners,  and  disclaim  friendship  with 
all  who  would  countenance  or  abet  them.    They  accompanied  this  vigorous 
demonstration  with  an  offer  to  compromise  the  dispute  by  rejudging  the 
cause  themselves  in  presence  of  the  commissioners  ;  but  this  proposition  was 
scornfully  rejected,  and  every  effort  to  establish  harmony  between  these 
conflicting  authorities  proved  unavailing. 

Suspending  for  a  time  their  operations  at  Boston,  the  commissioners  re- 
paired to  New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  and  instantly  pronouncing  sentence  in 
favor  of  the  claims  of  Mason  and  Gorges  against  the  jurisdiction  of  Massa- 
chusetts, they  suppressed  tlie  existing  audiorities,  and  erected  a  new  system 
of  government  in  each  of  those  provinces.  On  their  return  to  Boston,  the 
General  Court  declared  that  these  measures  tended  to  the  disturbance  of 
the  public  peace,  and  demanded  a  conference  with  the  commissioners,  which 
was  refused  with  an  asperity  of  reproach  that  excluded  all  farther  corre- 
spondence. Sir  Robert  Carr  even  went  the  length  of  assuring  the  General 
Court  that  the  king's  pardon  for  their  manifold  treasons  during  the  civil  war 
had  been  merely  conditional  and  was  now  forfeited  by  their  evil  behivicv, 
and  that  the  contrivers  of  their  late  measures  would  speedily  endure  the 
same  punishment  which  their  associates  in  rebellion  had  recently  experienced 
in  England. 

The  king,  having  been  apprized  of  these  transactions,  and  assured  by  the 
commissioners  that  it  was  fruitless  for  them  to  prolong  a  discussion  with  per- 
sons who  were  determined  to  misconstrue  all  their  words  and  actions,  issued 
letters,  recalling  tliese  functionaries  to  England  [1666],  expressing  his  satis- 


I 


.J 


n 


296 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERIGA; 


[BOOK  il, 


■•m 


fiction  with  the  conduct  of  all  the  colonies  except  Massachusetts,  and  com. 
niandine  the  General  Court  of  this  province  to  send  deputies  to  answer  in 
his  presence  the  charges  preferred  against  their  countrymen.     But  the  in, 
habitants  of  Massachusetts  were  aware  that  in  such  a  controversy  they  had 
mi  the  remotest  chance  of  success,  and  that  it  was  not  by  reasonable  pleas, 
or  the  coeency  of  argument,  that  they  could  hope  to  pacity  the  displeasure 
of  their  sovereign.     Instead  of  complying  with  his  injunction,  the  General 
Court  addressed  a  letter  to  the  secretary  of  state,  in  which  they  hinted  real 
or  pretended  doubts  of  the  authenticity  of  the  royal  mandate,  and  declared 
that  their  cause  had  already  been  so  plainly  and  minutely^  unfolded,  that  the 
ablest  among  them  would  be  utterly  incapable  of  rendering  it  any  clearer. 
At  the  same  time  they  endeavcired  to  appease  his  Majesty  by  humble  ad- 
dresses expressive  of  their  loyali/  ;  and  in  order  to   \emon8t  ite  the  sense 
they  attached  to  these  professions,  they  purchased  a  ship-load  oi  masts  which 
they  presented  to  the  king  ;  and  learning  that  his  fleet  in  the  West  Indies 
was  distressed  by  want  of  provisions,  they  promoted  a  contribution  among 
themselves,  and  victualled  it  at  their  own  expense.     Charlet,  accepted  their 
presents  very  graciously  ;  and  a  letter  under  the  sign  manual  having  been 
transmitted  to  the  General  Court,  declaring  that  their  zeal  forjhe  royal  ser- 
vice was  "  taken  well  by  his  Majesty,"  the  cloud  that  had  gathered  over  the 
colony  in  this  quarter  seemed  for  the  present  to  be  dispersed.^  Nevertheless, 
the  design  that  had  been  so  far  disclosed  of  remodelhng  the  institutions  of 
New  England  was  by  no  means  abandoned.     The  report  of  the  commis^ 
sioners  furnished  Charles  with  the  very  pretexts  that  were  wanting  to  the 
accomplishment  of  his  plans;  and  the  measures  which  he  embraced,  at  a 
later  period,  demonstrated  that  it  was  not  the  dutiful  professions  or  liberah- 
ties  of  the  colonists  that  would  deter  him  from  avaihng  himselt  ot  the  advan- 
tages which  he  had  made  such  efforts  to  obtain.     But  the  dreadful  affliction 
of  the  p/o'TU*,  —  which  broke  out  with  such  violence,  as  m  one  year  to 
destroy  ninety  thousand  of  the  inhabitants  of  London,  and  to  Iransfer  fo,  a 
time  the  seat  of  government  to  Oxford,  —  the  great  fire  of  London,''  the 
wars  and  intrigues  on  the  comment  of  Europe,  and  the  rising  discontents 
of  the  people  of  Britain,  so  forcibly  engaged  the  attention  of  the  king,  as  to 
suspend  for  a  while  the  execution  of  his  designs  against  the  institutions  of 

New  England.  .    .  .  .  „ 

After  the  departure  of  the  royal  commissioners,  the  provinces  ot  Wew 
England  enjoyed  for  some  years  a  quiet  and  prosperous  condition.  The 
onl?  disturbance  which  their  internal  tranquillity  sustained  arose  Irom  the 
persecutions,  which,  in  all  the  States  except  Rhode  Island,  continued  to  be 

i  ATiberareontriblTtion  wa»  made  by  tlio  people  of  iyia8.acliui.ette,  and  transmitted  toLon- 
don.  fo  relief  of  the  .ufferers  by  tha  fire.  ilutohi..«..v  Wo  have  B«eathe.r  kindness  hon- 
ondlv  repaid  [18361,  by  a  Bubscription  among  the  cit. /.«.».  of  London  for  rehef  of  the  sul- 
?nW  by  a  vost^on  Aration  at  New  York.  TTio  people  of  New  England  have  alwaj^s  oe„ 
v.norablv  di.tin)(.ii.sbod  by  their  charitable  particination  of  the  miBfortune*  of  other  romnnin.. 
Uo«  In  the  ye«  1703,  U.er  contributed  iii.OOt)  L  the  relief  of  the  ,nhab.tant«  of  N«v.san 
St  ChrLtophen.,  which  ha/ been  ravaged  by  the  French.  Holmen.  In  the  »ame  year  h 
had  an  onpWtun  ity  of  showing  that  their  hand,  were  aa  ready  to  repel  the  danger  a«  to  rnliov 
he  c."«m&.fn.eir  friend*  The  planters  of  Jnn.aira  h,,vin|?  boHought  the  a»«Ht«nre  o 
NewKnKa.ul  to  repel  an  i..vtt«on  'that  wn.  apprehended  froiu  the  French,  two  rrg.ment 
Je^.  promptly  enduldied  and  desi.nt.hed  for  .1,^  purpose  ^"^T'^'ir'v^tVZZlt 
two  veaw    Oldmixon  (»!  edit.).    Viililarv  aid  wi.h  not  the  onlv  benefit  which  the  Went  India 


•  romniiKd 

Vent  India 

two  vearg.    ».»iammon  (wi  eon.;.     jTumniT  <•■<■  "•■"  •■"•  •■•' .■  - ,.    ,    , 

nl..„ten.  denve.1  from  New  Kn.land,  wl.ich  appeHr.^fWquently  to  '•''V" jmpphed  the,„,^., 

FntlanC  iVL.  fi.Mh  "inHtroction  and  the  defi.nre  of  the  cl^loninta  of  Carolina,  «,me  not.re 
will  be  found  in  Book  IV  ,  Chup.  II.,  and  Book  VIII.,  Chnp,  11.,  vutt. 


tHAP.IV.j 


GEnaSLOM  OF  ACADIA  TO  PRANCE. 


«a7 


waged  against  the  Anabaptists,  as  these  sectaries,  from  time  to  time,  ift- 
tracted  notice  by  attempting  to  propagate  their  tenets.    Letters  were  written 
ill  their  behalf  to  the  provincial  magistrates .  by  the  most  eminent  dissenting 
iiiiiiisteis  in  England  ;  but  though  it  was  strongly  urged  by  the  writers  of 
these  letters,' that  the  severe  persecntion  which  the  Anabaptists  were  then 
enduring  in  the  parent  state  should  recommend  Ihem  to  the  sympathy  of  the 
,  olonists,  and  that  their  conversion  was  more  likely  to  be  accomplished  by 
exempiifj^ng  to  them  the  peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness  than  by  attacking 
their  doctrines  with,  penal  inflictions,  which  could  have  no  other  effect  than 
to  render  them  martyrs  or  hypocrites,  the  intercessicm,  thou^  respectfully 
received,  was  completely  unavailing.     The  provincial  authorities  persisted 
in  believing  that  they  were  doing  God  service  by  employing  the  civil  power 
,vitb  which  they  were  invested  to  guard  their  territories  from  the  intrusion 
of  what  they  deemed  heresy,  and  to  maintain  the  purity  of  those  religious 
principles  for  the  cuhure  and  preservation  of  which  their  settlements  were 
orieinally  founded.     A  considerable  nuipber  of  Anabaptists  were  fined,  im- 
prisoned, and  banished  ;  and  persecution  produced  its  usual  effect  of  eon- 
firming  tlie  seitfiments  and  propagating  the  tenets  which  it  sought  to  extirpate, 
by  causing  their  professors  to  connect  them  in  their  own  minds,  and  to  ex- 
hibit them  to  others  in  connection,  with  suffering  for  conscience's  sake. 
These  proceedings,  however,  contributed  more  to  stain  the  character  of  the 
colonists  than  to  disturb  their  tranquillity.  Much  greater  disquiet  was  created 
by  the  intelligence  of  the  cession  of  Acadia,  or,  as  it  was  now  generally 
termed,  J^ova  Scotia,  to  the  French  by  the  treaty  of  Breda.     [1667.] 
Nothing  had  contributed  more  to  promote  the  commerce  and  security  of 
iVew  England  than  the  conquest  of  that  province  by  Cromwell ;  and  the  in- 
habitants of  Massachusetts,  apprized  of  the  extreme  solicitude  of  the  French 
to  regain  it,  and  justly  regarding  such  an  issue  as  pre^ant  with  mischief 
and  danger  to  themselves,  sent  agents  to  England  to  remonstrate  against  it. 
But  the  influence  of  France  prevailed  with  tlie  British  monarch  over  the  in- 
terest of  his  people  ;  and  the  conduct  of  Charles  on  this  occasion  betrayed 
as  much  indifference  for  the  external  security  of  the  colonies,  as  his  pre- 
vious measures  had  disclosed  for  their  domestic  liberties.     The  French  re- 
gained possession  of  their  ancient  settlement ;  and  both  New  England  and 
the  mother  country  had  afterwards  abundant  cause  to  regret  the  admission 
of  a  resdess  and  ambitious  neighbour,  who  for  a  long  course  of  time  ex- 
erted her  peculiar  arts  of  intrigue  to  interrupt  tlie  pursuits  and  disturb  the 
repose  of  the  British  colonists.' 

The  system  of  government  tlwt  prevailed  in  Massachusetts  coincided  with 
th  sentiments  of  a  great  majority  of  the  people  ;  and  even  those  acts  of 
municipal  administration  that  imposed  restraints  on  civil  liberty  were  rever- 
enced on  account  of  their  manifest  design  and  their  supposed  efficiency  to 
promote  an  object  which  the  people  held  dearer  than  civil  liberty  itself. 
A  printing-press  had  been  established  at  Cambridge  for  upwards  of  twenty 
yeais ;  and  the  General  Court  had  recently  appointed  two  persons  to  be 
licensers  of  the  press,  and  prohibited  the  publication  of  any  book  or  other 
composition  that  was  not  sanctioned  hy  their  censorial  approbation.  The 
licensers  having  authorized  the  publication  of  Thomas  k  Kempis's  admirable 
treatise  De  Imitatione  Christi,  the  Court  interposed  [1668],  and,  declaring 
that  "  the  book  was  written  by  a  popish  minister,  and  contained  gome  thbgs 
"  "  ~  '  Neai.    ChaiiDMra. 


i: 


U 


238 


HISTORY  OP  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


less  safe  to  be  infused  among  the  people,"  recommended  a  more  diligent 
revisal  to  the  licensers,  and  in  the  meantime  suspended  the  publication.  1„ 
a  constitution  less  popular,  a.  measure  of  this  nature  would  have  been  re- 
carded  as  an  outrage  upon  liberty.  But  the  government  of  Massachuseits 
expressed  and  was  supported  by  the  feelings  and  opmions  of  the  people; 
and  so  generally  respected  was  its  administration,  that  the  inhabitants  of 
New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  rejecting  the  form  of  municipal  authority  which 
they  received  from  the  royal  commissioners,  again  solicited  and  were  re- 
ceived  into  the  rank  of  dependencies  on  its  jurisdiction.  All  traces  of  the 
visitation  of  these  commissioners  being  thus  effaced,  and  the  apprehensions 
excited  by  their  measures  forgotten,  the  affairs  of  the  New  England  colo- 
nies  continued  for  several  years  to  gUde  on  in  a  course  of  silent  but  cheer- 
ful prosperity.!  The  Navigation  Act,  not  being  aided  by  the  estabhshment 
of  an  efficient  custom-house,  and  depending  for  its  execution  upon  officers 
annually  elected  by  their  own  fellow-citizens,  was  completely  disregarded. 
[1668-1672.]  The  people  enjoyed  a  commerce  practically  unrestricted ;  a 
consequent  increase  of  wealth  was  visible  among  the  merchants  and  farmers; 
and  habits  of  industry  and  economy  continuing  to  prevail  with  unabated 
force,  the  plantations  underwent  a  progressive  improvement,  and  many  new 

settlements  arose.  i     •  i    /c      a 

From  a  document  preserved  in  the  archives  of  the  colonial  olUce  ol  Lon- 
don,  and  published  by  Chalmers,  it  appears,  that,  in  the  year  1673,  New 
England  was  estimated  to  contain  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  souls, 
of  whom  about  sixteen  thousand  were  able  to  bear  arms  ;  and  of  the  mer- 
chants and  planters  there  were  no  fewer  than  five  thousand  persons,  each 
of  whom  was  worth  £  3,000.»  Three  fourths  of  the  wealth  and  population 
of  the  country  centred  in  the  territory  of  Massachusetts  and  its  dependen- 
cies. The  town  of  Boston  alone  contained  fifteen  hundred  families.  Theft 
was  rare,  and  beggary  unknown  in  New  England.  Josselyn,  who  returned 
about  two  years  before  this  period  from  his  second  visit  to  America,  com. 
mends  highly  the  beauty  and  agreeableness  of  the  towns  and  villages  of 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  and  the  substantial  structure  and  interior 
comfort  of  all  the  private  dwellings^During  this  interval  of  tranquil  pros- 

""Tl^Tli^^^^iirieeinh^^^^^^  New  HampBhire,  preBented  an  address 

to  the  General  Court  of  MaBsachuBetts,  Bignifying,  "  that,  a  though  they  had  articled  w.th  thm 
-   "  ■       ~  -  -> had  never  articled  with  God  and  their  own  conscience! 

en  years  to  an 
Quincy's  Hi)- 


for  exemption  from  taxes,  yet  they  had  neve. ^„  ......  --_ _ 

for  exemption  from  gratit.ie,"  ani  that  they  p- P|*d^;^--'-«,r^^^ 


lor  exemption   irom  grttiiii.u<=,     •»■>"   "■"•  j     ,     \,'^  T°  en         .j  r<^ll».» 

annual  contribution  of  sixty  pounds  sterling  to  the  funds  of  Harvard  College 

ton,  of  UarrardJJnivtririly.       _  ^    ^  ^^„  ^^ ___,  .^  „„„.,^,,i„,  „n,l  promiiL 

_^ Prctaro, 

- "  To  our  beloved  brethren  anil 


In  tho  year  1672,  the  laws  of  Connecticut  (till  then  prcBervcd  m  manu»>:riDt,  and  pre 
rated  by  oral  proclai^iation)  were  collected  into  a  code,  printed,  and  published  1  he  Pr, 
written  with  ircat  solemnity,  commences  in  this  manner  :  -  "  To  our  beloved  brcthre, 
Sl'^ours,  the  inhabitants  o'f  Connecticut,  the  General  Court  of  that  colony  wish  grace  and 
noace  in  our  Lord  Jcbus."  It  was  ordered  that  every  householder  should  have  a  copy  of  ilie 
roX  and  should  read  it  weekly  to  his  family.  Trumbull.  The  legislators  of  Connecticut  8« 
to  ha\e  though  .E  tho  d/ties  of  a  citizen  should  form  part  of  the  earlie^i 

''^"n''^'"nnoc*.c';l^by  a  law  of  1G67,  three  years'  voluntary  separation  of  married  persons. 
held  t..S.Bsolve  iheir  matrimonial  engagement.  '»  i^«'^»"8«  »!'V  "/"^  ^/^KUS 
from  the  injunctions  of  Scripture  should  have  gained  admission  into  the  codes  of  t^colland  an 
of  New  Fnilnnd,--  two  countries  long  distinguislied  above  all  others  by  the  general  and  ea 
ous  desire  of  their  people  to  harmonize  their  municipal  ordinances  witii  the  canons  of  Scnp- 

""S^John  Dunton,  who  visited  New  England  about  twelve  years  after  this  period,  mentions 
a  merchant  in  Salem  worth  £30,000.       Dunton's  Ufe.  and  Errors.  ^   i  ,i,„  „„„ 

Ty!".".-'.  o-.™j  !/».-.„.  Ev-.n  At  thi«  Afirlv  neriod.  Josselyn  has  remarked  thcprcvv 
lenco'of  t^at  inveterate  fciit  unexplained  peculiarity,  of  tho  premature  decay  of  theteeUiol 
whitn  perrons,  and  especially  women,  in  North  America. 


CHAP.  IV.] 


INDIAN  CONSPIRACY. 


239 


r  this  period,  raenlioM 


neritv  many  of  the  more  aged  inhabitants  of  New  England  closed  the  career 
nf  a  long  and  eventful  life  ;  and  the  original  race  of  settlers  was  now  almost 
entirely  extinguished.     The  annals  of  this  period  are  filled  with  accounts  of 
their  deaths,  —  of  the  virtues  by  which  they  contributed  to  the  foundation 
of  the  new  commonwealth,  and  of  the  fondness  with  which  their  closing  eyes 
lingered  upon  its  flourishing  estate.   To  our  retrospective  view,  enlarged  by 
the  knowledge  which  history  supplies  of  the  impending  calamities  from  which 
these  persons  were  thus  seasonably  removed,  not  the  least  enviable  circurn- 
stance  of  their  lot  appears  to  have  been,  that  they  died  in  scenes  so  fraught 
with  serene  enjoyment  and  cheering  promise,  and  bequeathed  to  their  de- 
scendants at  once  the  bright  example  of  their  virtue,  and  the  substantial 
fruits  of  it,  in  a  singularly  happy  and  prosperous  condition.     Yet,  so  short- 
siirhted  and  fallacious  are  the  prospective  regards  of  men,  —  so  strongly 
are  they  led  by  an  instinctive  and  unquenchable  propensity  to  figure  and 
iesire  something  better  than  they  behold,  —  and  so  apt  to  restrict  to  the 
uresent  fleeting  and  disordered  scene  the  suggestions  of  this  secret  longing 
after  original  and  immortal  perfection,  -^  that  many  of  the  fathers  of  the 


colony,  even 


coiui>y,  — .  when,  full  of  days  and  honor,  they  beheld  their  Matter  end 
crowned  with  peace,  could  not  refrain  from  lamenting  that  they  had  been 
born  too  soon  to  see  more  than  the  first  faint  dawn  of  New  England's  glory. 
Others,  with  greater  enlargement  of  wisdom  and  piety,  remembered  the 
Scriptural  declaration,  that  the  eye  is  not  satisfied  with  «ectn^;  acknowl- 
edeed  that  the  conceptions  of  an  immortal  spirit  are  incapable  of  being  ade- 
mmtely  filled  by  any  thing  short  of  the  vision  of  its  Divme  Author,  for 
whose  contemplation  it  was  created ;  and  were  contented  to  drop  like  leaves 
into  the  bosom  of  their  adopted  country,  and  resign  to  a  succeeding  race 
tlie  enjoyment  and  promotion  of  her  glory,  in  the  confidence  of  their  own 
renovated  existence  in  scenes  of  more  elevated  and  durable  felicity. 

The  state  of  prosperous  repose  which  New  England  enjoyed  for  several 
years  was  interrupted  by  a  general  conspiracy  of  the  Indian  tribes  [1674], 
that  produced  a  war  so  bloody  and  formidable  as  to  threaten  for  some  time 
the  utter  destruction  of  all  the  settlements.     This  hostile  combination  was 
promoted  by  a  young  chief  whose  history  reminds  us  of  the  exploits  ot 
Opechancanough  in  Virginia.     He  was  the  second  son  of  Massasoit,  a 
pnnce  who  ruled  a  powerful  tribe  inhabiting  territories  adjacent  to  the  set- 
tlement -^f  Plymouth  at  the  time  when  the  English  first  gained  a  footing  in 
the  country.  The  father  had  entered  into  an  alliance  with  the  colomsts,  and, 
after  his  death,  his  two  sons  expressed  an  earnest  desire  to  retain  and  culti- 
vate their  friendship.    They  even  requested  of  the  magisti-ates  of  Plymouth, 
as  a  mark  of  identification  with  their  allies,  that  Enghsh  names  might  be 
given  them  ;  and,  in  compliance  with  their  desire,  the  elder  received  the 
Same  of  Alexander,  and  the  younger  of  Philip.     But  these  expi^ssions  of 
good-will  were  prompted  entirely  by  the  artifice  that  regulated  their  schemes 
of  hostility  ;  and  they  were  both  shortly  after  detected  and  disappointed  in 
a  treacherous  attempt  to  involve  the  Narragansets  in  hostilities  with  the 
colonists.    The  haughty  spirit  of  the  elder  brother  w^s  overwhelmed  by  this 
disgrace.     Unable  to  brook  the  detection  and  discomfiture  of  his  pertidy, 
and  perhaps  additionally  stung  by  the  generous  clemency  of  the  colonists, 
which  lent  aggravation  to  his  infamy,  he  abandoned  himself  to  despair,  and 
died  of  the  corrosion  of  rage  and  mortification.     Philip,  after  the_death^t 

""  »  Hutchinson.    Chuhueni.    Ntiai. 


U' 


240 


HISTORY  OF  NOttTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


his  brother,  reviewed  the  alliance  between  his  tribe  and  the  English  ;  but 
n^tS  was  father  from  his  thoughts  than  the  fulfilment  of  his  engagements. 
Sub  le,  fierce,  artful,  and  dissembling,  yet  stern  in  adventurous  purpose  and 
Slentless  cruelty,  he  meditated  a  universal  conspiracy  of  the  Indians  for 
[he  extirpation  of  tlie  colonists,  and  for  several  years  pursued  this  des^n  as 
secretly  and  successfully  as  the  numerous  difficulues  that  encompassed  him 
would  permit.   Next  to  the  growuig  power  of  the  European  settlers,  noihing 
more  keenly  provoked  his  indignation  than  the  progress  of  their  missionary 
labors  ;  and,  in  reality,  it  was  to  tliese  labors,  and  some  of  the  consequences 
they  produced,  that  the  colonists  were  indebted  for  their  preservation  from 
the  ruin  that  would  have  attended  the  success  of  Phdip  s  machinations. 
Some  of  tlie  tribes  to  whom  he  applied  revealed  his  propositions  to  the  mis- 
sionaries ;  and  several  Indians  w1k>  had  embraced  his  schemes  were  per- 
suaded  by  their  conveitod  brethren  to  renounce  them.     The  magistrates  of 
Plvmouth  frequently  remonstrated  with  him  on  the  dishonor  he  incurred  and 
Uie  dancer  he  provoked  by  the  perfidious  machinations  of  which  irom  time 
to  time  they  obtained  informatien  ;  and  by  renewed  and  more  solemn  en- 
eaeements  tlian  before,  he  endeavoured  to  disarm  their  vigilance  and  allay 
fheir  apprehension.     For  two  or  three  years  before  the  present  period,  he 
pursued  his  hosule  orojects  with  such  successful  duplicity  as  tp  elude  dis- 
covery  and  even  suspicion  ;  and  had  now  succeeded  in  uniting  some  of  the 
fiercest  and  most  powerful  of  Uie  Indian  tribes  m  a  confederacy  to  make  war 
on  the  colonists  to  the  point  of  extermination. 

A  converted  Indian,  who  was  laboring  as  a  missionary  among  the  tribes 
of  his  countrymen,  having  discovered  the  plot,  revealed  it  to  the  governor 
of  Plvmouth,  and  was  soon  after  found  dead  m  a  field,  under  circumstances 
that  left  no  doubt  of  assassination.     Some  neighbouring  Indians,  suspected 
of  being  the  perpetrators  of  this  crime,  were  apprehended,  and  solemnly 
tried  before  a  jury  consisting  half  of  English  and  half  of  Indians,  who  re- 
turned  a  verdict  of  guilty.     At  tlieir  execution,  one  of  the  convicts  con- 
fessed  the  murder,  —  declaring,  witlial,  that  its  commission  had  beeri  planned 
and  instigated  by  Philip  ;  and  this  crafty  chief,  alarmed  at  the  perilous  dis- 
closure,  now  tiirew  off  the  mask,  and  summoned  his  confederates  to  his  aid, 
The  States  of  Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  and  Connecticut  took  arms  for 
their  common  defence,  —  having  first  employed  every  means  to  induce  Fhilip 
to  accommodate  the  quarrel  by  a  friendly  treaty.   But  a  bloodless  issue  was 
not  what  Philip  desired  ;  and  perceiving  that  the  season  of  secret  conspira- 
cy was  over,  he  rejected  aU  negotiation,  and  commenced  a  general  war 
[16761  which  was  carried  on  with  great  vigor  and  various  success.   1  hough 
Philip's  own  tribe  supplied  no  more  tlian  five  hundred  warriors,  he  had  so 
increased  his  force  by  alliances  that  he  was  able  to  bring  three  thousand  men 
into  the  field.     This  formidable  host,  conducted  by  a  chief  who  was  per- 
suaded that  the  war  must  terminate  in  the  total  rum  of  one  or  other  ot  tlie 
conflictine  parties,  made  exertions  of  which  the  Indian^  were  hitherto  sup- 
posed incapable.     Several  battles  were  fought,  and  all  ♦  )o  lury,  hayoc,  an 
cruelty  which  distin.^i  sh  Indian  warfare  were  cxperu/iced  in  their  fullest 
exteat  by  the  EnglU^      Wherever  the  enemy  n^^'lled,  their  route  was 
marked  with  slaughter  and  desolation.     Massach-.^o  w  and  Plymouth  wm 
tl»e  States  that  suffered  principally  from  the  contfr- lu     Ihere,  especially, 
the  IndMWswere  so  mingled  with  the  European  r.OiOTi  ,,h,  that  there  wa^ 
scarcely  a  part  of  the  country  which  was  not  exposed  lu  « iUiger,  or  a  luiniiy 


CHAP.  IV.] 


PHILIP'S  WAR. 


241 


which  had  not  to  bewail  the  loss  of  a  relative  or  friend.    In  a  woodland  scene 
near  the  village  of  Deerfield,  in  Massachusetts,  Captain  Lothrop  and  a  party 
of  the  provincial  troops  were  suddenly  attacked  by  an  Indian  force  command- 
ed by  Philip  himself ;  and,  unaware  that  to  encounter  such  an  enemy  with 
effect  he  ought  to  place  his  men  in  phalanx,  Lothrop  posted  them  separately 
behind  trees,  where  he  and  every  one  of  them,  to  the  number  of  ninety-three, 
were  presently  shot  down  ;  other  provincial  troops  now  pressing  up  with 
unavailing  succour,  defeated  the  Indians  and  put  them  to  flight.     But,  more 
(iiated  with  their  first  success  than  daunted  by  their  final  check,  these  sav- 
iii'es  speedily  reappeared  before  the  village  and  shook  the  scalps  and  bloody 
(rarments  of  the  slaughtered  captain  and  his  troop  before  the  eyes  of  the 
iiihabitants.     Deerfield  was  shortly  after  deserted  by  its  harassed  settlers, 
and  destroyed  by  the  triumphant  Indians.     It  is  a  truth  not  yet  sufficiently 
illustrated,  that,  in  all  tlie  Indian  wars  of  this  period,  the  savages,  from  the 
condition  of  the  country,  their  own  superior  acquaintance  with  it,  and  their 
peculiar  habits  of  life  and  qualities  of  body  and  mind,  enjoyed  advantages 
which  well  nigh  counterbalanced  the  superiority  of  European  science.   They 
seemed  to  unite  the  instinct  and  ferocity  of  the  brutal  creation  with  the  art 
and  sagacity  of  rational  beings,  and  were,  in  single  combat  and  in  the  con- 
flict of  very  small  numbers,  as  superior,  as  in  more  numerous  encounter 
they  were  inferior,  to  civilized  men.  Changing  their  own  encampments  with 
facility,  and  advancing  upon  thos^  of  the  colonists  with  the  wary,  dexterous 
secrecy  of  beasts  of  prey,  with  them  there  was  abnost  always  the  spirit  and 
audacity  of  attack,  and  with  their  adversaries  the  disadvantages  of  defenre 
and  the  consternation  produced  by  surprise  ;  nor  could  the  colonists  obtr.in 
the  means  of  attacking,  in  their  turn,  without  following  the  savages  into 
forests  and  swamps,  where  the  benefit  of  their  higher  martial  qualities  was 
lost,  and  the  system  of  European  warfare  rendered  impracticable.     Tlu» 
savages  had  long  been  acquainted  with  firearms,  and  were  remarkably  ex- 
pert in  the  use  of  them. 

For  some  time  the  incursions  of  the  Indians  could  not  be  restrained  ;  and 
every  enterprise  or  skirmish  in  which  they  reaped  the  slightest  credit  or 
advantage  increased  the  number  of  their  allies.  But  die  savage  artifice  which 
Philip  employed,  on  one  occasion,  for  the  purpose  of  recruiting  his  forces, 
recoiled  with  merited  injury  on  himself.  Repairing  with  a  band  of  his  ad- 
herents to  the  territory  of  a  neutral  tribe,  he  caused  certain  of  the  people 
who  belonged  to  it  to  be  surprised  and  assassinated  ;  and  then,  proceeding 
to  the  head-quarters  of  the  tribe,  he  aiTumed  that  he  had  seen  the  murder 
committed  by  a  party  of  the  Plymouth  soldiers.  The  tribe,  in  a  flame  of 
rage,  declared  war  on  the  colonists  ;  but  their  vindictive  sentiments  soon 
took  another  direction  ;  for  one  of  the  wounded  men,  having  rocovercd  his 
senses,  made  a  shift  to  crawl  to  the  habitations  of  his  countrymen,  and, 
though  mortally  injured,  was  able,  before  he  expired,  to  disclose  the  real 
author  of  the  tragedy.  Revoking  their  former  purpose,  the  tribe  thereupon 
declared  war  on  Philip,  and  espoused  the  cause  of  his  enemies.  HostilitiPb 
were  protracted  till  near  the  close  of  the  following  year,  when  the  steady 
efforts  and  determined  courage  of  the  colonists  prevailed  ;  and,  after  a  series 
of  defeats,  and  the  loss  of  all  his  family  and  chief  counsellors,  Philip  himself 
was  killed  by  one  of  his  own  tribe  whom  he  had  offended.  [Aug.,  1676.] 
Deprived  of  its  chief  abettor,  the  war  was  soon  terminated  by  the  submis- 
sion of  tbfi  Indians,     Yet  to  certain  of  the  tribes  the  colonists  sternlv  denied 


VOL.    I. 


31 


24^ 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11 


all  terms  df  capitulation,  and  warned  them,  before  their  surrender,  that  their 
treachery  had  been  so  gross  and  unprovoked,  and  the.r  outrages  so  atrocious 
r„T  mZrdonable,  Uiat  they  must  abide  the  issue  of  judicial  arbitrameni. 
b  cXniUytVth  this  declaration,  some  of  the  chiefs  were  tried  and  exe- 
Juted    o   mider  ;  and  a  number  of  their  followers  Were  transported  to  the 
West  IndSs,  and  sold  as  slaves.     Never  before  had  the  people  o   New 
Eng  and  been  engaged  in  hostilities  so  fierce,  so  bloody,  or  so  desolatmg. 
Many  houses  and^  flourishing  villages  were  reduced  to  ashes ;  and  in  the 
rourse  of  the  warfare  six  hundred  persons  of  European  birth  or  descent, 
ompo^ng  t^e  flo^ver  and  strength  oi  several  of  the  districts   erther  fell  in 
batTlerwere  massacred  in  their  dwellings,  or  expired  beneatli  the  tortures 
mfl  cted  by  the  savages  on  their  capUves.     The  military  operations  of  the 
colonists  in  these  campaigns  were  thought,  and  perhaps  jusUy^o  disclose 
L°s  skill  and  conduct  than  had  been  displayed  m  the  l>equod  War.  They 
were,  indeed,  no  longer  commanded  by  the  experienced  officers  who  ac- 
rompanied  th^ir  ancestors  from  Europe  ;  and  they  Were  opposed  to  an  ene- 
my much  more  formidable  than  the  Penuods.     But  the  firm,  enduring  va  or 
Aev  manifested  was  worthy  of  men  whose  characters  were  formed  under 
Sution    no  less  favorable  to  freedom  than  virtue,  and  who  fought  m  de- 
frnrof  all  they  held  dear  and  valuable.     Among  otlier  officer^  Captam 
Church  of  Massachusetts,  and  Captain  Denison,  of  Connecticut,  have  been 
parUcularly  celebrated  by  the  provincial  historians  for  their  heroic  ardor  and 
fort  tude.     In  the  commencement  of  the  war,  the  surprising  treachery  prac- 
tUed  by  the  hostile  Indians  naturally  excited  apprehensions  of  the  defectmn 
of  the  Indian  congregations  which  the  missionaries  had  collected  and  partly 
civilted      But  It  one  of  these  people  proved  unfaithful  to  the.r  bene- 

'^m' Indian  warfare  by  which  New  England  was  desolated  during  this 
period  was  not  bounded' by  the  hostilities  of  PWip  and  his  confederates. 
An  attack  was  made  at  the  same  time  on  New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  by 
the  tribes  that  were  situated  in  the  vicinity  of  these  settlements.     The  n- 
dians  complained  that  they  had  been  defrauded  and  insulted  by  -^ome  of  the 
English  traders  in  that  quarter  ',^  but  strong  suspicions  were  eniarta.ned  that 
their  hostilities  were  promoted  by  the  French  government,  nmvreestablishe 
in  Acadia.     The  invasion"  of  those  territories  was  distinguished  by  the  usual 
cuile,  ferocity,  and  cruelty  of  the  savages.     Many  of  the  inhabitants  were 
massacred,  and  others  carried  into  captivity.     Promj^t  assistance  was  ren- 
dered to  her  allies  by  Massachusetts  ;  and  after  a  variety  of  sharp  engage- 
ments, the  Indians  sustained  a  considerable  defeat.     They  were,  notw.ih- 
standing,  still  able  and  willing  to  comlnue  the  war  ;  and  both  their  numbers 
and  theiV  animosity  were  increased  by  a  measure  which  the  provincial  gov- 
emment  adopted  np''"^^  them.     It  was  proposed  to  the  General  Court  of 

I  M«tl.Br     N^      Hutchinson.     See  Note  XH.,  nt  the  end  of  the  volume. 

•  One  of  thow  compia  nt-  was  occasioned  by  the  brutal  act  of  some  English  «a.lor»  m  over- 
Uno  "' '^"I^^"*  T"P  ".  ui<.u  jhey  observed  an  infant  child,  in  order  to  ascertain  the  tru  h 
ofTZv  tl  "vKeaTd  lh"t^  v^^^^  wL  a.  natural  loavoung  Indian  as.oa  young d... 
&  chfddLVn  consequence  of  the  inTmcrsion  ;  and  itsfatJicr  who  was.  highlv  re'pectcd-s 
J5 Cimance;  by  the  Indians,  became  the  inveterate  enemy  of  the  En^Ush^  " ^lan! 
nriinn  that  excitcd  still  treater  resentment  was  committed  by  Major  Waldron,  oi  i^ow  mnp 
Hhe  during  tlewa  ^e  had  made  a  treaty  of  fri.^ndship  with  a  band  of  [«.";  h""dre  "• 
dians'  bto^n  discov.ering  that  some  of  them  had  served  in  ^'hilip's  army,  he  laid  hold  of  the. 
bv  r*;™  i^m  rd  «nt  tlicm  as  prisoners  to  Boston.  Their  associates  never  forgave  thi,  bre«cl, 
bjr  a  stratagem  ana  seni  in ^  j^^^  ^  ^^^^^  „f  ih«m.  havina  surprised  the  major  in  his  liouwi 

of  cruelty.    Ibid. 


CHAP  IV 1  INVASION  OF  CONNECTICUT  BY  ANDR08. 


24S 


Massachusetts  to  invite  the  Mohawk  tribe,  who,  from  time  immemorial,  had 
been  the  enemies  of  the  Eastern  Indians,  to  make  a  descent  on  their  terri- 
tories at  this  juncture.     The  lawfulness  of  using  such  auxiliaries  was  ques- 
tioned by  some  ;  but  it  was  deemed  a  satisfactory  answer  to  the  objection, 
that  Abraham  confederated  with  the  Amorites  for  the  rescue  of  his  kins- 
man, Lot,  from  the  hands  of 'a  common  enemy  ;  ^  and  messengers  were  ac- 
cordingly despatched  to  solicit  the  cooperation  of  the  Mohawks.     Litde 
entreaty  was  necessary  to  induce  them  to  comply  with  the  invitation  ;  and  a 
band  of  Mohawk  warriors  quickly  marched  apinst  their  hereditary  foes. 
The  expedition,  however,  so  far  from  producmg  the  slightest  benefit,  was 
attended  with  serious  disadvantage  to  the  cause  of  the  colonists.     The  In- 
dians who  were  their  proper  enemies  suffered  very  little  from  the  Mohawk 
invasion  ;  while  some  powerful  tribes,  who  had  been  hitherto  at  peace  with 
the  colonists,  exasperated  by  injuries  or  affronts  which  thejr  received  from 
those  invaders,  now  declared  war  both  against  them  and  their  English  allies. 
At  last,  the  intelligence  of  Philip's  overthrow,  and  the  probability  of  stronger 
forces  being  thus  enabled  to  maich  against  them,  inclined  the  Eastern  In- 
dians to  hearken  to  proposals  of  peace.     The  war  in  this  quarter  was  ter- 
minated by  a  treaty  favorable  to  the  Indians,  to  whom  the  colonists  engaged 
to  pay  a  certain  quantity  of  corn  yearly  as  a  quitrent  for  their  lands.' 

Although  the  neighbouring  province  of  New  York  was  now  a  British  set- 
tlement, no  assistance  was  obtained  from  it  by  the  New  England  States  in 
iheir  long  and  obstinate  conflict  with  the  Indians.  On  the  contrary,  a  hostile 
demonstration  from  that  quarter  augmented  the  distress  and  inquietude  of  the 
Indian  war.  Andros,  who  was  then  governor  of  the  newly  acquired  prov- 
ince, having  claimed  for  the  Duke  of  York  a  considerable  tract  of  land 
which  in  reality  formed  part  of  the  Connecticut  territory,  asserted  the  de- 
nied pretension  of  his  master  by  advancing  with  an  armament  against  the 
town  and  fort  of  Saybrook,  which  he  summoned  to  surrender.  The  inhabit- 
ants, though  at  first  alarmed  to  behold  the  English  flag  unfurled  against  them, 
speedily  recovered  from  their  surprise ;  and  hoisting  the  same  flag  on  their 
walk,  prepared  to  defend  themselves  against  the  assailants.  Andros,  who 
had  not  anticipated  such  resolute  opposition,  hesitated  to  fire  upon  the  Eng- 
lish flag ;  and  learning  that  Captain  Bull,  an  officer  of  distbguished  bravery 
and  determination,  had  marched  with  a  party  of  the  Connecticut  militia  for 
the  defence  of  the  place,  judged  it  expedient  to  abandon  his  enterprise  and 

return  to  New  York.'  ,   ,    * , 

The  cessation  of  the  Indian  host;ilities  was  not  attended  with  a  restoration 
of  the  happiness  and  trannnillity  which  they  interrupted.  The  king  had  n6w 
matured  the  scheme  of  arbitrary  government  which  he  steadily  pursued  dur- 
ing the  remainder  of  his  inglorious  reign ;  and  the  colonists,  while  yet  afflicted 
with  the  smart  of  their  recent  calamities,  were  forced  to  resume  their  ancient 
controversies  with  the  crown,  which  they  had  vainly  hoped  were  forgotten 
or  abandoned  by  the  English  government.*  Instead  of  approbation  for  the 
bravery  and  the  manly  reliance  on  their  own  resources  with  which  they  had 
conducted  their  military  operations,  and  repelled  hostilities  partly  occasioned 
by  the  disregard  of  tlieir  interests  exemplified  by  the  mother  country  m  re- 
storing Acadia  to  the  French,  —  they  found  themsel\^es  overwhelmed  with 

'  Frannis  the  Second,  of  Franco,  hnd 

th*  proclamation  by  ^vhich  he  apologizes  — 

» '  W(,»!     Htitchinsrjn.    Be'.knan.  *  TnimbuU. 


ireviously  employed  the  same  defensive  argument  in 
for  Itis  ailiance  wi'Ji  the  Turks.      "-"' 


Millot. 


*  Soe  Nqte  XUl.,  at  the  end  of  tlie  volume. 


244 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n 


reproaches  for  a  haughty,  factious  obstmacy  in  refusing  to  sohcit  assistance 

3tlie  kinrand  a  sordid  parsimony  in  the  e.juiiHr.ent  of  their  levies,  which 

Z  B  'tish^court  declared)  had  caused  the  war  to  bo  so  greatly  protracted, 

ind  slio    ed  them  utterly  unfit  to  be  longer  intrusted  with    he  governu.nt 

of  a  counuy  in  which  thei.     v.  .u,.  possessed  so  large  a  stake.*     Ind.ca- 

Sons  rS/ revival  of  rv.yal  di.oK.,  and  of  the  resumouon  of  the  king's 

brmer  designs,  had  occurred  betore  the  conclusion  of  tlie  war  With  Ph.hp. 

WWle  hostditiis  wer.-  .dll  raging  in  the  province,  the  government  o  Massa- 

clu^etts  found  it  necessary  to  direct  a  part  of  its  attenUon  to  the  claims  of 

tason  and  Gorges  with  respect  to  New  Hampshire  and  Maine.     In  the 

summer  of  1676,  Randolph,  a  messenger  despatched  by  the  king,  announced 

oZ  General  Court  Uial  a  judgment  wo.lJ  ..  , .   .ounced  by  h.s  Majesiy 

n  council  against  their  pretensions,  unless,  within  six  monhs  deput,.  .  were 

sent  to  plead  in  their  behalf;  and  as  letters  were  received  at  the  sa  ne  i.me 

rom  the  friends  of  the  colonists  m  England,  giving  assurance  tliat  the  k.ng 

wardetermined  to  fulfil  his  threat,  and  that  any  apparent  contumacy  or  pro- 

Trastination  on  the  part  of  the  nrovincial  government  would  but  accelerate 

the  execution  of  more  formidable  designs  on  vvh.ch  the  Knghsh  court  was 

deliberating,  the  royal  message  received  immediate  attention  and  Stoughiou 

and  BuLky  weri  despatched  as  deputies  to  represent  and  support  the  m- 

"^S^s^ve 'SrLd  claims  of  the  parUes  having  been  submitted  to 
the  considLation  of  the  two  chief  justices  of  England,  the  legal  mer.ts  of 
the  que  lion  were  speedily  extricated  by  their  practised  mtelhgence  from  the 
confused  mass  of  Inconsistent  grants  in  which  thej;  had  been  en,  sloped. 
n677.]   It  was  adjudged  that  municipal  jurisdiction  in  New  Hampshire  was 
incapable  of  being  validly  conveyed  by  the  Council  of  Plymouth  and  there- 
fore^reverted  to  the  croin  in  consequence  of  the  dissolution  of  theCounc.l, 
with  reservation,  however,  of  Mason's  claims  on  the  property  of  the  sod,- 
rreservation  which  for  many  years  rendered  all  pronerty  in  New  Hamp- 
shire insecure,  and  involved  the  inhabitants  in  continual  mqu.e  ude,  d.spu  e, 
and  1  Ugation.     As  Gorges,  in  addition  to  his  origmal  grant  from  the  Ply- 
mouU?Corcil,  had  procured  a  roval  patent  for  the  province  of  Mame  the 
em  re  property  bothieigniorlal  an(I  territorial,  of  this  province  was  adjudge 
to  be  Sd  h    hmi.     In  consequence  of  this  decision,  the  jurisdiction  of 
Mas  achusetts  over  New  Hampshire  ceased  ;  but  "  was  preserved  .„  t  e 
province  of  Maine  by  an  aifangement  with  the  successful  claimant.     1  he 
kng  had  been  for  some  time  in  treaty  for  .he  purchase  of  Maine,  which  he 
deigned  to  unite  with  New  Hampshire,  and  to  bestow  on  h.s  natural  son, 
tlL  1  uke  of  Monmouth  ;  but,  straitened  ^or  money,  and  expecting  no  com- 
eu tor  in  the  purchase,  he  deferred  the  completion  of  the  contract,     f le 
Cmment  of  Massachusetts,  aware  of  this,  and  urgently  solicited  by  i« 
fnhabUants  of  Maine  to  prevent  their  territories  from  being  severed  from  u 
ur^sd  cUon!  proposed  toV,orges  an  immediate  purchase  of  his  rights,  wh.ch 
he    cadilv  consented  to  sell  for  twelve  hundred  pounds.     This  transact)., 
Jav    much  offence  to  the  king,  who  peremptorily  insisted  Uiat  die  author.fes 
of  M^msetts  should  waive  their  title  and  relinquish  the  acquisition  to 
ill     but  they  firmly  declined  to  gratify  him  by  such  comphance^^ndmm. 

ing's 


'  "You 
tor  to  the  doineilio 
protection." 

*  Ilutchinion. 


arc  poor  and  yet  proud,"  .aid  LordAngleBcy,  one  of  the  king',  "lini^ '"  •  ' 
lel^lk  auSuci^of  M;wochu«,tU,  "  and  you  wi.h  lobe  independent  of  the  k,n 


CHAP.  IV.]  ROYAL  GOVERNOR  OF  NEW  HAMPSHIRE. 


246 


ince,  and  main- 


taini  d  that  thoir  conduct  needed  no  other  justification  than  its  conformity  to 
the  wishes  of  the  people  of  Maine. 

T'  '  inhabitants  of  New  Hampshire  were  no  less  reluctant  to  be  separated 
from  Massachusetts  ;  but  they  were  compelled  to  submit,  and  to  receive  a 
royal  governor.'     [1677.]     One  of  the  first  acts  of  their  legislature  was  to 
vote  a  grateful  address  to  Massachusetts,  acknowledging  the  former  kind- 
ness of  this  colony,  and  protesting  that  only  the  commands  of  the  king  now 
interrupted  a  connection  which  it  had  been  their  anxious  desire  to  preserve. 
The  government  thus  forced  upon  them  proved  incapable  of  preserving 
tranquillity  or  commanding  respect.     The  attempts  that  were  made  to  en- 
force Mason's  title  to  the  property  of  the  soil,  and  to  render  the  inhabitants 
tributary  to  him  for  tlie  possessions  which  thev  had  purchased  from  others 
and  improved  by  their  own  labor,  excited  violent  ferments,  and  resulted  in 
a  train  of  vexatious,  but  indecisive,  legal  warfare."  Cranfield,  the  governor, 
after  involving  himself  in  controversies  and  altercations  with  the  planters  and 
their  legislative  assembly,  in  which  he  was  continually  foiled,  transmitted  an 
assurance  to  the  British  governmem,  "  that,  while  the  clergy  were  allowed 
to  preach,  no  true  allegiance  could  be  found  in  those  parts."     He  wreaked 
his  vengeance  upon  some  Non-conformist  ministers,  to  whose  eloquence  he 
imputed  the  stiff,  unbending  spirit  of  the  people,  and  whose  ^oneral  denun- 
ciations against  vice  he  construed  into  personal  reflections  on  himself  and 
his  favorites,  by  arbitrarily  commanding  them  to  administer  the  sacrament  to 
him  according  to  the  liturgy  of  the  church  of  England,  and  cornmitting  them 
to  prison  on  receiving  the  refusal  which  he  expected.     His  misgovernment 
at  length  provoked  a  few  rash  individuals,  hastily  and  without  concert,  to 
revolt  against  his  authority.     The  insurrection  was  suppressed  without  the 
slightest  difficulty  ;  and  the  insurgents,  having  beon  arraigned  of  high  treason, 
were  convicted  and  condemned  to  die.     But  Cranfield,  conscious  of  the 
unpopularity  of  his  government,  had  exercised  an  unfair  and  illegal  control 
in  the  selection  of  the  jury,  which  excited  universal  indignation  ;  "and  afraid 
to  carry  his  sentence  into  effect  within  the  colony,  he  adopted  the  strange 
and  unwarrantable  proceeding  of  sending  the  prisoners  to  be  executed  in 
England.   The  English  government  actually  sanctioned  this  irregularity,  and 
were  preparing  to  obey  the  sentence  of  a  provincial  magistrate,  and  to  ex- 
hibit to  the  people  of  England  the  tragical  issue  of  a  trial,  with  the  merits 
of  which  they  were  totally  unacquainted,  when  a  pardon  was  obtained  for 
the  unfortijnate  persons,  by  the  solicitation  of  Cranfield  himself,  who,  finding 
it  impracticable  to  maintain  ordei  in  the  province,  or  to  withstand  the  nu- 
merous complaints  of  his  injustice  and  oppression,  had  solicited  his  own 
recall.    Shortly  after  h     departure,  New  Hampshire  spontaneously  reverted 
to  the  jurisdiction  of  INiassachusetts,  and  shared  her  fortunes  till  the  period 
of  the  British  Revolution.^ 

'  III  tho  first  comiuisHion  that  wns  issued  for  the  jjovernment  of  this  province,  the  king  en- 
gaged to  continue  to  tho  people  their  ancient  nrivilcge  of  an  assembly, "  unless,  by  incon- 
vrnience  arising  therefrom,  he  or  his  heirs  should  see  cause  to  alter  the  same.        Belknap. 

«  The  people  were  sometimes  provoked  to  oppose  what  they  termed  swamp  law  to  parch- 
ment law.  An  irrpj?ular  judgment  having  been  pronounced  in  favor  of  Mason,  agamst  some 
persona  who  refused  to  submit  to  it,  the  governor  sent  a  party  of  BheriflF's  officrrs  to  serve  a 
writ  on  them  while  they  wore  in  church.  The  congregation  wns  incensed  at  this  proceeding ; 
a  voiing  woman  knocked  down  a  sheriff's  officer  with  her  Bible  ;  and  the  conflict  becom;ng 
general,  the  whole  legal  army  was  routed.    It  was  found  necessary  to  abandon  the  judgment. 

"s  nX'hinson.  Chalmers.  Belknap.  These  events,  and  the  particular  history  of  New 
Hamu«liire  at  this  neriod.  are  related  in  considerable  detail,  with  every  appearance  ol  accu 

U* 


.^WJ 


lUSTCJftV  OF  NORTH  AMERICA- 


[BOOK  II 


ill       V    .v,„  froi.l.les  of  ihc  Popish  Plot  began  now  to  engage  and  per- 
Although  ^h°  7"''^«^'j„°^     1678]V  he  was  no  longer  to  be  diverted  U 

^'^^To7ul  S  "    M^^^^^  with  that  celebrated  imposture  and  U>c 

concern  ot  "«-  '  "J^-   .     ..     ,     profligate  Shaftesbury  and  its  oiher  pro- 
"rrfri  "^ght  f^  king'^  regret  for  the  privation  oAhe 

"nlnace  which  hi  ha§  meant  to  bestow  on  him,  yet  the  presump  nous  inter- 

agamst  tnc  colony  w      1  ^^^^^  ^^j  service  or  to  pay 


had  incurred  by  the  exaction  ol  those  nnes,  as  wcu  «  «.  --  ,-..  -,.. 
nhied  them  to  contribute  to  the  maintenance  of  the  provmcial  clergy 
w£he  dangers  of  irindian  war  were  at  tlieir  height,  some  of , he  coo- 

'racrenf  TaV^ ^  rS ab^^^^^^^^^  worship  ;  and 

thouehU  does  not  appear  that  this  law  was  executed,  its  promulgation  was 
tstlfrel^^^^^^^  pmecution,  and  alienated  the  regards  of  many  persons 
dl  oLd  Wtherto  been  friends  of  the  colony.  The  agents,  deputed  to  de- 
fpnd  he  interests  of  Massachusetts  in  the  controversies  respecting  New 
HamisLe  and  Maine;  were  detained  to  answer  the  complamts  of  die  Q«a- 
tir-eraX  preferred  by  these  sectaries  to  a  government  which  was  .t- 
iTf  'admEe  (ng  with  far  greater  rigor  upon  them  the  very  oohcy  wh.ch ,, 
now  en'raged  Aem  to  impute  to  one  of  its  own  provmciaf  dependences 
n«  thp  most  scandalous  cruelty  and  injustice.  ,     •     ^  .      j 

She"  and  more  serious  imputations  contributed,  to  detam  the  agents  an 

roS  he  noVreturned  to  Kngland  and  ^P^^^  .^/^"^J^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
and  vitu'peration.     The  most  just  and  most  ^^^'^^j^^L^^^tde^^^^ 
that  die  Navigation  Act  was  entirely  disregarded,  and  a  Iree  trade  pursueo 
bv  the  colonUTs  with  all  parts  of  the  world.     This  was  a  charge  which  the 
Xvindal  a^^^^^^^  could  Ltlicr  deny  nor  extenuate  ;  and  they  anx.usy 
iressed  their  constituents  to  put  an  end  to  the  occasion  of  it.  Anyjnea  "" 
whfch  the  king  might  adopt,  either  for  promoting  the  future  efficacy  o.  the 
Wation  Acts   or  for  punishing  the  past  neglect  which  they  nad  e.pe- 
r.^nrpd  were  the  more  likely  to  coincide  witli  the  sentiments  of  the  Engl  s l. 
:"  le,'  ?rom  theXest  Jhich  a. considerable  portion  o    t^e  mercant.e 
[\Jn  of  their  countrymen  enjoyed  in  the  n^«»«P«  ^^hich  it  was  the  ob  c 
of  those  laws  to  secure.     A  petition  was  presented  to  the  king  ano  privy 
oLtTby  rnlber  of  English  merchants  and  manufacturers,  compiammg 
;?  the  disregiJJd  of  the  Navigation  Acts  inJ^wEngknd^^^ 

priate  titli  of  a  valuable  work)  u  aot  exprogaiy  uioul.o»ea. 


[BOOK  II       I      cJIAP  IV]  I'AWS  or  BNOLAJID  DEEMED  INOPERATIVE  IN  AMERICA.  247 


jago  and  per- 
diverled  from 
j»d  tliough  the 
sture,  and  the 
its  other  pro- 
rivalion  of  the 
mptuous  inter- 
lispleasure  and 
might  not  be 
I  be  collected 
alters,  who  re- 
rvico  or  to  pay 
trsecution  they 
the  law  which 
ivincial  clergy. 
me  of  the  colo- 
jn  the  land  for 
rocured  the  re- 
worship  ;  and 
omulgation  vvus 
f  many  persons 
deputed  to  de- 
•especling  New 
ints  of  ilie  Qua- 
it  which  was  it- 
policy  which  it 
il  dependencies 

1  the  agents  and 
by  a  stanch  and 
arbitrary  power, 
ng  up  and  down 
Med  his  instruc- 
abtain  within  the 

cordially  recip- 
t  of  arraignment 
his  charges  was, 
ee  trade  pursued 
:harge  which  the 
1  they  anxiously 
t.  Any  measures 
e  efficacy  of  tie 

they  had  expp- 
nts  of  the  English 
)f  the  mercantile 
it  was  the  ohject 
e  king  and  privy 
irers,  complaining 
and  prayingthat 

It  is  to  thi«  BUthor'n 
>fty  (the  very  inappro- 


.v,«v  midU  hereafter  be  vigorously  executed,  for  the  sake  of  promoting  the 

Smerce  of  tho  pareru  Ite,  as  weU  as  of  preserving  her  donun.on  over 

"   Tolonies.     Tlmt  a  siro..ger  impression  might  be  made  on  the  publ  t 

ind  the  petitioners  were  sofemnly  heard  in  presence  of  the  pnvy  council, 

3  i^dufgerwiTti^e  amplest  lalifude  of  pleading  in  support  of  the.r  com- 

^-tS!^Ztlt^^:Z.  LKVTOl,  alarmed  by  the.  meas^c. 
intimated,  by  letter  t«  their  ageftts,  that  -  Uiey  apprehended  th«  Nav.g^^^^^^ 
fZ  to  be  an  invasion  of  the  rights,  liberties,  and  properties  of  the  subjects 
;f  his  Maiity  in  Uie  colony  ;  -  they  not  being  represented  tn  parhamenl 
Id  accoS  to  the  usual^ayings  of  the  learned  in  the  law,  the  laws  o 
Fndand  being\ounded  within  the  four  seas,  and  not  reach.ng  to  An.er.ca 
S  addeTbowever,  that,  "as  his  Majesty  had  signified  h.s  pleasure  that 
.hSacts  shouhi  be  pbsorved  in  Massachusetts,  they  had  made  provision, 
tv  a  laTof  the  colony,  that  they  should  be  strictly  attended  to  from  time  to 
le  aUhough  it  greaiy  discouraged  trade,  and  was  a  great  damage  to  Im 
Ests  Station.''     These  expressions,  and  the  recent  provmcal  law 
'S  tliev  refer   demonstrate  the  peculiar  views  which  were  entertained 
Tvt  Pe5  of  M^^^^^  of  th'e  connection  that  subsisted  between 

Tot  on  posses^X^m  tlte  people  of  New  England,  and  so  obst.na  ely 

StUirTnterests  resist  the  exe'cution  of  the  commercial  regu^^^^^^^^^^^ 
pL  the  submissive  province  of  Rhode  Island,  although,  about  this  time, 
Llmiou  o^Lssa?^^^         it  took  some  steus  towards  a  confor^^y^;^ ; 
Ise  regulations,  never  expressly  recognized  tiiem  till  the  ^^1^1  JOO'J^^/^ 
its  legislature  empomred  the  governor  "  to  put  the  Acts  of  Navigation  m 

"'TheTrovincial  agents,  aware  of  the  strong  interests  that  prompted  tlieir 
.nnntrvmensti  I  to  overstep  the  boundaries  of  th.ir  regulated  trade  fur- 
Xyremwth  correct  ^information  of  the  threatening  aspect  of  their 

£^i  Engknd,  and  assured  them  that  only  an  ent  re  compliance  w  h  the 
Naea^n  Acts  could  shelter  them  from  the  impendmg  «torm  of  royal  ven- 
.^2Ttldmmm.     These  honest  representations  produced  Uie  too  fre- 

uen    effect  of  unwelcome  truths  ;  the}  diminished  the  popijar.ty  of   lie 

and  infected  with  the  subservience  that  prevaded  at  the  royal  couri  ,  a  m 
hey  ngctd^  make  due  allowance  for  the  different  -P-^J J J^^  ^^^^^^^ 
pute  wifh  England  presented  to  men  who  beheld  face  to  face  her  vast  estab 

duty,  the  deliberate  sentiments  of  their  countrymen  were  so  htUe^  pervert^ 
"  i  Nettl.    Hutchinson.    Chalmers. 


'       I' 


248 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11. 


that,  when  the  klrig  again  intimated  his  desire  of  the  reappointment  of  agents 
in  England,  the  colonists  twice  again  elected  the  same  individuals  to  their 
former  ofiice,  —  which,  however,  these  persons  could  never  again  be  per- 
suaded  to  undertake.  They  carried  back  with  them  to  America  a  letter 
containing  the  requisitions  of  the  king,  of  which  the  most  material  were,  that 
tho  foriniilu  of  the  oath  of  allegiance  should  be  rendered  more  explicit,  and 
should  be  subscribed  by  every  person  holding  an  office  of  public  trust  in 
New  England  ;  that  all  civil  and  military  commissions  should  be  issued  in 
tlie  king's  name  ;  and  all  laws  repugnant  to  the  English  commercial  statutes 
abolished.  The  General  Court,  eagerly  indulging  the  hope,  that,  by  a  com- 
pliance with  these  moderate  demands,  they  could  appease  their  sovereign 
and  avert  his  displeasure,  made  haste  to  enact  laws  in  conformity  with  his 
requisitions.  They  trusted  that  he  had  now  abandoned  the  designs  which 
they  had  been  taught  to  apprehend  ;  and  which,  in  reality,  were  merely 
suspended  by  the  influence  of  the  proceedings  connected  with  the  Popish 
Plot,  and  with  the  parliamentary  bill  that  was  in  agitation  for  excluding  the 
Duke  of  York  from  the  throne. 

Although  the  requisitions  which  the  king  transmitted  by  the  hands  of 
Stoughton  and  Bulkeley  were  obeyed,  he  continued  to  intimate,  from  time 
to  time,  his  desire  tiiat  new  agents  might  be  appointed  to  represent  the  colo- 
ny in  London  ;  but  partly  from  the  apprehensive  jealousy  with  wliich  the 
colonists  regarded  such  a  measure,  and  partly  from  the  reluctance  that  pre- 
vailed among  their  political  leaders  to  undertake  so  arduous  and  delicate  an 
(;m|)loyment,  the  king's  desires  on  this  point  were  not  complied  with.    The 
short  interval  of  independence  which  the  colonists  were  yet  permitted  to  en- 
joy was  very  remote  from  a  state  of  tranquillity.     Randolph,  who  had  com- 
inended  himself  to  the  king  and  his  ministers  by  the  adroit  and  active 
prosecution  of  their  views,  was  appointed  collector  of  the  customs  at  Bos- 
ton ;  and  a  custom-house  establishment,  which  some  years  before  had  been 
erected  without  opposition  in  Virginia  and  Maryland,  was  now  extended  to 
New  England. I  But  it  was  in  Massachusetts  that  this  measure  was  intended 
to  produce  the  effects  which  it  was  easily  foreseen  would  result  from  its 
own  nature,  as  well  as  from  the  temper  and  unpopularity  of  the  person  who 
was  appointed  to  conduct  it.     The  Navigation  Acts  were  evaded  in  Rhode 
Island,  and  openly  contemned  and  violated  in  Connecticut ;  yet  these  States 
were  permitted  to  practise  such  irregularities  without  reprehension.     It  was 
less  the  execution  of  the  commercial   statutes  themselves  that  the  king  de- 
sired, than  the  advantage  which  would  accrue  from  an  attempt  to  enforce 
them  aiter  such  long  neglect  in  the  obnoxious  province  of  Massachusetts. 
To  this  province  he  confined  his  attention  ;  and  justly  considered  that  the 
issue  of  a  contest  with  it  would  necessarily  involve  the  fate  of  all  the  other 
settlements  in  New  England.     Randolph  exercised  his  functipns  with  the 
most  offensive  rigor,  and  very  soon  complained  that  the  stubbornness  of  the 
peo[)le  defeated  all   his  efforts,  and  presented  insuperable  obstacles  to  the 
execution  of  the  laws.    Almost  every  suit  that  he  instituted  for  the  recovery 
of  penalties  or  forfeitures  issued  in  a  judicial  sentence  against  himself.     He 
repaired  to  England  in  order  to  lay  his  complaints  before   his  employers 

'  A«  n  ninnsuri",  pnrllv  <if  termr,  and  partly  of  ptiniMlimcnt,  it  was  detrrniinod  l)y  tlin  Knijlish 
■  council,  nlioiif  tliis  time,  "  thut  no  Meditorratiimn  paesfls  »hal!  he  firBntjd  to  Jivvr  I'.ng- 


InnJ,  to  protcft  its  vi.ksoIs  apainst  tliM  Turks,  till  it  is  seen  what  depeiidunco  it  will  ncknowl 

^..tj...  ..,,  jjig  \f;i;.^!u   iir  >v!><:tht;r  hi^  ciutooi-houtK!  officer'  sr<9  rot^'^ivud  ar 

Clmiiiiurii. 


aa  in  other  coluniet. 


CHAP.  IV.]  PARTIES  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  —  PORTENTS. 


249 


[1680],  and  returned  invested  with  more  extensive  powers,  —  in  the  exer- 
cise of  which  he  was  not  more  successful.  He  reproached  the  provincial 
authorities  with  injustice  and  partiality  ;  while  they  denied  the  charge,  and 
taxed  him  with  superfluous,  unnecessary,  and  vexatious  litigation. 

The  requisitions  and  remonstrances  which  the  king  continued  to  address 
to  the  General  Court,  from  time  to  time,  were  answered  by  professions  of 
loyalty,  and  by  partial  compliances  ;  but  on  one  point  the  colonists  were 
determined,  either  entirely  or  as  long  as  possible,  to  evade  the  royal  will ; 
and  though  repeatedly  directed,  they  still  delayed,  to  send  deputies  to  Eng- 
land. The  General  Court  was  at  this  time  divided  between  two  parties, 
who  cordially  agreed  in  the  esteem  and  attachment  by  which  they  were 
wedded  to  their  chartered  privileges,  but  differed  in  opinion  as  to  the  extent 
to  which  it  was  expedient  to  contend  for  them.  Brad  street,  the  governor, 
at  the  head  of  the  moderate  party,  promoted  every  compliance  with  the  will 
of  the  parent  state  short  of  a  total  surrender  of  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
constitution  of  Massachusetts.  Danforth,  the  deputy-governor,  at  the  head 
of  another  party,  obstructed  the  appointment  of  deputies,  and  opposed  all 
submission  to  the  acts  of  trade  ;  maintaining  that  the  colonists  should  adhere 
to  the  strict  construction  of  their  charter,  resist  every  abridgment  of  it  as  a 
dangerous  precedent,  no  less  than  an  injurious  aggression,  and,  standing  firm 
in  defence  of  their  utmost  right,  commit  the  event  to  Divine  Providence. 
These  parties  conducted  their  debates  with  warmth,  but  without  acrimony  ; 
and  as  the  sentiments  of  one  or  other  alternately  prevailed,  a  greater  or 
lesser  degree  of  compliance  with  the  demands  of  the  king  was  infused  into 
the  undecided  policy  of  the  General  Court.* 

The  scene  of  trouble  snd  misfortune  in  which  the  inhabitants  of  this  quar- 
ter of  America  had  for  a  series  of  years  been  involved  could  not  fail  to  pro- 
duce a  grave  and  earnest  impression  on  the  minds  of  men  habituated  to 
regard  all  the  events  of  life  in  a  religious  aspect,  and  contributed  to  revive 
among  the  descendants  of  the  original  planters  the  piety  for  which  New 
England  was  at  first  so  highly  distinguished.  A  short  time  before  the  com- 
mencement of  their  late  distresses,  a  natural  phenomenon *•  that  excited  much 
awe  and  tribulation  at  the  time,  and  was  long  pondered  with  earnest  and 
solemn  remembrance,  was  visible  for  several  nights  successively  in  the 
heavens.  It  was  a  bright  meteor  in  the  form  of  a  spear,  of  which  the  point 
was  directed  towards  the  setting  sun,  —  and  which,  with  slow,  majestic  mo- 
tion, descended  through  the  upper  regions  of  the  air,  and  gradually  disap- 
peared beneath  the  horizon.  This  spjendid  phenomenon  produced  a  deep 
and  general  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  people  ;  and  the  magistrates, 
without  expressly  alluding  to  it,  acknowledged  and  endeavoured  to  improve 
its  influence  by  seizing  the  opportunity  to  promote  a  general  reformation 
of  manners.  Circular  letters  were  transmitted  to  all  the  clergy,  urging  them 
increased  diligence  in  exemplifying  and  inculcating  the  precept.^  of  re- 


to 


ligion,  especially  on  the  young,  and  instructing  tlieir  parishioners  from  house 
to  house.  The  dupes  of  science,  falsely  so  called,  may  deride  these  im- 
pressions, and  ascribe  to  ignorant  wonder  the  piety  which  they  enkindled  ; 
hut  enlightened  philosophy  will  confess  the  worth  and  dignity  of  that  pri^- 

'  Hutchinwon.  Chnlrnors.  From  a  report  presented  thia  year  (1680)  to  the  Lords  of  Triule, 
il  appears  that  Connecticut  tl)en  contained  twentv-one  eliurches,  each  of  which  had  its  min- 
i^tir,  n  miiitiii  of  2,r>i)0  men  ;  a  very  few  indented  servnnts,  and  ihirty  slaves.     Hohnes. 

*  In  the  Jiiurntd  of  ,Tohn   Evelyn  there  ore  descriptions  of  tht  occurrence  of  similar  phe 
■i'Mttrnit  in  England,  in  the  y;;Uf3  1(MI>  arid  IGdO. 

VOL.  I.  3:3 


260 


HWTQRY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


eiple  which  .cognto  -.-ejy/ig^X  "'.fi.Sgl./S^^I  S 
elevates  and  refines  numan  la  ,r        I    from  connection  with  lie 

?'f  ",f  ^rmor^allfa^d  tSeSr  ^^^^         The  events  of  the  Indian  w„ 
interests  ol  raoraiiiy  *"'""'  „nr>a<sinnpd  bv  the  peculiar  inclemency  of 

the  agricultural  lo^^^^^^h^^  J;^/;  the  di^Zet  exdte/by  the  contentions  with 
the  ensuing  season,  and,  latterly  the  ^^^'^^^^    ^^  ^^^^^^  ^he  people  be- 

^^^  ?"f .'  ^LTthat  Sove7e  gn  Power  wS  controls  the  passions  of  n>e„ 
neath  the  hand  of  that  ^o/^'^f'S"  %";,  gguaUy  productive  of  increased 

as  well  as.the  elements  of  nature    and^^^^^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^^^ 

dihgence  in  tha  cultivation  "^  P^  ^  J"^^^^^^^^  deficiencies  whicli  they 

fieeply  lamenting  the  moral  ^-^P^^^^^^^  them,  many  of 

experienced  m  themselves  and  ^^"^^^  jnJ^^^  of  Massachusetts  and 
thi^  ministers,  magistrates,  ^"'1,,  PJ  ^^  J^e^tTcon^  if  the  interrup- 
Connecti:;uturpnUy  besoashttas^rcou^^^^^^^  will ;  and  by 

tion  of  divine  favor  did  n^^/^;^^^"  ^^^^^^^^^^^     "^11  habit  or  licentious  prac- 

P"^r ."'tr"?  w  f  ^d  n  nSux  of  co'mLrcial  wealth  were  supposed 
tice  that  a  state  ot  war  ana  an  um  strongly  exhorted  to  carry  a 

to  have  produced  ^r  promoted^    Men  were  str^^^^^^^^ 

continual  respect  to  the  di^»"«  ^f  ,  ^"^^  f  f^^'^^  by  doing  it  to  the  Lord. 
.ffplrs,  and  to  ^f-^^^-^^^^^'J^''^^^^^  the  epidemical  vices  of  the 

The  (;eaeral  Court  published  ^  catalogue  oj  P         j        f  ^^^^^ 

tim...  in  which  we  find  en""^^^f^^'  Pf  ^\^J  11^^!.'^,  excess  of  finery 
prid.  displayed  m  the  manner  "^  ^"^  and  cj^m^  ^^^        J^^ 

K;l:,:idf^t:S  Muenung^j  ta^rns^^^  ^1;^^^^^ 
"  ''T  iut"  i'ther  Z^^^^  o^Txtpleind  remonstrance  w. 

tent  of  prevalence  as  to  J-^f  ^  f  ^j)  "'  ^^^^^  has  reprobated 

instances,  the  scrupulous  piety  of  'f.;  P\^;'"'^'7gJ^,^d,  b  language  uhichis 
existing  vices,  and  ^l>\«^^^"V"if  t  ntire  ed  in  Conform.'  with  the 
apt  to  beget  misapprehension   if  .t  be  '"^^''P^^^^"  .^^^  „„  'le.s  acute 

general  .ions  and  tone  of  the  world  ,  «"  ^ '  f  "^^^^^^^  ^  charge  of  ev 
Than  Chahuers  has  fallen  into  the  F«^^"^*f^^^^  ^assacStts  from  tlte  very 
traordinary  immorality  ^S--\;^e  m^^^^^^^^  ^^  ^,,,^  ^^^ 

t^'^^l^ltU^^   hJ'  Xt'LpiraLns'   .  The  stro, 

i- ir^r  tr= ^^':^i1^  rt  ^l..  of  hypocnn. 

cant  or  fanatical  delusion^^ . — 

Tjj-^^i7~H^ainton.     Trumbull.  „■„,•,„„  ^,>„,  voustomod  to  address  their  l.earer^ 

«  After  thi.  .Banner  the  New  Lngland  miniRterB  w' V   f  ?"    orieinnlly  a  pluntaiion  n- 
»  It  inccrneth  New  England  always  ll^^^^^''\^^l^^^^^^^^^  Lt.  .r  r. 

liziouB,  not  a  plantauon  of  trade     Let  ";™"^  ^f  the  people  of 'i«w  W»'"' 

nfmeinber  thu.;  that  worldly  gu...  wu*  not  ''"  ";J^,^"^,,fX.U -,  «"<'  '''«  >-  .Id  a.  thTU.., 
but  relieion.  And  if  any  man  ainong  us  l^""*'' '''''f'"'\  "f  '  ..  iiieainson's  Aledim  Semt'r. 
B  r.h  af  on.,  hath  not  tlu,  spirit  of  a  true  N^w-LngTandman.  I  gg^^^^^^  ^_^^,  ^„„  ■.,,„. 
TeS,  apud  Belknap.  Robert  Keayne,  a  ro  on  t  "J f J f/J''''  ^j^'  ^^  „„„  c'-eaHioa  Inn.. 
ti^in  'Massachusetts,  and  a  l.hora(  benefaelor  Jlfj!';^,-^^"/.:,;;?;;,  «„   ,,„,t  traders, '.' w«.  1;' 


[BOOK  II     fl    cjiAP.  I  v.]  WRIT  OF  QUO  WARRANTO  THREATENED. 


mi 


nena  of  nature 
tor,  and  which 
ct  tliat  forcihly 
lection  with  the 
the  Indian  war, 
■  mclemency  of 
contentions  with 
!  the  people  he- 
passions  of  men 
live  of  increased 
manners, 
icies  which  they 
,  them,  many  of 
assachusetts  and 
r  if  the  interrup- 
ne  will  ;  and  hy 
r  licentious  prac- 
th  were  supposed 
lorted  to  carry  a 
ificatipns  of  their 
ng  it  to  the  Lord. 
[lical  vices  of  the 
ition  of  children, 
excess  of  finery, 
in  due  respect  to 
^h  prices,  profane 
ries  were  directed 
oflenders  in  these 
remonstrance  was 
r  attained  such  ex- 
srities.i     In  many 
tes  has  reprohated 
I  language  wldchis 
onformiiy  with  the 
riter  no  less  acme 
ng  a  charge  of  ex- 
isetts  from  llie  very 
lurity  of  their  mora! 
Lions.     The  stron? 
ropensities  nihereiit 
liments  of  truly  re- 
logs  of  hypocritical 


to  addrouR  thoir  licarcrs 
riginnlly  a  plantntinn  re 
incroasing  ffiit.  m  ['"'■ 
people  of '.owMg'*' 
nd  iliB  V.'  --Id  a»  »'»*'"' 
jinson'H  /:Mixm  Smm. 
rtv,  lalt^nt,  Biid  cowulen- 
on  one  occ.wion  U'^ow 
„  .,ost  traders, ''wn?,!;' 
iiierui  Court,  pabni:  i  '•' 


The  king  had  newer  lost  sight  of  his  purpose  of  r^-modcUing  the  constitu- 
lion  of  Massachusetts  ;  although  some  appearance  of  moderation  had  been 
latterly  enforced  upon  him  by  the  more  personal  and  pressing  concern  of 
resisting  the  attempts  of  Shaftesbury  to  reexemplify  the  deep  and  darmg 
nolicv  of  the  Duke  of  Guise,  and  control  his  sovereign  by  the  formation  and 
supremacy  of  a  Protestant  league  in  England.     While  Shaftesbury  and  his 
Jty  were  able  to  retain  their  influence  on  the  public  mind  by  the  artifice 
of  the  Popish  Plot,  and  to  attack  the  monarchy  by  the  device  of  the  exclu- 
sion bill,  it  was  probably  deemed  unsafe  to  signalize  the  royal  administration 
bv  any  public  act  of  extraordinary  tyranny  in  a  province  so  distinguished 
for  zeal  in  the  Protestant  cause  as  Massachusetts.     But  Charles  had  now 
obtained  a  complete  victory  over  his  domestic  adversaries  [1681]  ;  and, 
araons;  other  excesses  of  retaliatory  violence  and  arbitrary  power  by  which 
be  hastened  to  improve  his  success,  he  instituted  writs  of  quo  warranto 
aeainst  the  principal  corporations  in  England,  and  easily  obtained  judgments 
from  the  courts  of  law  that  declared  all  their  liberties  and  franchises  forfeited 
to  the  crown.     About  two  years  before  this  period,  he  deliberated  on  the 
possibility  of  superseding  entirely  the  constitution  of  Massachusetts  without 
the  intermediate  recourse  of  any  legal  solemnity  ;  but,  on  consulting  Jones 
and  Winnington,  the  attorney  and  solicitor  general,  he  learned  that  his  object 
could  not  be  securely  or  effectually  attained  except  by  the  instrumentality  ol 
a  writ  of  quo  warranto,  which  at  that  time  it  was  not  deemed  expedient  to 
employ     But  now  every  impediment  to  the  gratification  of  his  wishes  was 
renioved ;  and  the  colonists  received  such  intelligence  from  their  friends  m 
Eneland  as  pennitted  them  no  longer  to  doubt  that  the  abrogation  ol  their 
charter  was  finally  resolved  on  and  was  to  be  instantly  attempted.  Randolph, 
who  made  numerous  vovages  between  England  and  America,  and  had  lately 
affixed  a  protest  on  the  exchange  of  Boston  against  the  legitnnacy  ol  the 
urovincial  government  and  its  official  acts,  now  brought  from  London  a  let- 
ter from  the  king,  dated  the  26th  of  October,  1681,  recapitulating  all  the 
complaints  against  the  colony,  and  commanding  that  deputies  should  mstanUy 
be  sent  to  him,  not  only  to  answer  these  complaints,  but  »  with  powers  to 
submit  to  such  regulations  of  government  as  his  Majesty  should  think  tit     ; 
which  if  the  colonists  failed  to  do,  it  was  intimated  that  a  writ  of  quo  war- 
ranto would  be  directed  against  their  charter. 

A  new  criminatory  charge,  suggested  by  the  inquisitive  hostility  ol  Ran- 
dolph, was  at  the  same  time  preferred  against  them,— that  they  coined 
money  within  the  province,  in  contempt  of  the  king's  prerogative.      1  he 
General  Court,  in  answer  to  this  sudden  arraignment  of  a  practice  which 
bad  been  permitted  so  long  to  prevail  without  objection,  explained  in  what 
manner  and  at  what  time  it  originated,  and  appealed  to  these  circumstances 
as  decisively  proving  that  no  contempt  of  royal  authority  had  been  designed  ; 
but  withal  declared,  that,  if  it  were  regarded  as  a  trespass  on  his  Majesty  s 
preroeative,  they  humbly  entreated  pardon  for  the  offence,  and  indulgence 
for  the  ignorance  under  which  it  was  committed.     Among  the  other  com- 
plaints that  were  urged  by  the  king,  were  the  presumptuous  purchase  ol  the 
province  of  Maine,  which  the  colonists  were  again  commanded  to  surren- 
der, and  the  disallowance  of  religious  worship  except  on  the  model  ol  the 
Coneregational  churches  within  the   colony.     To  the  first  of  these  they 
answered  by  repeating  their  former  apology,  and  still  declmmg  what  was  re- 

; — — — n — r, i ; ■  ■-.r  lu-  -arim-!  "»'omm'>n'''a»>nn  "     duincv's  History  of  Uar- 

nerd  Univer/Uy. 


rl 


262 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11 


nuired  of  them  ;  and  to  the  second,  that  liberty  of  worship  was  now  granted 
?o  an  denominations  of  Christians  in  Massachusetts.  The  royal  letter  con- 
tained  many  other  charges  ;  but  they  were  all  answered  by  solemn  proteste- 

ions  tSt  iither  the  commands  they  imported  were  already  fulfilled,  or  the 
iTsobedience  they  imputed  had  not  been  committed.  An  assembly  of  the 
General  Court  having  been  held  for  the  purpose  of  electing  deputies  to 
represent  the  province  in  England,  and  Stoughton. again  declinmg  to  accept 
[his  office,  it  was  conferred  on  Dudley  and  Richards,  two  of  the  wealthiest 

nd  most  respectable  citizens  of  Massachusetts.  But  as  the  plenary  powers 
which  the  royal  letter  required  that  they  should  be  invested  with  of  acced- 
ing  to  whotever  regulations  of  government  the  king  might  th.nk  fit  to  propose, 
were  nothing  else  than  powers  to  surrender  all  the  rights  of  their  countrj- 
nien  the  Court  was  careful  to  grant  no  such  authority,  and,  on  the  contrary, 
plainly  expressed  in  their  instructions  that  the  deputies  were  not  to  do  or 
consent  to  any  thing  that  should  infringe  the  liberties  bestowed  by  the  char- 
ter. 


fast  was  appointed  to  be  observed  throughout  the  province  ;  and  prayers 
were  addressed  to  Heaven  for  the  preservation  of  the  charter  and  the  sue- 
Tess  of  the  deputation.     Means  less  pure,  though  certainly  not  unjustifiable 
were  adopted    or  at  least  sanctioned,  by  the  provmcial  council  or  board  o 
ass  stants,  for  promoting  at  the  English  court  the  wishes  and  interests  of 
their  runtrymen.     Cranfield,  the  late  royal  governor  of  New  Hanipshire, 
pnening  to  visit  Boston  at  this  juncture,  suggested  to  those  authont.es 
rthe  provincial  deputies  should  be  directed  to  wait  on  Lord  Hyde  and 
tender  tl  e  sum  of  two  thousand  guineas  for  the  private  service  of   he  kmg, 
which  he  assured  them,  from  the  notorious  poverty  and  venality  of  the  court, 
wo  ,ld  infallibly  procure  a  suspension  of  all  hostile  proceedings     Novices  .n 
craf    they  fell  headlong  into  the  snare,  and  addressed  letters  to  this  effect 
to  the  deputies,  while  Cranfield  despatched  letters  at  the  same  time  to  the 
kin-   whiJh  he  represented  to  them  as  containing  the  strongest  ^ecommen- 
datfons  of  their  cause  to  royal  favor.     But  though  these  men  were  w.lhng, 
n  a  cause  where  no  interests  except  their  own  were  involved,  to  sacrifice 
their  monov  for  their  liberty,  and  to  buy  their  country  out  of  the  hands  of  a 
ordid  and  dissolute  tyrant,  -  it  was  not  the  will  o    Providence  that  the 
rberties  of  Massachusetts  should  be  bartered  for  gold,  or  that  devot.onal 
r^ynrs  associated  with  such  unholy  exertions  should  prevad.    fetters  soon 
a  r?ved  from  the  deputies,  informing  their  constituents  that  Cranfield  1^ 
written  a  ludicrous  account  of  the  aflair  to  the  king   and  vaunted  h.s  dev 
erity  in  outwitting  the  people  of  Boston,  whom  he  described  as  a  crew 
seditious  miscreants  and  rebels  ;  and  that  the  publication  of  the  story  had 
rxposed  them  to  the  derision  of  the  royal  court. 

'   The  American  deputies  found  their  sovereign  intoxu^ated  with  the  tr 
umph  of  his  victorious  prerogative,  impatiem  of^alljartherj^ac^^^ 

.  T..  „u.h  a  dnnrc^^  Randolph  oxcitedtlu,Hnu«y  and  "^'^orren..,  of  U..MM,lon.t,,  I  ai 

(iitioii.     Holni«». 
»  IJatchinion.    Cimimprt, 


ras  now  granted 
oyal  letter  con- 
iOlemn  protesta- 
fulfilled,  or  the 
assembly  of  the 
ing  deputies  to 
ilining  to  accept 
jf  the  wealthiest 
plenary  powers 
with,  of  acced- 
ik  fit  to  propose, 
)f  their  country- 
on  the  contrary, 
ere  not  to  do  or 
ped  by  the  char- 
;overnment. 
con  followed  by 
tions.'   A  public 
36  ;  and  prayers 
rter  and  the  sue- 
not  unjustifiable, 
mcil  or  board  of 
and  interests  of 
New  Hampshire, 
those  authorities 
Lord  Hyde,  and 
•vice  of  the  king, 
ality  of  the  court, 
lings.    Novices  in 
lers  to  this  effect 
same  time  to  the 
ngest  recommen- 
men  were  willing, 
olved,  to  sacrifice 
of  the  hands  of  a 
evidence  that  tlie 
ar  that  devotional 
ail.    Letters  soon 
hat  Cranfield  had 
I  vaunted  his  dex- 
ibed  as  a  crew  of 
n  of  the  story  had 

:?atcd  with  the  tri- 
er vacation  of  his 

(tiTof  th(!  colonists,  thai 
r  hisnrrival  in  tliociiy, 
r  it  firiitctiins<m);  nnd 
an'-e,  thnt  lie  fxproffpJ 
cttH  would  nocount  him 
rt  tiicir  politicul  coiuii' 


revenge,  and  incensed  to  the  highest  degree  against  a  province  tl 
long  presumed  to  withstand  his  will.     Their  credentials,  which 


[BOOK  II      ■    ^,i.vp.  !V.]    QUO  WARRANTO  ISSUED  AGAINST  MASSACHUSETTS.        253 

that  had  so 
lone  presumea  lo  wunsianu  ms  wm.      aucu  ticuunuaio,  y»iii.^n  were  ex- 
hibited to  Sir  Lionel  Jenkins,  the  secretary  of  state,  were  at  once  declared 
to  be  insufficient ;  and  they  were  informed,  that,  unless  a  commission  more 
ample  and  salisfactorv  were  immediately  produced,  it  was  his  Majesty's 
nleasure  that  a  writ  of  quo  warranto  against  their  country's  charter  should 
issile  without  delay.     The  deputies  communicated  this  peremptory  injunc- 
tion to  their  constituents  ;  assuring  them,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  pre- 
dicament of   the  colony  was  desperate  ;    and  leaving  them  to  determine 
whether  it  was  most  advisable  to  submit  themselves  unreservedly  to  bis 
Majesty's  pleasure,  or  to  abide  the  issue  of  a  process  which  v^ould  certainly 
be  fatal.     This  important  question,  the  determination  of  which  was  to  be 
the  last  exercise  of  their  highly  prized  liberty,  was  solemnly  debated,  both 
in  the  General  Court,  and,  as  was  meet,  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  province 
■it  larce  ;  and  the   prevailing  sentiment  was  declared  to  be,  "  that  it  was 
better  to  die  by  other  hands  than  by  their  own."  [1683.']     An  earnest  ad- 
dress to  the  king  was  framed  by  the  General  Court ;  a  corresponding  one 
was  signed  by  the  inhabitants  at  large  ;  and  the  agents  were  directed  to 
present  or  suppress  these  addresses  according  to  their  own  discretion. 
They^  were  likewise  authorized  to  resign  the  title-deeds  of  the  province  of 
Maine,  if,  by  so  doing,  they  could  preserve  the  charter  of  Massachusetts, 
-and  they  were,  finally,  assured  of  the  irrevocable  determination  of  their 
constituents  to  adhere  to  the  charter,  and  never  to  show  themselves  unwor- 
thy of  liberty  by  making  a  voluntary  surrender  of  it.     The  communication 
of  this  magnanimous  answer  put  an  end  to  the  functions  of  the  deputies  ; 
and  a  writ  of  quo  warranto  having  been  issued  forthwith  against  the  colony, 
they  desired  leave  to  retire  from  the  scene  of  this  procedure,  and  were  per- 
mitted to  return  lo  Boston. 

They  were  instantly  followed  by  Randolph,  who  had  presented  to  the 
Committee  of  Plantations  a  catalogue  of  crimes  and  misdemeanours  which 
he  imputed  to  the  provincial  government,  and  was  now  selected  to  carry  the 
fatal  writ  across  the  Atlantic.     The  communication  was  highly  agreeable 
to  the  messenger  who  conveyed  it ;  and  Randolph  performed   [October, 
1683]  his  part  with  an  ostent  of  triumphant  satisfaction  that  added  insult  to 
injury,  and  increased  the  detestation  with  which  he  was  universally  regarded. 
The  king,  at  the  same  time,  made  a  last  endeavour  to  induce  the  colonists 
to  spare  him  the  tedious  formalities  of  legal  process.     He  declared,  that,  n 
before  judgment  they  would  unreservedly  submit  and  resign  themselves  to 
his  pleasu'-e,  he  would  study  their  interest  as  well  as  his  own  in  composing 
the  new  charter,  and  make  no  farther  innovation  on  the  original  constitution 
of  the  province  than  should  be  necessary  for    '      due  support  of  his  au- 
thority.    To  add  weight  to  this  suggestion,  the  colonists  were  apprized, 
that  all  the  corporations  in  Kntc-and,  except  the  city  of  London,  had  sur- 
rendered their  privileges  to  the  king  ;  and  abstracts  of  the  legal  proceedings 
which  had  proved  fatal  t^  thr  charter  of  London  were  circulated  through 
the  province,  —  that  all  miglit  learn  the  hopelessness  of  a  contest  with  royal 
authority.     But  the  people  of  Massachusetts  were  not  to  be  moved  from 


This  year,  Jiod  Rojor  Williaiim,  founder  of  tlic  seUlenient  of  Frovidencr,  and  one  of  Uio 
founders  of  the  State  of  Riiodo  Island  ;  his  admirable  piety  and  philanthropy  and  singulurly 
virtuous  and  useful  lift  have  boen  strikingly  illuatrRted  in  tho  third  volume  of  the  CoUedwns 
of  the  Rhode  Island  Hhtoricol  ''^  u  .'y,  —  a  composition  of  very  grefit  merit,  but  defaced  by  a 
straits  of  hostile  nreiudi-jo  uHaif!  •  •'  •-  ear!y  colonists  of  Massachusetts  and  t^onnecUcut. 


1364 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


their  purpose  by  the  threats  of  despotic  power  or  the  example  of  general 
servility  They  had  acted  well,  and  had  now  to  suffer  well ;  and  disdain- 
fully refused  to  diminish  the  infamy  of  their  oppressor  by  sharing  it  with 
him  A  majority  of  the  council,  dejected  and  overwhelmed  by  their  ca- 
lamities, voted  an  address  of  submission  to  the  king  ;  but,  with  more  erect 
spirit  the  house  of  delegates,  imbued  with  the  general  feelmg  of  the  people, 
and  supported  by  the  approbation  of  the  clergy,  rejected  the  address,  and 
adhered  to  their  former  resolutions.  [1683.]  The  process  of  ^uo  warranto 
was  in  consequence  urged  forward  with  all  the  expedition  that  was  com- 
patible with  forensic  formality.  Among  other  mstances  of  tyrannical  con- 
tempt  of  justice,  the  summons  which  required  the  colony  to  defend  itself 
was  transmitted  so  tardily,  that,  before  compliance  with  it  was  possible  the 
space  assigned  for  such  compliance  had  elapsed.  In  Trinity  lerm  of  the 
following  year  [1684],  judgment  was  pronounced  by  the  English  Court  of 
King's  Bench  against  the  Governor  and  Company  of  Massachusetts,  "thai 
their  letters  patent  and  the  enrolment  thereof  be  cancelled  ;  and  m  the 
year  after,  an  official  copy  of  this  judgment  was  received  by  the  secretary 
of  the  General  Court.     [2d  .Tuly,  1685.]  ^    .,    ,.      •  •    nf 

Thus  was  the  system  of  liberty  that  flourished  for  sixty  years  m  Massa- 
chusetts overthrown  by  the  descendant  of  the  princes  whose  tyranny  had  led 
to  its  establishment,  after  being  defended  by  the  children  of  the  original  set- 
tlers with  the  same  hardy  and  generous  virtue  that  their  fathers  had  exerted 
in  founding  and  rearing  it.  The  venerable  Bradstreet,  who  accompanied  the 
first  emigrants  to  Massachusetts  in  1630,  was  still  alive,  and  was  governor 
of  the  colony  at  the  period  of  the  subversion  of  those  institutions  which  he 
had  contributed  to  plant  in  the  desert,  and  had  so  long  conf  "ued  to  adorn 
and  enjoy.  Perhaps  he  now  discerned  the  vanity  of  those  sentiments  that 
had  prompted  so  many  of  the  coevals  whom  he  survived  to  lament  their 
deaths  as  premature.  But  the  aged  eyes  that  beheld  this  eclipse  of  ^e^v 
England's  prosperity  were  not  yet  to  close  till  they  had  seen  the  return  ol 

belter  days.  .     ,     , .  ,        j  •    *     j . 

That  the  measures  of  the  king  were  in  the  highest  degree  unjust  arid  tyran. 
nical  appears  manifest  beyond  all  decent  denial ;  and  that  the  legal  adjudi- 
cation bv  which  he  masked  his  tyranny  was  never  annulled  by  the  English 
parliament  is  a  circumstance  very  little  creditable  to  English  justice.  The 
House  of  Commons,  indeed,  shortly  after  the  Revolution,  inflamed  with 
indi-^iiation  f»t  the  first  recital  of  the  transactions  which  we  have  now  wit- 
ness^ed,  voted  a  resolve  declaring  "that  those  quo  worranto*  against  th-^ 
charters  of  New  England  were  illegal  and  void"  ;  and  followed  up  thlsr^ 
solve  by  a  bill  for  restoring  the  charter  of  Massachusetts.  But  the  progress 
of  the  bill  was  arrested  in  the  House  of  Lords  by  a  sudden  prorogation  ol 
parliament ;  and  the  Commons  were  afterwards  prevailed  with  to  doiiari 
from  their  purpose  by  the  arguments  of  Treby,  Somers,  aud  Holt,  whose 
eminent  faculties  and  liberal  principles  could  not  exempt  them  from  the  in- 
fluence of  a  superstitious  prejudice,  generated  by  their  professional  habits,  in 

favor  of  the  sacredness  of  legal  formalities. ^ . 

«  Hutchii«tonr~Cba!merf.  **•**• 


CHAP,  v.] 


255 


KIRKE  APPOINTED  GOVERNOR. 


CHAPTER    V. 

P  -ng_nnd  Death  of  Charles  the  Second.  — Government  of  Massachusetts  under  a  tempo- 
mrv  Commission  from  James  the  Second.  —  Andros  appointed  Governor  of  New  England. 
Submission  of  Rhode  Island.  —  Efibrt  to  preserve  the  Charter  of  Connecticut. —  Opprcs- 
Tve  Government  of  Andros.  —  Colonial  Policy  of  the  King.  —  Sir  William  Phips.  —  Indian 
Hostilities  renewed  by  the  Intrigues  of  tlie  French.— Insurrection  at  Boston.- Andros 
;,  nosed—  and  the  ancient  Government  restored.  —  Connecticut  end  Rhode  Island  resume 
(heir  Charters.  —  William  and  Mary  proclaimed.  —  War  with  the  French  and  Indians.— 
<ir  William  Phips  conquers  Acadia.  —  Ineffectual  Expedition  against  Quebec.  —  Impeach- 
ment of  Audros  by  the  Colony  discourugcd  by  the  English  Ministers  — and  dismissed.- 
The  King  refbses  to  restore  the  ancient  Constitution  of  Massachusetts.  —Tenor  of  the  new 
Charter.— -Sir  William  Phips  Governor.  —  The  New  Engliind  Witchcraft.  —  Death  of 
pi,ipg.  _.  War  with  the  French  and  Indians.  —  Loss  of  Acadia.  —  Peace  of  Ryswick.  — 
Moral  and  Political  State  of  New  England. 

So  eager  was  Charles  to  complete  the  execution  of  his  long  cherished 
designs  on  Massachusetts,  that,  in  November,  1684,  immediately  after  the 
iiidgment  of  the  Court  of  King's  Bench  against  its  charter  was  pronounced, 
iie  began  to  make  arrangements  for  the  new  government  of  the  colony. 
Though  not  even  a  complaint  was  pretended  against  New  Plymouth,  he 
scrupled  not  to  involve  this  settlement  in  the  same  fate  ;  and  as  if  he  pur- 
posed 10  consummate  his  tyranny  and  vengeance  by  a  measure  that  should 
surpass  the  darkest  anticipations  entertained  in  New  England,  he  selected  as 
the  delegate  of  his  prerogative  a  man,  than  whom  it  would  be  difficult,  in 
all  the  records  of  human  wickedness  and  oppression,  to  find  one  who  has 
excited  to  a  greater  degree  the  abhorrence  and  indignation  of  his  fellow- 
creatures.     The  notorious  Colonel  Kirke,  whose  ferocious  and  detestable 
cruelty  has  secured  him  an  immortality  of  infamy  in  the  history  of  England, 
was  appointed  governor  of  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  Maine,  and  New 
Plymouth ;  and  it  was  determined  that  no  representative  assembly  of  the 
folonists  should  be  permitted  to  exist,  but  that  all  the  functions  of  municipal 
authority  should  be  vested  in  the  governor  and  a  council  appointed  during 
the  royal  pleasure.     This  arbitrary  policy  was  approved  by  all  the  ministers 
of  Charles,  except  the  Marquis  of  Halifax,  who  espoused  the  cause  of  the 
colonists  with  generous  zeal,  and  warmly,  but  vainly,  urged  that  they  were 
entitled  to  enjoy  the  same  laws  and  institutions  that  prevailed  m  the  parent 
state.i    Though  Kirke  had  not  yet  committed  the  enormities  by  which  he 
was  destined  to  illustrate  his"  name  in  the  West  of  England,  he  had  already 
^iven  such  indications  of  his  disposition,  in  the  government  of  Tangier,  that 
the  tidings  of  his  appointment  filled  the  inhabitants  of  the  colony  with  horror 
and  dismay.  But  befoie  the  royal  commission  and  instructions  to  this  ruffian 
were  completed,  the  career  of  the  monarch  himself  was  interrupted  by  death ; 
and  Kirke  was  reserved  to  contribute  by  his  sanguinary  violence  in  England 
to  bring  hatred  and  exile  on  Charles's  successor.     This  successor,  James 
the  Second,  from  whose  stern,  inflexible  temper  and  lofty  idea»  of  royal  pre- 
rogative the  most  gloomy  presages  of  tyranny  were  derived,  was  proclaimed 
in  Boston  with  melancholy  solemnity^  [April,^85^]^_ 

"^h^rUi;iir^ourrandlhc"Duke  of  Yo'rkT.unonstratcd  with  Charles  on  the  impolicy  of 
rctainins  in  office  a  man  who  professed  such  sentiments.  Banllori  s  Corrtspondencem  itie 
Appendix  to  Fox's  Itisiury  ofjamts  the  Srrnnd.  "  Even  at  this  early  period,  says  Mr.  box, 
"a  question  relative  to  North  American  liberty,  and  oven  to  North  American  taxa.ion,  wa> 

„«_...j...-j 4L.  .....A  ./• :__:_! C-ionftl"  or  n.liroi-cn  tn  nrhilrArv  nower  at  nOIDS. 

■••••  — !ri.-.i  tts  tiic  tvat  VI  t?rtTivii?:T:r  i»i.'**'**j   •-*.  »..-»-."- —  j    . 

'  Hutchinson.    Chalmers. 


I 


256 


HISTORY  or  NOllTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


These  presages  were  verified  by  the  conduct  of  tbe  new  sovereign.  Soon 
after  hTs  accession  to  the  throne,  he  appointed,  by  special  commission  a  pro- 
v^onu  governrnem  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire  Maine,  and  New 
P  Zouth,  to  be  administered  by  a  president  and  council  selected  from  the 
^haEnt  of  Massachusetts,  whose  functions  were  merely  executive,  and 
were  to  endure  till  the  establishment  of  a  fixed  and  pernjanent  system. 
The  functionaries  thus  appointed  were  directed  to  concede  hbery  of  con- 
science to  all  persons,  but  to  bestow  pecu  ar  encouragement  on  the  votar.es 
of  tL  church  of  Engknd  ;  to  determine  all  smts  ongmatmg  withm  he  cole 

V  but  to  admit  appeals  from  their  sentences  to  the  kmg  ;  and  to  dofraj 
he  expenses  of  tlJir  government  by  levying  the  taxes  previously  imposed, 

This  commission  was  appointed  to  be  produced  before  the  Genera  Court 
•i  Bosrn?not  as  still  c^onsidered  a  body  administeru.g  legal  authority,  bm 
t  a  convocation  of  individuals  of  the  greatest  influence  and  consideration  ,n 
the  province.  In  answer  to  the  communication  of  its  contents,  the  Court 
votedTMay,  1686]  a  unanimous  resolution,  in  which  they  protested  that  t  . 
[nl  ab.tants^of  Massachusetts  were  deprived  of  the  rights  of  ffeem^n  by  t  , 

V  !em  of  government  which  had  been  announced  to  them,  and  tha  it  dee,  y 
«ned\oth  those  who  imroduced  and  those  who  were  subjected  to  iho 
operaUon  of  this  system  to  reflect  how  far  it  was  safe  to  pursue  it  U 
Esres,  they  declared,  that,  if  the  nevly  appointed  olBcers  sj^oud  think 

oper  to  exercise  their  functions,  though  they  could  never  regard  them  as 
vested  N.Si  constitutional  power,  they  would  denriean  themselves  notw.th- 
sundlng,  as  loyal  subjects,  and  humbly  make  their  addresses  to  God,  and 
ill  due  time  to  their. prince,  for  relief.                  ^^    „          t     u  j         •     i 
The  president  nanied  in  the  commission  was  Dudley,  who  had  previously 
been  onTof  the  deputies  of  the  province  to  1  nghmd,  and  whose  condu.t 
iustified  in  some  degree,  the  jealousy  with  which  the  colonists  ever  regarded 
1    per  ^ns  to  whom^  they  were  constrained  to  intrust  that  important  office 
'rhe^patriotic  virtue  of  this  man,  without  being  utterly  dissolved,  vas  relaxed 
bv  the  bTams  of  regal  splendor  ;  and  he  had  not  been  able  to  look  on  the 
poiai  and  show  of  arislocratical  institutions  with  philosophic  composure  or 
unSi  ing  eyes.     Despairing  of  his  ability  at  once  to  serve  and  grat.  y  h. 
'    CO  mt  y,  he  applied  hiinself  with  more  success  to  cultivate  Ins  own  interest 
a^he  English  court ;  and  in  pursuing  this  crooked  policy   he  seems  to  ha^ 
flittered  himself  with  the  hope  that  the  Interest  of  his  fellow-cit.zens  m,gh. 
e  more  efi-ectually  promoted  by  his  own  advancement  to  ofiicial  premi- 
ence  among  them,  than  by  the  exclusion  which  he  would  mcur,  in  commo,, 
with  themselves,  b;  a  stricter  adherence  to  the  lino  of  integrity.    Though  he 
accepted  tl^  commission,  and  persuaded  the  other  persons  who  were  asso- 
caTed  wih  him  to  imitate  his  example,   he  continued  to  demonslra^e ;. 
fiendlv  regard  to  the  rights  of  the  people,  and  to  the  mumcipal  institutions 
Xh  tiLy  so  highly  valued.     Not'  only  was  immediate  change  in  the  pro- 
'  rial  magistracy  avoided,  but  the  commissioners,  ,n  deference  to  he  pubh. 
feeling  T^smitted  a  memorial  to  the  English  court   aflirming  that  a  .el^ 
^;d  "sembl/of  the  representatives  of  the  P-pl^-- -?-  ^  "-^ 
sarv    and  ought  in  their  opinion  to  be  estaph.shed  without  dolay.     Ihi.^ 
Serate   co'nduct,  howevJr,   ga^.  little  satisfaction  to  -y  of  [  yar   ; 
whom  they  desired  to  please.     The  people  were  mdignant  o  behold  a 
Tern  which\vas  erectei  onthe  niins  of,  their  liberty  admmistered^  by  a.^^ 
own  fellow-<;rti2iens,  and  atmve  aii  by  me  man  wuom  u.c>  .=  •• ;  - 


CHAP,  v.] 


ANDR03,  CAPTAIN-GENEKAL. 


267 


pointed  to  resist  its  introduction  among  them  ;  and  nothing  but  the  appre- 
hension of  seeing  him  replaced  by  Kirke,  whose  massacres  in  England 
seemed  gloomily  to  foretell  the  treatment  of  America,  prevented  an  open 
expression  of  their  displeasure.  The  conduct  of  the  commissioners  was  no 
less  unsatisfactory  both  to  the  abettors  of  arbitrary  government  in  England, 
,nd  to  the  creatures  and  associates  of  Randolph  within  the  province,  who 
were  eager  to  pay  court  to  the  king  by  prostrating  beneath  his  power  every 
obstacle  to  the  execution  of  his  will.  Complaints  were  soon  transmitted  by 
ihese  persons  to  the  English  ministers,  charging  the  commissioners  with 
conniving  at  wonted  practices  by  which  the  trade  laws  were  evaded,  coun- 
tenancing ancient  prmciples  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  policy,  and  evincing, 
in  general,  but  a  lukewarm  affection  to  the  king's  service.' 

In  addition  to  these  causes  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  commissioners,  the 
king  was  incited  to  proceed  to  the  completion  of  his  plans  by  the  imper- 
lection  of  the  temporary  arrangement  to  which  he  had  resorted.     It  was 
found  that  the  provincial  acts  of  taxation  were  ready  to  expire  ;  and  the 
commissioners,  being  devoid  of  legislative  authority,  had  no  power  to  renew 
mem.    They  employed  this  consideration  to  support  their  suggestion  of  a 
representative  assembly  ;  but  it  determined  the  king  to  enlarge  the  arbitrary 
authority  of  his  provincial  officers,  and  at  the  same  time  to  establish  a  per- 
inanenl  administration  for  New  England.     He  consulted  the  crown  lawyers, 
and  in  particular  Sir  William  Jones,  the  attorney-general,  respecting  the 
extent  of  his  powers  ;  and  they  pronounced,  as  their  official  opinion,  "that, 
notwithstanding  the  forfeiture  of  the  charter  of  Massachusetts,  its  inhabitants 
continued  English  subjects,  invested  with  English  liberties,  and  consequently 
that  the  king  could  no  more  grant  a  commission  to  levy  money  on  them, 
without  their  consent  in  an  assembly,  than  they  could  discharge  themselves 
from  their  allegiance  "  ;  a  truth,  of  which  the  discovery  implies  no  extraor- 
dinary legal  knowledge  or  acuteness,  but  of  which  this  open  declaration 
bespeaks  more  honesty  than  we  might  have  expected  from  persons  selected 
by  the  monarch  from  a  society  of  lawyers,  which,  in  that  age,  could  supply 
such  instruments  as  Jeffries  and  Scroggs.     We  must  recollect,  however, 
that  lawyers,  though  professionally  partial  to  the  authority  which  nominally 
and  theoretically  constitutes  the  source  and  mainspring  of  the  system  which 
they  administer,  cherish  also,  in  their  strong  predilection  for  those  forms  and 
precedents  that  practically  constitute  the>x  own  influence  and  the  peculiar 
mystery  of  their  science,  a  principle  that  frequently  protects  liberty  and  be- 
friends substantial  justice. 

But  James  was  too  much  enamoured  of  arbitrary  power  to  be  deterred 
from  the  indulgence  of  it  by  any  obstacle  inferior  to  invincible  necessity  ; 
and  accordingly,  without  paying  the  slightest  regard  to  an  opinion  supported 
only  by  the  ptns  of  lawyers,  he  determined  to  establish  a  complete  tyranny 
in  New  England,  by  combining  \Jie  whole  legislative  and  executive  authority 
in  the  persons  of  a  governor  and  council  to  be  named  by  himself.  Kirko 
had  been  found  too  useful,  as  an  instrument  of  terror  in  England,  to  be  spared 
to  America.  Rut  Sir  Edi.iund  Andros,  who  had  signalized  his  devotion  to 
arbitrary  power  in  the  government  of  New  York,  was  now  appointed  caplam- 
ceneral  and  vice-admiral  of  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  Maine,  New 
riymouth,  and  certain  dependent  territories,  during  the  pleasure  of  the  kiiig. . 
He  was  empowered,  with  consent  of  a  board  of  counsellors,  to  make  ordi- 


:l   II 


■  Neul.    Hutchinson.    Chalmera. 


VOL    I. 


%*o 


258 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[ROOK  II 


nances  for  the  colonies,  not  inconsistent  with  the  laws  of  England,  and  which 
were  to  be  submitted  to  the  king  for  his  approbation  or  dissent,  and  to  im- 
pose taxes  for  the  support  of  government.  He  was  directed  to  govern  the 
neonle  in  conformity  with  the  tenor  of  his  commission,  of  a  separate  letter 
of  instructions  with  which  he  was  at  the  same  time  furnished,  and  of  the 
laws  which  were  then  in  force  or  might  be  afterwards  enacted.  Ihe  gov 
ernor  and  council  were  also  constituted  a  court  of  record  ;  and  Irom  their 
decisions  an  appeal  was  competent  to  the  king.  Ihe  greater  part  of  the 
instructions  that  were  communicated  to  Andros  are  of  a  nature  that  would 
do  honor  to  the  patriotism  of  the  king,  if  the  praise  of  this  virtue  were  due 
to  a  barren  desire  to  promote  the  welfare  of  his  people,  accompanied  will, 
the  most  effectual  exertions  to  strip  them  of  every  security  by  which  their 

welfare  might  be  guarded.  r  .     ♦   v  .     , 

Andros  was  directed  to  promote  no  persons  to  offices  of  trust,  but  colo- 
nists of  fair  character  and  competent  estate,  and  to  displace  none  without 
sufficient  cause  ;  to  respect  and  administer  the  existing  laws  ol  the  country, 
in  so  far  as  they  were  not  inconsistent  with  his  commission  or  instructions ; 
to  dispose  of  the  crown  lands  at  moderate  quitrents  ;  "  to  take  away  or  to 
harm  no  man's  life,  member,  freehold,  or  goods,  but  by  established  laws  ot 
the  country,  not  repugnant  to  those  of  the  realm  "  ;  to  d.sciphne  and  am, 
the  inhabitants  for  the  defence  of  the  country,  but  not  to  obstruc  t  their  at- 
tention to  their  own  private  business  and  necessary  affairs  ;  to  encourage 
freedom  of  commerce  by  restraining  engrossers  ;  to  check  the  excessive 
severity  of  masters  to  their  servants,  and  to  punish  with  death  tho  slayers 
of  Indians  or  negroes  ;  to  allow  no  printing-press  to  exist ;  and  to  grant  uni- 
versal  toleration  in  religion,  but  special  encouragement  to  the  church  ol 
Eneland.    Except  the  restraint  of  printing  (which,  though  enjoined,  appears 
not  to  have  been  carried  into  effect),  there  is  not  one  of  these  instructions 
that  expresses  a  spirit  of  despotism  ;  and  yet  the  whole  system  was  silent  y 
pervaded  by  that  spirit ;  for  as  there  were  no  securities  provided  for  t  e 
accomphshmentof  the  king's  benevolent  directions,  so  there  were  no  checks 
established  to  restrain  the  abuse  of  the  powers  with  which  the  governor  was 
intrusted.     The  king  was  willing  that  his  subjects  should  be  happy,  but  not 
that  they  should  be  free,  or  entitled  to  pursue  a  scheme  of  happiness  inde- 
pendent of  his  instruction  and  control ;  and  this  conjunction  of  a  desire  to 
promote  human  welfare,  with  an  aversion  to  the  means  most  likely  o  secnre 
t,  suggests  the  explanation,  perhaps  the  apology,  of  an  error  to  which  des- 
^tidovereigns  are  inveterately  liable.     Trained  in  habits  of  indulgence 
of  their  own  vvill,  and  in  sentiments  of  respect  for  its  force  and  efficacy,  they 
learn  to  consider  it  as  what  not  only  ought  to  be,  but  must  bo,  irresistible ; 
and  feel  no  less  secure  of  ability  to  make  men  happy  without  their  own  co- 
operation, than  of  the  right  to  balk  the  natural  desire  of  mankind  to  be  the 
providers  and  guardians  of  their  proper  welfare.     The  possession  of  abs  ■ 
fute  power  renders  self-denial  the  highest  effort  of  virtue  ;  and  the  absolute 
monarch,  who  should  demonstrate  a  just  regard  to  the  rights  of  his  fello.- 
creatures,  would  deserve  to  be  honored  as  one  of  the  most  magnanimous  f 
human  beings.     Furnished  with  the  instructions  which  we  have  seen  tor  thj 
.  mitigation  of  his  arbitrary  power,  and  attended  by  a  few  cornpames  of     • 
diers  for  its  support,  Andros  arrived  m  Boston  [December,  168G1  ,  and  pre 
.«n.in^  bimonlf  as  the  substitutc  for  the  dreaded  and  detested  Kirke,  M 
commencing  his  administration  with  many  gracious  expressions  ol  guod-vM.i, 


CHAP,  v.]  SURRENDER  OF  RHODE   ISLAND  CHARTER. 


269 


he  was  received  more  favorably  than  might  have  been  expected.  But  his 
popularity  was  shortlived.  Instead  of  conforming  to  his  instructions,  he 
copied  and  even  exceeded  the  arbitrary  behaviour  of  his  master  in  England, 
and  committed  the  most  tyrannical  violeiire  and  oppressive  exactions. » 
Dudley,  the  late  president,  and  several  of  his  colleagues,  were  associated 
as  counsellors  of  the  new  administration,  —  which  was  thus  loaded,  in  the 
beginning  of  its  career,  with  the  weight  of  their  unpopularity,  and  in  the  end 
involved  them  in  deeper  odium  and  disgrace. 

It  was  the  purpose  of  James  to  consolidate  the  force  of  all  the  British 
colonics  in  one  general  government ;  and  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut 
were  now  to  experience  that  their  destiny  was  involved  in  that  of  Massa- 
chiisetis.  The  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island,  on  learning  the  accession  of 
ilie  kiiie,  instantly  transmitted  an  address  congratulating  him  on  his  eleva- 
tion, acknowledging  themselves  his  loyal  subiects,  and  begging  his  protec- 
,  of  their  chartered  rights.     Yet  the  humility  of  their  supplications  could 


tion 


not  protect  them  from  the  consequences  of  the  plans  he  had  embraced  for 
the  general  government  of  New  England.     Articles  of  high  misdemeanour 
were  exhibited  against  them  before  the  Lords  of  the  Committee  of  Colonies, 
charging  them  with  breaches  of  their  charter,  aiM  with  opposition  to  the  Acts 
of  Navigation  ;  and  before  the  close  of  the  year  1685,  they  received  notice 
of  the  institution  of  a  process  of  <jf«o  warranto  against  their  patent.  Without 
hesitation,  they  protested  that  they  would  not  contend  with  their  sovereign, 
and  passed  an  act,  in  full  assembly,  formally  surrendering  their  provincial 
rharler  and  all  the  powers  it  conferred.     By  a  fresh  address  they  "  humbly 
prostrated  themselves,  their  privileges,  their  all,  at  the  gracious  feet  of  his 
Majesty,  with  an  entire  resolution  to  serve  him  with  faithful  hearts.'       ihis 
abject  language  emboldened,  without  conciliating,  the  king ;  who,  accounting 
le4l  -solemnities  a  superfluous  ceremony  with  persons  so  obsequious  to  his 
wfll,  proceeded,  without  farther  delay,  to  impose  the  yoke  which  the  people 
sought  to  evade  by  deserving  it.  But  his  eagerness  to  accomplish  his  object 
with  rapidity,  though  it  probably  inflicted  a  salutary  disappointment  on  this 
people  at  the  time,  proved  ultimately  beneficial  to  their  political  mterests 
by  preserving  their  charter  from  a  legal  extinction  ;  and  this  benefit,  which 
a  similar  improvidence  aflx)rded  to  the  people  of  Connecticut,  was  ascer- 
tained at  the  era  of  the  British  Revolution.     In  consequence  of  the  last  ad- 
dress from  Rhode  Island,  Andros  was  charged  to  extend  his  administration 
to  this  province  ;  and  in  the  same  month  that  witnessed  his  arrival  at  Boston 
he  visited  Rhode  Island,  where  he  dissolved  the  provincial  corporation, 
broke  its  seal,  and,  admitting  five  of  the  inhabitants  into  his  legislative 
council,  assumed  the  exercise  of  all  the  functions  of  government. 

Connecticut  had  also  transmitted  an  address  to  the  king  on  his  accession, 
and  vainly  solicited  the  preservation  of  her  privileges.  When  the  articles 
of  misdemeanour  were  exhibited  against  Rhode  Island,  a  measure  of  similar 
import  was  employed  against  the  governor  and  assembly  of  Connecticut,  who 
were  reproached  with  framing  laws  contrary  in  tenor  to  those  of  England  ; 
of  extorting  unreasonable  fines  ;  of  administering  an  oath  of  fidelity  to  their 
own  corporation,  in  contradistinction  to  the  oath  of  allegiance ;  of  intolerance 
in  ecclesiastical  polity  ;  and  of  denial  of  justice.  These  charges,  which 
were  supposed  to  infer  a  forfeiture  of  the  charter,  were  remitted  to  bawyer, 
the  attorney-general,  with  directions  to  expedite  a  writ  of  quo  tearranto 

'  nutcliinson.     Chalmers.  '  ^^"^- 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


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Photographic 

Sciences 

Corporation 


23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER, NY    MS80 

(716)  872-4S03 


260 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA 


rBOOK  n. 


aga,inst  tlie  colony.  The  writ  was  issued,  and  Randolph,  the  general  enemy 
of  American  liberty  and  officious  partisan  of  arbitrary  power,  offered  his 
services  in  conveying  it  across  the  Atlantic.  The  governor  and  the  assem- 
bly of  Connecticut  had  for  some  time  remarked  the  storm  approaching,  and, 
knowing  that  direct  resistance  was  vain,  they  endeavoured,  by  address,  to 
elude  what  they  were  unable  to  repel.  After  delaying,  as  long  as  possible, 
to  make  any  signification  of  their  intentions,  they  were  convinced,  by  the 
arrival  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros  at  Boston,  and  his  conduct  in  Rhode  Island, 
that  the  designs  of  the  king  were  to  be  vigorously  pursued,  and  that  they 
could  not  hope  to  be  indulged  with  farther  space  for  dehberation.  They 
wrote,  accordingly,  to  the  secretary  of  state,  expressing  a  strong  desire  to 
retain  their  present  constitution  ;  but  requesting,  if  it  were  the  irrevocable 
purpose  of  their  sovereign  to  dispose  otherwise  of  them,  that  they  might  be 
incorporated  with  Massachusetts,  and  share  the  fortunes  of  a  people  with 
whom  they  had  always  maintained  a  friendly  correspondence,  and  whose 
principles  and  manners  they  understood  and  approved.  This  was  hastily 
construed  by  the  British  government  into  a  surrender  of  the  provincial  con- 
stitution ;  and  Andros  was  commanded  to  annex  this  province,  also,  to  his 

jurisdiction.  •  it.-, 

Randolph,  who  seems  to  have  been  qualified  not  less  by  genius  than 
inclination  to  promote  the  success  of  tyrannical  designs,  advised  the  English 
ministers  to  prosecute  the  quo  tearranto  to  a  judicial  issue  ;  assuhng  them 
that  the  government  of  Connecticut  would  never  consent  to  do,  nor  ac- 
knowledge that  they  had  actually  done,  what  was  equivalent  to  an  express 
surrender  of  the  rights  of  the  people.     It  was  matter  of  regret  to  the  min- 
isters and  crown  lawyers  of  a  later  age,  that  this  politic  suggestion  was  not 
adopted.   But  the  king  was  too  eager  to  snatch  the  boon  that  seemed  withiu 
his  reach,  to  wait  the  tedious  formalities  of  the  law  ;  and  no  farther  judicial 
proceedings  ensued  on  tlie  quo  warranto.     In  conformity  with  his  orders, 
Andros  marched  at  the  head  of  a  body  of  troops  to  Hartford  [October, 
1687],  the  seat  of  the  provincial  government,  where  he  demanded  that  the 
charter  should  be  delivered  into  his  hands.     The  people  were  extremely 
desirous  to  preserve  at  least  the  document  of  rights,  which  the  return  of 
better  times  might  enable  them  to  assert  with  advantage.     The  charter  was 
laid  on  the  table  of  the  assembly,  and  some  of  the  principal  inhabitants  of 
the  colony  addressed  Andros  at  considerable  length,  recounting  the  exertions 
that  had  been  made,  and  the  hardships  that  had  been  incurred,  in  order  to 
found  the  institutions  which  he  was  come  to  destroy  ;  entreating  him  yet  to 
spare  them,  or  at  least  to  leave  the  people  in  possession  of  the  patent,  as  a 
testimonial  of  the  favor  and  happiness  they  had  hitherto  enjojred.     The  de- 
bate was  earnest,  but  orderly,  and  protracted  to  a  late  hour  in  the  evening. 
As  the  day  declined,  lights  were  introduced  into  the  hall,  wliich  was  gradu- 
ally surrounded  by  a  numerous  concourse  of  the  bravest  and  most  deter- 
mined men  in  the  province,  prepared  to  defend  their  representatives  agamst 
the  apprehended  violence  of  Andros  and  his  armed  followers.     Ai  length, 
rlieir  arguments  proving  quite  ineffectual,  a  measure,  supposed  to  have  been 
previously  concerted  by  the  inhabitants,  was  coolly,  resolutely,  and  success- 
fully conducted.    The  lights  were  extinguished,  as  if  by  accident ;  and  Cap- 
lain  Wadsvvorlh,  laying  hold  of  the  charter,  disappeared  \vith  it  before  they 
could  be  rekindled.     Fe  conveyed  it  securely  through  the  crowd,— who 
opened  to  let  him  pass,  and  closed  their  ranks  as  he  proceeded,  —and  dc 


CHAP,  v.] 


OPPRESSIVE  GOVERNMENT  OF  ANDROS. 


261 


)f  the  patent,  as  a 


posited  it  in  the  hollow  of  an  ancient  oak,  which  retained  the  precious  deposit 
till  the  era  of  the  British  Revolution,  and  was  long  regarded  with  veneration 
by  the  people,  as  the  memorial  and  associate  of  a  transaction  so  interesting 
to  their  liberties.  Andros,  disappointed  in  all  his  efforts  to  recover  the  char- 
ter, or  ascertain  the  person  by  whom  it  was  secreted,  contented  himself  with 
declaring  that  its  institutions  were  dissolved ;  and  assuming  to  himself  the 
exercise  of  supreme  authority,  he  created  two  of  the  principal  inhabitants 
members  of  his  legislative  council.^ 

Having  thus  united  all  the  New  England  States  under  one  comprehensive 
system  of  arbitrary  government,  Andros,  with  the  assistance  of  his  grand 
legislative  council,  selected  from  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  provinces, 
addressed  himself  to  the  task  of  composing  laws  and  regulations  calculated 
to  fortify  his  authority.  An  act  restoring  the  former  taxes  obtained  the  assent 
of  the  council ;  and  yet  even  this  indispensable  provision  was  obstructed  by 
the  reluctance  with  which  the  counsellors,  though  selected  by  Andros  him- 
self, consented  to  become  the  instruments  of  riveting  the  shackles  of  their 
country.  The  only  farther  opposition  which  he  experienced  proceeded  from 
^he  inhabitants  of  the  county  of  Essex,  in  Massachusetts,  who,  insisting  that 
they  were  freemen,  refused  to  pay  the  contingent  assessed  upon  them  of  a 
taxation  which  they  deemed  unconstitutional.  But  their  resistance  was  easily 
overpowered,  and  their  leaders  were  severely  punished.  Andros  soon  dis- 
covered that  the  revenues  of  the  ancient  government  were  inadequate  to  the 
support  of  his  more  costly  administration  ;  and  while  he  signified  this  defal- 
cation to  the  king,  he  declared,  at  the  same  time,  with  real  or  affected  hu- 
manity, that  the.  country  was  so  much  impoverished  by  the  effects  of  the 
Indian  war,  by  recent  losses  at  sea,  and  by  scanty  harvests,  that  an  increase 
of  taxation  could  hardly  be  endured.  But  James,  who  had  exhausted  his 
lenity  in  the  letter  of  instructions,  answered  this  communication  by  a  peremp- 
tory mandate  to  raise  the  taxes  to  a  level  with  the  charges  of  administration  ; 
and  Andros,  thereupon,  either  stifling  his  tenderness  for  the  people,  or  dis- 
carding his  superfluous  respect  to  the  moderation  of  the  king,  proceeded  to 
exercise  his  power  with  a  tyrannical  rigor  that  rendered  his  government  uni- 
versally odious. 

The  weight  of  taxation  was  oppressively  augmented,  and  the  fees  of  all 
public  functionaries  screwed  up  to  an  enormous  height.  The  ceremonial  of 
marriage  was  altered,  and  the  celebration  of  that  rite,  which  had  been  hith- 
erto committed  to  the  civil  magistrates,  was  confined  to  the  ministers  of  the 
church  of  England,  of  whom  there  was  only  one  in  the  province  of  Mas- 
sachusetts. The  fasts  and  thanksgivings  appointed  by  the  Congregational 
churches  were  arbitrarily  suppressed  by  the  governor,  who  maintained  that 
the  regulation  of  such  matters  belonged  entirely  to  the  civil  power.  He  took 
occasion  repeatedly,  and  with  the  most  offensive  insolence,  to  remark,  in 
presence  of  the  council,  that  the  colonists  would  find  themselves  mistaken, 
if  they  supposed  that  the  privileges  of  Englishmen  followed  them  to  me  ex- 
tremity of  the  earth  ;  and  that  the  only  difference  between  their  condition 
and  that  of  slaves  was,  that  they  were  neither  bought  nor  sold.  It  was  de- 
clared unlawful  for  the  colonists  to  assemble  in  public  meetings,  or  for  any 
one  to  quit  the  province  without  a  passport  from  the  governor ;  and  Randolpl , 
now  at  the  summit  of  his  wishes,  was  not  ashamed  to  boast  in  letters  to  hij 
friends  that  the  rulers  of  New  England  were  "  as  arbitrary  as  the  Great 

'  Hutchinson.    Chaimers.    Dwight's  Travels.    Trumbuii. 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


^2 

Turk."  While  Andros  mocked  the  people  with  the  semblance  of  trial  by 
jury,  he  contrived,  by  intrigue  and  partiality  in  the  selection  of  jurymen,  to 
wreak  his  vengeance  on  every  person  who  offended  him,  as  well  as  to  screen 
the  misdeeds  of  his  own  dependents  from  tlie  punishment  they  deserved. 
And,  as  if  to  heighten  the  discontent  excited  by  such  tyrannical  insolence, 
he  took  occasion  to  question  the  validitjr  of  the  existbg  titles  to  landed 
property,  pretending  that  t^ie  rights  acquired  under  the  sanction  of  the  an- 
cient government  were  tainted  with  its  vices  and  obnoxious  to  its  fate.' 
New  grants  or  patents  from  the  governor,  it  was  announced,  were  recjuisite 
to  mend  the  defective  titles  to  land  ;  and  v/Tils  of  intrusion  were  issued 
agamst  all  who  refused  to  apply  for  such  patepts,  and  to  pay  the  large  fees 
that  were  charged  for  them.  Most  of  the  landed  proprietors  were  compelled 
to  submit  to  this  extortion  in  order  to  save  their  estates  from  confiscation, 
—  an  extremity,  which,  however,  was  braved  by  one  individual,  Colonel 
Shrimpton,  who  preferred  the  loss  of  his  property  to  the  recognition  of  a 
principle  which  he  deemed  both  injurious  and  dishonorable  to  his  country. 
The  king  had  now  encouraged  Andros  to  consider  the  people  whom  he 
governed  as  a  society  of  felons  or  rebels ;  for  he  transmitted  to  him  express 
directions  to  grant  his  Majesty's  most  gracious  pardon  to  as  many  of  the 
colonists  as  should  apply  for  it.  But  none  had  the  meanness  to  solicit  a 
grace  that  exclusively  befitted  the  guilty.  The  only  act  of  the  king  that  was 
favorably  regarded  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  colony  was  his  Decli^ration  oj 
Indulgence,  which  excited  so  much  discontent  in  Britain,  eyen  among  the 
Protestant  dissenters  who  shared  its  benefit.  Notwithstanding  the  intolerance 
that  has  been  imputed  to  New  England,  this  declaration  pjoduced  general 
satisfaction  there  ;  though  some  of  the  inhabitants  had  discernment  enough 
to  perceive  that  the  sole  object  of  the  king  was  the  gradual  introduction  of 
the  Catholic  church  into  Britain.* 

After  many  ineffectual  remonstrances  against  his  violence  ^nd  injustice 
had  been  addressed  by  the  colonists  to  Andros  himself,  two  deputies,  one 
of  whom  was  Increase  lyiather,  the  most  eminent  theologian  and  most  pop- 
ular minister  in  Massachusetts,  were  sent  to  England,  to  submit  the  griev- 
ances of  the  colony  to  the  humane  consideration  of  the  king.  [April,  1688.] 
Jlandolph,  whose  subservience  to  the  royal  policy  was  revyarded  with  the 
offices  of  postmaster-general  and  licenser  of  the  press  in  Neyv  England,  ex- 
erted himself  to  defeat  the  success  of  the  deputation,  by  writing  to  the  Eng- 
lish court  that  Mather  was  a  seditious  and  profligate  incendiary,  and  that  his 
object  was  to  pave  the  way  to  the  overtlirow  of  regal  government.  Yet  the 
petitions  which  the  colonists  transmitted  by  Mather  were  remarkably  mod- 
erate. Whatever  they  might  desire,  all  that  they  demanded  was,  that  their 
freeholds  should  be  respected,  and  diat  a  representative  assembly  should  he 
established  for  the  purpose,  at  least,  of  adjusting  their  taxation.  The  first 
of  these  points  was  conceded  by  the  king ;  but  with  respect  to  the  other,  he 
was  inexorable.  When  Sir  William  Phips,  whose  spirit  and  gallantry  had 
gained  this  monarch's  esteem,  pressed  him  to  grant  the  colonists  an  assem- 
bly, he  replied,  "  Any  thing  but  that,  Sir  William"  ;  and  even  the  opinion 
of'^Powis,  the  attorney-general,  to  whom  the  application  of  the  deputies  was 

'  *  The  titles  of  many  of  the  proprietora  of  egtateg  in  New  En^iaDd  dependbd  upoD  convey- 
ances executed  by  the  Indians ;  but  Andros  declared  that  Indian  deeds  were  no  better  than 
"  the  scratch  of  a  bear's  pnw."      Belknap. 

«  Life  of  Phips,  apud  Mather.    Neal.    Dummer's  Defence  of  the  JV«»  England  Charters. 
Uuichinion.    Chalmer9.    Trumbull. 


CHAP,  v.] 


SIR  WILLIAM  PHIPS. 


263 


V<to  England  Charien. 


remitted,  and  who  reported  that  it  was  just  and  reasonable,  produced  no 
change  in  his  determination. 

James,  who  had  now  enlarged  and  completed  his  views  of  colonial  policy, 
determined  to  reduce  all  th6  American  communities  and  constitutions,  as 
well  those  which  were  denominated  proprietary  as  the  others,  to  an  imme- 
diate dependence  on  the  crown  ;  for  the  double  purpose  of  effacing  examples 
that  might  diminish  the  resignation  of  the  people  of  New  England,  and  of 
combining  the  force  of  all  the  colonies,  from  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  to 
the  shores  of  Nova  Scotia,  in  a  compact  system  capable  of  presenting  a 
barrier  to  the  formidable  encroachments  of  France.  A  general  dislike  of 
liberal  establishments  conspired  with  these  views  ;  and  the  declamations 
that  resounded  from  his  oppressed  subjects  in  Britain,  on  the  happiness  and 
liberty  which  America  was  reputed  to  enjoy,  contributed,  at  this  period,  to 
increase  his  aversion  to  American  institutions.*  In  prosecution  of  his  politic 
design,  he  had  recently  commanded  writs  of  quo  waiTanto  to  be  issued  for 
the  purpose  of  cancelling  all  the  colonial  patents  that  still  remained  in  force  ; 
and  shortly  before  the  arrival  of  the  deputation  from  Massachusetts,  a  new 
commission  had  extended  the  jurisdiction  of  Andros  to  New  York  and  New 
Jersey,  and  conferred  the  appointment  of  lieutenant-governor  on  Colonel 
Francis  Nicholson,  Andros,  with  his  usual  promptitude,  accomplished  this 
enlargement  of  his  authority  ;  and  having  appointed  his  deputy  to  reside  at 
New  York,  he  conducted  his  wide  dominion  with  a  vigor  that  rendered  him 
formidable  to  the  French,  but,  unhappily,  still  more  formidable  and  odious 
to  the  people  whom  he  governed.' 

Sir  William  Phips,  whose  fruitless  interposition  we  have  remarked  in 
behalf  of  the  deputation  from  Massachusetts,  was  himself  a  native  of  this 
province,  and,  notwithstanding  a  mean  education  and  the  depression  of  the 
humblest  social  position,  had  ascended  by  the  mere  force  of  superior  genius 
to  a  conspicuous  rank,  and  gained  a  high  reputation  for  spirit,  capacity,  and 
success.  He  followed  the  employment  of  a  shepherd  at  his  native  place  till 
he  was  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  was  afterwards  apprenticed  to  a  ship- 
carpenter.  When  he  was  freed  from  his  indentures,  he  pursued  a  seafaring 
life,  and  attained  the  station  of  captain  of  a  merchant-vessel.  An  account 
which  he  happened  to  peruse  of  the  wreck  of  a  Spanish  ship,  loaded  with 
bullion,  near  the  Bahama  Islands,  about  fifty  years  before,  inspired  him  with 
the  bold  design  of  extricating  the  buried  treasure  from  the  bowels  of  the 
deep  ;  whereupon,  transporting  himself  to  England,  he  stated  his  scheme  so 
plausibly,  that  the  king  was  struck  with  it,  and,  in  1C83,  sent  him  with  a 
vessel  (o  undertake  the  experiment.  It  proved  unsuccessful ;  and  all  his 
urgency  could  not  induce  James  to  engage  in  a  repetition  of  it.  But  the 
Duke  of  Albemarle,  resuming  the  project,  equipped  a  vessel  for  the  pur- 

'  Dryden,  whose  servile  Muse  f:itliru11y  reechoed  the  sentiments  of  the  court,  thus  expresses 
himself  in  a  dramatic  prologu«  written  in  the  year  1686 :  — 

"Sinre  faction  ebbs,  and  rogues  grow  out  of  fashion, 
Tljeir  penny  scribes  take  care  to  inform  the  nation 
How  well  men  thrive  in  this  or  that  plantation  : 

"  How  Pennsylvania's  air  agrees  with  Quakers, 
And  Carolina's  with  associators ; 
Both  e'en  too  good  for  madmen  and  for  traitors. 

"  Truth  is,  our  land  with  saints  is  so  run  o'er, 
And  every  age  produces  such  a  store, 
That  now  there  's  need  of  two  New  Englands  more." 

'  Neal     Hutchinson.    Cbalmcra. 


264 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


pose,  and  gave  the  command  of  it  to  Phips,  who  now  succeeded  in  ac- 
complishing his  expectations,  and  achieved  the  recovery  cf  specie,  to  the 
value  of  at  least  £  300,000,  from  the  bottom  of  the  ocean.  Of  this  treasure 
he  obtained  a  portion  sufficient  for  his  own  enrichment,  with  a  still  larger 
meed  of  general  consideration  and  applause.  The  king  was  advised  by  some 
of  his  courtiers  to  confiscate  the  whole  of  the  specie  thus  recovered,  on  pre- 
tence that  he  had  not  received  a  fair  representation  of  the  project ;  but  he 
declared  that  the  representation  had  been  perfectly  fair,  and  that  nothing  but 
his  own  misgivings,  and  the  timorous  counsels  and  mean  suspicions  of  those 
courtiers  themselves,  had  deprived  him  of  the  riches  which  this  honest  man 
had  sought  to  procure  for  him.  He  conceived  a  high  regard  for  Phips,  and 
conferred  on  him  the  rank  of  knighthood.  Sir  William  employed  his  influ 
ence  at  court  for  the  benefit  of  his  country  ;  and  his  patriotism  seems  nevej 
to  have  harmed  him  in  the  opinion  of  the  kmg.  Finding  that  he  could  not 
prevail  to  obtain  the  restoration  of  the  chartered  privileges,  he  solicited  and 
received  the  appointment  of  high  sheriff  of  New  England  ;  in  the  hope,  that, 
by  remedying  the  abuses  that  were  committed  in  the  empanelling  of  juries, 
he  might  create  a  barrier  against  the  tyranny  of  Andros.  But  the  governor 
and  his  creatures,  incensed  at  this  interference,  hired  ruflSans  to  attack  his 
person,  and  soon  compelled  him  to  quit  the  province  and  take  shelter  in 
Britain.  James,  shortly  before  his  own  abdication,  among  the  other  attempts 
he  mode  to  conciliate  his  subjects,  offered  Phips  the  government!  of  New 
England  ;  but  Phips  refused  to  accept  this  appointment  from  a  falling  tyrant, 
and  under  a  system,  which,  instead  of  seekmg  any  longer  to  mitigate,  he 
hoped  speedily  to  behold  entirely  overthrown.^ 

The  discontent  of  the  people  of  New  England  continued  meanwhile  to 
increase,  insomuch  that  every  act  of  the  government,  however  innocent  or 
even  laudable,  was  viewed  through  the  perverting  gloom  of  a  settled  jeal- 
ousy, and  ascribed  with  undoubting  confidence  to  the  most  sinister  designs. 
In  order  to  discredit  the  former  provincial  authorities,  Andros  and  Randolph 
sedulously  inculcated  the  notion  that  the  Indians  had  hitherto  been  treated 
with  a  cruelty  and  injustice,  to  which  all  the  hostilities  of  these  savages  ought 
reasonably  to  be  imputed  ;  and  vaunted  their  own  ability  to  pacify  and  pro- 
pitiate them  by  gentleness  and  equity.*  But  this  year  their  theory  and  their 
policy  were  alike  disgraced  by  the  furious  hostilities  of  the  Indians  on  the 
eastern  frontiers  of  New  England.  The  movements  of  these  savages  were 
excited  on  this,  as  on  former  occasions,  by  the  insidious  artifices  of  the 
French,  whose  suppleness  of  character  and  demeanour,  contrasted  with  the 
grave,  unbending  spirit  of  the  English,  gave  them  in  general  a  great  advan- 
tage ui  the  competition  for  the  favor  of  the  Indians ;  and  who  found  it  easier 
to  direct  and  employ  than  to  check  or  eradicate  the  treachery  and  ferocity 
of  their  savage  neighbours.  The  English  colonists  offered  to  the  Indians 
terms  of  accommodation,  which  at  first  they  seemed  willing  to  accept ;  but 
the  encouragement  of  their  French  allies  soon  prevailed  with  them  to  reject 
all  friendly  overtures,  and  their  native  ferocity  prompted  them  to  signalize 
this  declaration  by  a  series  of  unprovoked  and  unexpected  massacres. 
Andros  published  a  proclamation  requiring  that  the  murderers  should  be 
delivered  up  to  him  ;  but  the  Indians  treated  him  and  his  proclamation  with 

'  Life  of  I'hips,  apud  Mather.     Neal.     Hutchin§on. 

*  It  appoara  that  Ranilolph  cultivated  the  good  opinion  of  William  Pcnn,  by  writing  to  him 
in  this  strain,  as  well  an  by  condemning  the  former  persecution  of  tlio  Quake.-s  in  Massachu- 
•etlfl.       Hutchinson.    Clialmcrs. 


CHAP,  v.] 


INSURRECTION  AGAINST  ANDROS. 


266 


rontempt.  In  the  depth  of  winter,  he  found  himself  obliged  to  march  with 
a  considerable  force  against  these  enemies  ;  and  though  he  succeeded  in 
occupying  and  fortifying  positions  which  enabled  him  somewhat  to  restrain 
their  future  incursions,  he  inflicted  but  little  injury  upon  them,  and  lost  a 
great  many  of  his  own  men,  who  perished  in  vain  attempts  to  follow  the  In- 
dians into  their  fastnesses,  in  the  most  rigorous  season  of  the  year.  So 
strong  and  so  undiscriminating  was  the  dislike  he  excited  among  the  people 
of  New  England,  that  tliis  expedition  was  unjustly  ascribed  to  a  deliberate 
purpose  to  destroy  the  troops  whom'  he  conducted,  by  cold  and  famine.' 
Every  reproach,  however  groundless,  stuck  fast  to  the  hated  characters  of 
Andres  and  Randolph. 

At  length  [1689]  the  smothered  rage  of  the  people  broke  forth.  In  the 
spring,  some  vague  intelligence  was  received,  by  letters  from  Virginia,  of 
the  transactions  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  in  England.  The  ancient  magis- 
trates and  principal  inhabitants  of  the  province,  though  they  ardently  wished 
and  secretly  prayed  that  success  might  attend  the  Prince's  enterprise,  yet 
determined  in  so  great  a  cause  to  incur  no  unnecessary  hazard,  and  quietly 
to  await  a  revolution  which  they  believed  that  no  movement  of  theirs  could 
either  promote  or  retard.  But  New  England  was  destined  to  accomplish  by 
her  own  efforts  her  own  hberation  ;  and  the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts 
were  now  to  exercise  the  gallant  privilege,  which,  nearly  a  century  after,  and 
in  a  conflict  still  more  arduous,  their  children  again  were  ready  to  assert,  of 
being  the  foremost  in  resisting  oppression  and  vindicating  the  rights  and 
honor  of  their  country.  The  cautious  policy  and  prudential  dissuasions 
from  violence  that  were  employed  by  the  wealthier  and  more  aged  colonists 
were  contemned  by  the  great  body  of  the  people,  whose  spirit  and  courage 
prompted  them  to  achieve  the  deliverance  which  they  were  less  qualified  by 
foresight  and  patience  to  await.  Stung  with  the  recollection  of  past  inju- 
ries, their  patriotic  ardor,  on  the  first  prospect  of  relief,  could  not  be  re- 
strained. In  seasons  of  revolution,  the  wealthy  and  eminent  mingle  with 
theii  public  spirit  a  less  generous  concern  for  their  valuable  private  stakes, 
and  their  prospect  of  sharing  in  official  dignities.  The  poor  have  no  rich 
private  stakes  in  their  possession  ;  no  dazzling  preferments  within  their 
reach  ;  and  consequently  less  restraint  on  the  full  flow  of  their  social  affec- 
tions. All  at  once,  and  apparently  without  any  preconcerted  plan,  an  insur- 
rection burst  out  in  the  town  of  Boston  ;  the  drums  beat  to  arms,  the  peo- 
ple flocked  together,  and  in  a  few  hours  the  revolt  became  universal,  and 
the  energy  of  the  people  so  overpowering,  that  every,  purpose  of  resisting 
their  will  was  abandoned  by  the  government.  The  scruples  of  the  more 
wealthy  and  cautious  inhabitants  were  completely  overcome  by  the  obvious 
necessity  of  interfering  to  calm  and  regulate  the  fervor  of  the  populace. 
Andres,  Dudley,  and  others,  to  the  number  of  fifty  of  the  most  obnoxious 
characters,  were  seized  and  imprisoned.  On  the  first  intelligence  of  the 
tumuh,  Andros  sent  a  party  of  soldiers  to  apprehend  Simon  Bradstreet ; 
a  measure  that  served  only  to  suggest  to  the  people  who  their  chief  ought 
to  be,  and  to  anticipate  the  unanimous  choice  by  which  this  venerable  man 
was  reinstated  in  the  office  he  had  held  when  his  country  was  deprived  of 
lier  liberties.  Though  now  bending  under  the  weight  of  ninety  years,  his 
intellectual  powers  had  undergone  but  little  decay  ;  he  retained  (says  Cotton 
Madier)  a  vigor  and  wisdom  that  would  have  recommended  a  younger  mati 


'  Ncal.     Hutchinson. 


VOL.    1. 


34 


w 


266 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11. 


to  the  government  rf  a  greater  colony.  As  the  tidings  of  the  revolt  spread 
through  the  province,  the  people  eagerly  flew  to  arms,  and  hurried  to  Boston 
to  cooperate  with  their  insurgent  countrymen.  To  the  assembled  crowds  a 
proclamation  was  read  from  the  balcony  of  the  court-house,  detailing  the 
grievances  of  the  colony,  and  imputing  the  whole  to  the  tyrannical  abroga- 
tion  of  the  charter.  A  committee  of  safety  was  appointed  by  general  con- 
sent ;  and  an  assembly  of  representatives  being  convened  soon  afjer,  this 
body',  by  a  unanimous  vote,  and  with  the  hearty  concurrence  of  the  whole 
province,  declared  their  ancient  charter  and  its  constitutions  to  be  resumed ; 
reappointed  Bradstreet  and  all  the  other  magistrates  who  were  in  office  in 
the  year  1686  ;  and  directed  these  persons  in  all  things  to  conform  to  the 
provisions  of  the  charter,  "  that  this  method  of  government  may  be  found 
among  us  when  order  shall  come  from  the  higher  powers  in  England." 
They  announced  that  Andros  and  his  fellow-prisoners  were  detained  in  cus- 
tody to  abide  the  directions  that  might  be  received  concerning  them  from 
his  Highness  the  Prince  of  Orange  and  the  English  parHament.'  What 
would  be  the  extent  and  final  issue  of  the  revolution  that  was  in  progress  in 
the  parent  state  was  yet  unknown  in  the  colonies. 

The  example  of  Massachusetts  was  followed  by  the  other  provinces  of 
New  England.  When  the  tidings  of  the  revolution  at  Boston  reached  Con- 
necticut, the  inhabitants  determined  no  longer  to  acknowledge  a  governor, 
who,  from  the  command  of  one  half  of  the  English  colonies,  was  now  re- 
duced to  the  situation  of  an  imprisoned  delinquent.  Their  chatter  reap- 
peared from  its  concealment ;  and  their  democratical  constitution,  which  had 
not  been  either  expressly  surrendered  or  legally  dissolved,  was  instantly  re- 
stored with  universal  satisfaction.  The  people  of  Rhode  Island  had  never 
been  required  to  give  up  the  charter  whose  privileges  they  so  formally  and 
unequivocally  resigned ;  and  now,  without  a  moment's  scruple  or  hesitation, 
they  protested  that  it  was  still  in  force,  and  removed  as  well  as  they  could 
the  only  obstruction  to  this  plea,  by  retracting  every  prior  declaration  of  a 
contrary  tenor.  New  Plymouth,  in  like  manner,  resumed  instantaneously 
its  ancient  form  of  government.  In  New  Hampshire,  there  assembled  a 
general  convention  of  the  inhabitants,  who  promptly  and  unanimously  deter- 
mined to  reannex  their  territory  to  Massachusetts.  In  pursuance  of  this 
purpose,  they  elected  deputies  to  represent  them  in  the  General  Court  at 
Boston  ;  but  King  William  refused  to  comply  with  their  wishes,  and  in  the 
sequel  appointed  a  separate  governor  for  New  Hampshire." 

Although  the  people  of  Massachusetts  at  first  distinctly  intimated  their 
intention  to  reestablish  by  their  own  act  their  ancient  charter,  the  calm 
reflection  that  succeeded  the  ferment  during  which  this  purpose  had  been 
broached  convinced  them  that  its  accomplishment  was  impracticable,  and 
that  the  renovation  of  a  charter,  vacated  by  legal  process  before  the  tribu- 
nals of  the  parent  state,  could  proceed  only  from  the  crown  or  legislature  of 
England.  Informed  of  the  convention  of  estates  convoked  by  the  Prince 
of  Orange  in  England,  the  revolutionary  government  of  Massachusetts  as- 
sembled a  similar  convention  of  the  counties  and  towns  of  the  province ;  and 
.t  was  the  opinion  of  the  rngjority  of  this  assembly,  that,  although  the  charter 

"«  Livos  of  Bradstreet  and  PhipB,  apud  Mather.  Neal,  Hutchinson.  Jjie  provisionnl  gov- 
emmentat  Boston  would  willingly  have  released  Androj.  for  they  had  deprived  h  m  of 
power;  but  the  people  vehemently  insisted  that  he  should  be  detained  in  prison.  1  am 
Seeply  sensible  that  we  have  a  wolf  by  the  ears,"  says  Danforth,  In  a  letter  written  on  tin* 
occMion  to  Mather,  the  provincial  agf>nt  in  England.  Hutobinson  s  Massaehusttis  Papm. 
'  Uutcliiiisuu.    Ciiainierii. 


CH.'VP.  v.]        WAR  WITH  FRANCE.  —  CONQUEST  OF  ACADIA. 


267 


IS  in  progress  in 


might  be  restored,  it  could  not  be  resumed.  Intelligence  having  arrived  of 
the  settlement  of  England,  and  of  the  investiture  of  William  and  Mary  with 
tlie  crown,  these  sovereigns  were  proclaimed  in  the  colony  with  sincere 
ffratulation  and  extraordinary  solemnity.  [May  29,  1689.]  A  letter  was 
soon  after  addressed  by  the  king  and  queen  to  the  Colony  of  JUassachusetts, 
expressing  the  royal  sanction  and  ratification  of  the  late  transactions  of  the 
people,  and  authorizing  the  present  magistrates  to  retain  provisionally  the 
administration  of  the  provincial  government,  till  their  Majesties,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  privy  council,  should  establish  it  on  a  basis  more  perma- 
nent and  satisfactory.  An  order  was  communicated,  at  the  same  time,  to 
send  Andros  and  the  other  prisoners  to  England,  that  they  might  answer 
the  charges  preferred  against  them.  Additional  agents  were  deputed  by  the 
colony  to  join  Mather,  who  still  continued  in  England,  and,  in  concurrence 
with  him,  to  prosecute  the  charges  against  Andros,  and,  above  all,  to  solicit 
the  restoration  of  the  charter.* 

But  before  the  colonists  were  able  to  ascertain  if  their  favorite  desire 
was  to  be  promoted  by  the  English  Revolution,  they  felt  the  evil  effects  of 
this  great  event,  in  the  consequences  of  the  war  that  ensued  between  Eng- 
land and  France.  The  rupture  between  the  two  parent  states  quickly  ex- 
tended itself  to  their  possessions  in  America ;  and  the  colonies  of  New 
England  and  New  York  were  now  involved  in  bloody  and  desolating  warfare 
with  the  forces  of  the  French  in  Canada  and  their  Indian  auxiliaries  and 
aUies.  The  hostilities  that  were  directed  against  New  York  belong  to  an- 
other branch  of  this  history.  In  concert  with  them,  various  attacks  were 
made  by  numerous  bands  of  the  Indians,  in  the  conclusion  of  the  present 
year,  on  the  settlements  and  forts  in  New  Hampshire  and  Maine ;  and  prov- 
ing successful  in  some  instances,  they  were  productive  of  the  most  horrid 
extremities  of  savage  cruelty.  Aware  that  these  depredations  originated  in 
Canada  and  Acadia,  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  prepared,  during 
the  winter,  an  expedition  against  both  Port  Royal  and  Quebec.  The  con- 
duct of  it  was  intrusted  to  Sir  William  Phips,  who,  on  the  dissolution  of 
the  late  arbitrary  government,  returned  to  New  England,  in  the  hope  of 
being  able  to  render  some  service  to  his  countrymen.  Eight  small  vessels, 
with  seven  or  eight  hundred  men,  sailed  under  his  command,  in  the  following 
spring  [April,  1690],  and,  with  little  opposition,  took  possession  of  Port 
Royal  and  of  the  whole  province  of  Acadia  ;  and,  within  a  month  after  its 
departure,  the  fleet  returned  loaded  with  plunder  enough  to  defray  the  whole 
expense  of  the  expedition.  But  Count  Frontignac,  the  governor  of  Canada, 
retorted  by  sharp  and  harassing  attacks  on  the  remote  settlements  of  New 
England ;  and,  stimulating  the  activity  of  liis  Indian  allies,  kept  the  frontiers 
in  a  state  of  incessant  alarm  by  their  predatory  incursions. 

In  letters  to  King  William  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  had  for- 
cibly represented  the  importance  of  the  conquest  of  Canada,  and  urgently 
solicited  his  aid  in  an  expedition  for  that  purpose  ;  but  he  was  too  much 
occupied  in  Europe  to  extend  his  exertions  to  America ;  and  the  provincial 
government  determined  to  prosecute  the  enterprise  without  his  assistance. 
New  York  and  Connecticut  engaged  to  furnish  a  body  of  men  who  were  to 
march  overland  to  attack  Montreal,  while  the  troops  of  Massachusetts  should 
repair  by  sea  to  Quebec.  The  fleet  destined  for  this  expedition  consisted 
of  nearly  forty  vessels,  the  largest  of  which  carried  forty-four  guns ;  and  the 

'  Neal.    Hutchinson. 


i 

m 


268 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


if 


number  of  troops  on  board  amounted  to  two  thousand.   [Aug.  9,  1690.] 
The  command  of  this  armament  was  intrusted  to  Sir  William  Phips,  who, 
in  the  conduct  of  the  enterprise,  demonstrated  his  usual  courage,  and  every 
other  military  qualification  except  that  which  experience  alone  can  confer, 
and  without  which,  in  warfare  with  a  civilized  enemy,  all  the  rest  commonly 
prove  unavailing.     The  troops  of  Connecticut  and  New  York,  retarded  by 
defective  arrangements,  and  disappointed  of  the  assistance  of  the  friendly 
Indians  who  had  engaged  to  furnish  them  with  canoes  for  crossing  the  rivers 
they  had  to  pass,  were  compelled  to  retire  without  attacking  Montreal ;  and, 
in  consequence,  the  whole  force  of  Canada  was  concentrated  to  resist  the 
attack  of  Phips.   His  armament  arrived  before  Quebec  so  late  in  the  season 
[October],  that  only  an  immediate  assault  could  have  enabled  him  to  carry 
the  place  ;  but  by  unskilful  delay  the  opportunity  of  making  such  an  attempt 
with  advantage  was  irretrievably  lost.   The  English  v/ere  worsted  in  various 
sharp  encoi  nters,  and  finally  compelled  to  make  a  precipitate  retreat ;  and 
the  fleet,  alter  sustaining  great  flamage  in  its  homeward  voyage,  returned  to 
Boston.   [November  13.]     Such  was  the  unfortunate  issue  of  an  enterprise 
which  involved  Massachusetts  in  an  enormous  expense,  and  cost  the  lives 
of  at  least  a  thousand  of  her  people.  The  French  had  so  strongly  foreboded 
its  success,  that  they  ascribed  its  discomfiture  to  the  immediate  interposition 
of  Heaven,  in  confounding  the  devices  of  the  enemy,  and  depriving  them  of 
common  sense  ;  and  under  this  impression,  the  citizens  of  Quebec  established 
an  annual  procession  in  commemoration  of  their  deliverance.  That  the  con- 
duct of  Phips,  however,  was  no  way  obnoxious  to  censure  may  be  safely 
inferred  from  the  fact  that  a  result  so  disastrous  brought  no  reproach  upon 
him,  and  deprived  him  in  no  degree  of  the  favor  of  his  courjtrymen.     And 
yet  the  disappointment,  in  addition  to  the  mortification  which  it  inflicted, 
was  attended  with  very  injurious  consequences. 

The  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  had  not  even  anticipated  the  possi- 
bility of  miscarriage,  and  confidently  expected  to  derive,  from  the  success 
of  tl  ".  expedition,  the  same  reimbursement  of  expenses  which  their  former 
enterprise  had  afforded.     "  During  the  absence  of  the  forces,"  says  Cotton 
Mather,  with  an  expression  too  whimsical  for  a  matter  of  so  much  solemnity, 
"  the  wheel  of  prayer  for  thein  in  New  England  had  been  kept  continually 
going  round"  ;  and  this  attempt  to  reinforce  the  expedition  by  spiritual  co- 
operation was  pursued  in  conjunction  with  an  entire  neglect  of  provisions 
applicable  to  an  unsuccessful  result.     The»returning  army,  finding  the  gov- 
ernment unprepared  to  satisfy  their  claims,  were  on  the  point  of  mutinying 
for  their  pay  ;  and  it  was  found  necessary  to  issue  bills  of  credit,  which  the 
troops  consented  to  accept  in  place  of  money.     The  colony  was  now  in  a 
very  depressed  and  sufFermg  state.     Hoping  to  improve  (as  they  expressed 
themselves)  the  calamities  which  they  were  unable  to  evade,  the  provincial 
magistrates  endeavoured  to  promote  the  increase  of  piety  and  the  reformation 
of  manners  ;  and  pressed  upon  the  ministers  and  the  people  the  duty  of 
strongly  resisting  that  worldliness  of  mind  which  the  necessity  of  contending 
violently  for  temporal  interests  is  apt  to  engender.     The  attacks  of  the  In- 
dians on  the  eastern  frontiers  were  attended  with  a  degree  of  success  and 
barbarity  that  diffused  general  terror  ;  and  the  colonists  in  this  quarter  vvere 
yielding  to  anticipations  of  a  speedy  expulsion  from  their  setdements,  when, 
all  at  once,  the  savages,  of  their  own  accord,  proposed  a  peace  of  six  months, 
which  was  accepted  by  the  provincial  govenument  with  great  willingness 


■,1 


ciivp.  v.]   cHiCAMiin  i;i  tjie  court  in  the  case  of  andros.    269 

and  devout  graiitude.  As  it  was  clearly  ascertained  that  the  hostilities  of 
ihe  Indians  were  continually  fostered  1  y  the  intrigues,  and  rendered  the  more 
formidable  by  the  counsel  and  assistance,  of  the  French  authorities  in  Cana- 
aa  the  people  of  New  England  began  to  regard  tlie  conauest  of  that  jprov- 
itic'e  as  indispensable  to  their  safety  and  tranquillity.  With  the  hope  of  pre- 
vailing on  the  king  to  sanction  and  embrace  this  enterprise,  as  well  as  for  the 
purpose  of  aiding  the  other  deputies  in  the  no  less  interesting  application  for 
the  restoration  of  tlie  provincial  charter,  Sir  William  Phips,  soon  after  his 
return  from  Quebec,  by  desire  of  his  countrymen,  repaired  to  England.* 

In  the  discharge  ol  the  duties  of  their  mission  [1691],  the  deputies  em- 
ployed every  effort  that  patriotic  zeal  could  prompt,  and  honorable  policy 
admit,  to  obtain  satisfaction  to  their  constituents,  by  the  punishment  of  their 
oppressors,  and  the  restitution  of  their  charter.     But  in  both  these  objects 
llieir  endeavours  were  unsuccessful ;  and  the  failure  was  generally  (whether 
justly  or  not)  ascribed  to  the  unbending  integrity  with  which  Mather  and 
Phips  rejected  every  art  and  intrigue  that  seemed  inconsistent  with  the  honor 
of  their  country.  It  was  soon  discovered  that  the  king  and  his  ministers  were 
averse  to  an  inquiry  into  the  conduct  of  Andros  and  Randolph,  and  not  less 
so  to  the  restoration  of  the  ancient  charter  of  the  colony.     The  conduct  of 
the  British  court  on  this  occasion  presents  a  confused  and  disgustmg  picture 
of  intrigue  and  duplicity.     The  deputies  were  beset  by  a  multitude  of  im- 
portmiate  counsellors,  and  real  or  pretended  partisans  ;— some  doubtless 
indiscreet,  and  some  perhaps  insincere.     They  were  persuaded  by  certain 
of  their  advisers  to  present  to  the  privy  council  the  charges  against  Andros 
unsiVncd,  and  assured  by  others  that  in  so  doing  they  had  cut  the  throat  of 
their  country.    When  they  attended  to  present  their  charges,  they  were  an- 
ticipated by  Andros  and  Randolph,  who  came  prepared  with  a  charge  against 
the  colonists  of  resistance  to  the  authority  of  the  parent  state,  and  rebellious 
deposition  of  their  legitimate  governor.     Sir  John  Somers,  the  lawyer  em- 
ployed by  the  deputies,  consented  that  they  should  abandon  the  situation  of 
accusers  and  stand  on  the  defensive  ;  and  he  tendered  the  unsigned  charges 
as  an  answer  to  the  accusations  of  Andros  and  Randolph.     The  counci 
hesitated  to  receive  a  plea  presented  in  the  name  of  a  whole  people,  and 
required  that  some  individuals  should  appear  and  personally  avouch  it. 
"  Who  was  it,"  said  the  Lord  President,  "  that  imprisoned  Sir  Edmund 
and  the  rest .?     You  say  it  was  the  country,  and  that  they  rose  as  one  man. 
Bui  that  is  nobody.     Let  us  see  the  persons  who  will  make  it  their  own 
The  deputies  thereupon  offered  to  sign  the  charges,  and  to  under 


case 


take  the  amplest  personal  responsibility  for  the  acts  of  their  countrymen. 
But  they  were  deterred  from  this  proceeding  by  the  remonstrances  of  Sir 
John  Somers,  who  insisted  (for  reasons  that  have  never  been  satisfactorily 
explained)  on  persisting  in  the  course  in  which  they  had  begun.     Some  oi 
the  counsellors  protested  against  the  injustice  and  chicanery  of  encountering 
the  complaint  of  a  whole  nation  with  objections  so  narrow  and  technical. 
"  Is  not  it  plain,"  they  urged,  "  that  the  revolution  in  Massachusetts  was 
carried  on  exactly  in  the  same  manner  as  the  revolution  in  England  .?    Who 
seized  and  imprisoned  Chancellor  Jeffries  .?     Who  secured  the  garrison  ot^ 
Hull  ?     These  were  the  acts  of  tlie  people,  and  not  of  private  individuals. 
This  difference  of  opinion  on  a  point  of  form  seems  to  have  been  the  object 
which  the  ministry  studied  to  promote.    Without  determmmg  the  point,  the 
•  Naal.    Hutchinson.    Gulden's  History  of  the  Five  Indian  Jfaiions  qf  Canada.  ; 


570 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


I 

■  1.   ' 


council  interrupted  the  discussion  by  a  resolution  that  the  whole  matter 
should  be  referred  to  the  king  ;  and  his  Majesty  soon  after  signified  his 
pleasure  that  the  complaints  of  both  parties  snould  be  dismissed.'  [1691.1 
Thus  terminated  the  impeachment  of  Andros,  in  a  manner  very  ill  calculated 
to  impress  the  people  of  Massachusetts  with  respect  for  the  justice  of  the 
British  government.  They  soon  after  had  the  mortification  of  seeing  him 
add  reward  to  impunity,  and  honored  with  the  appointment  of  governor  of 
Virginia  and  Maryland.  They  had  previously  seen  Dudley,  whom  they 
arrested  and  sent  to  England  with  Andros,  appointed  chief  justice  of  New 
York,  where  ho  condemned  to  death  the  unfortunate  Leisler,  who  excited 
the  first  revolutionary  movement  in  that  colony  in  favor  of  King  WilliarD." 

The  deputies,  finding  that  the  House  of  Commons,  though  at  first  dis- 
posed to  annul  the  judicial  decree  against  the  charter  of  Massachusetts,  had 
been  persuaded,  by  the  arguments  of  Somers  and  other  lawyers  who  pos- 
sessed  seats  in  the  house,  to  depart  from  this  purpose,  and  that  the  king 
was  resolved  not  to  restore  the  old  charter,  employed  every  effort  to  obtain 
at  least  a  restitution  of  the  privileges  it  conferred.  But  William  and  his 
ministers,  though  restrained  from  unitating  the  tyrannical  measures  of  the 
former  reign,  were  eager  and  determined  to  avail  themselves  of  whatever 
acquisitions  these  measures  might  have  gained  to  the  royal  prerogative  ;  and 
finding  that  the  crown  had  acquired  a  specious  legal  pretext  to  exercise  much 
greater  authority  over  the  colony  than  was  reserved  in  its  original  constitu- 
tion, they  scrupled  not  to  take  advantage  of  this  pretext,  without  regard  to 
the  tyrannical  cast  of  the  policy  by  which  it  had  been  obtained.  The  res- 
toration of  their  ancient  privilege  of  electing  their  own  municipal  officers 
was  ardently  desired  by  the  colonists,  and  demanded  by  the  deputies  with  a 
warmth  which  the  king  would  probably  have  resented  as  disrespectful  to 
himself,  if  he  had  not  felt  himself  bound  to  excuse  the  irritation  provoked 
by  his  own  injustice.  In  vain  did  Archbishop  Tillotson  urge  him  not  to 
withhold  from  the  people  of  Massachusetts  the  full  measure  of  those  privi- 
leges, which,  even  under  the  arbitrary  sway  of  Charles  the  First,  had  been 
conceded  to  them.  He  adhered  inflexibly  to  his  determination  of  retaining, 
as  far  as  possible,  every  advantage,  however  surreptitiously  acquired,  that 
fortune  had  put  into  his  hands  ;  and  at  length  a  new  charter  was  framed  on 
principles  that  widely  departed  from  the  primeval  constitution  of  the  colony, 
and  transferred  to  the  crown  many  valuable  privileges  that  originally  belonged 
to  the  people.    [October  7,  1691.] 

By  this  charter  the  territories  of  Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  and  Maine, 
together  with  the  conquered  province  of  Acadia,  or  Nova  Scotia,  were 
united  together  under  one  jurisdiction,  —  an  arrangement  that  was  by  no 
means  satisfactory  to  the  parties  included  in  it ;  for  Plymouth,  which  ear- 
nestly solicited  a  separate  establishment,  was  forcibly  annexed  to  Massachu- 
setts ;  and  New  Hampshire,  which  as  earnestly  pe'itioned  to  be  included  in 
this  annexation,  was  made  a  separate  province.^     The  appointment  of  the 

'  Neat.    Hutchinson. 

•  Randolph  was  not  gent  back  to  America.  He  received,  however,  an  appointment  in  the 
We8t  Indiof),  where  he  died,  retaining,  it  is  gaid,  his  dislike  of  the  people  of  New  England  tn 
tlio  last.  Eliot's  Bioi'mphical  Dictionary  of  jV'cir  England.  Craofield,  the  tyrant  of  New 
Hampxhiro,  was  appointed  collector  of  customs  at  Barbadoes.  He  repented  of  his  condurt  in 
New  England,  ana  endeavoured  to  atone  for  it  by  sliowins  all  the  kindness  in  his  power  tn 
the  New  England  traders  who  resorted  to  Barbadoes.     Belknap. 

*  The  union,  so  much  desired  by  the  people  of  Mnssacliuxelts  and  New  Hampshire,  wa* 
overruled  by  the  interest,  and  for  the  convenience,  of  Samuel  Allen,  a  merchant  m  London, 


CHAP,  v.] 


NEW  CHARTER  OF  MASSACHUSETTS. 


271 


eovcrnor,  deputy-governor,  secretary,  and  all  the  ofRccrg  of  tlio  admiraltv, 
was  reserved  to  the  crown.  Twenty-eight  counsellors  were  directed  to  oe 
rliosen  by  the  house  of  assembly,  and  presented  to  the  governor  for  his  ap- 
probation. Tlie  governor  was  empowered  to  convoke,  adjourn,  prorogue, 
and  dissolve  the  assembly  at  pleasure  ;  to  nominate,  exclusively,  all  military 
orticers,  and  (with  consent  of  the  council)  all  the  judges  and  other  officers  of 
the  law.  To  the  governor  was  reserved  a  negative  on  the  laws  and  acts  of 
the  general  assembly  and  council  ;  and  all  laws  enacted  by  these  bodies  and 
anp'ovcd  by  the  governor  were  to  be  transmitted  to  England  for  the  royal 
approbation  ;  and  if  disallowed  within  the  space  of  three  years,  they  were 
to  become  absolutely  void.  Liberty  of  conscience  and  of  divine  worship, 
which  had  not  been  mentioned  in  the  old  charier,  was,  by  the  present  one, 
expressly  assured  to  all  j)erson3  except  Roman  Catholics.^ 

The  innovations  thus  introduced  into  their  ancient  municipal  constitution 
i  1691]  excited  much  discontent  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts ;  the  more  especially  because  the  enlargement  of  royal  authority  was 
not  attended  with  a  proportional  communication  of  the  royal  protection.    At 
the  very  time  when  the  king  thus  extended  the  limits  ol  his  prerogative  at 
the  expense  of  popular  liberty,  he  found  himself  constrained,  by  the  urgency 
of  his  affairs  in  Europe,  to  refuse  the  assistance  which  the  people  besought 
from  him  to  repel  the  hostilities  of  the  Indians  and  of  the  I  rench  forces  in 
Canada.     The  situation  of  the  provinces  of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island, 
which  were  permitted  to  reassume  all  their  ancient  privileges,  rendered  the 
injustice  with  which  Massachusetts  was  treated  more  flagrant  and  irritating. 
Though  legal  technicalities  might  be  thought  by  lawyers  and  special  pleaders 
to  warrant  the  advantageous  distinction  which  those  States  enjoyed,  a  con- 
clusion so  illiberal  was  utterly  repugnant  to  the  enlarged  views  of  justice  and 
equity  which  ought  to  regulate  the  policy  of  a  legislator.     Only  mistake  on 
the  one  side,  or  artifice  on  the  other,  could  be  supposed  to  have  procured 
to  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  an  advantage  that  made  the  treatment  of 
Massachusetts  more  invidious  ;  and  a  dangerous  lesson  was  taught  to  the 
colonial  communities,  when  they  were  thus  given  to  understand  that  it  was 
their  own  vigilant  dexterity  and  successful  intrigue,  or  the  blunders  of  the 
parent  state,  that  they  were  to  rely  on  as  the  safeguards  of  their  rights. 
The  injustice  of  tlie  policy  now  applied  to  Massachusetts  was  rendered  still 
more  glaringly  apparent  by  the  very  different  treatment  obtained  by  the 
powerful  corporation  of  the  city  of  London,  whose  charter,  though  annulled 
with  the  same  legal  formality,  and  on  grounds  as  plausible,  as  the  ancient 
charter  of  Massacliusetts,  was  restored  by  a  legislative  act  immediately  after 
the  Revolution.    Nor  was  any  real  political  advantage  obtained  by  the  Eng- 
lish government  from  its  violation  of  just  and  equitable  principles.     The 

to  whom  Mason's  heirs  had  sold  thoir  claim  to~the  soil  of  New  Hampshire.  He  was  ap- 
pointed the  first  governor  of  tho  province ;  and  emploving  his  authority  m  vexatious,  but  un- 
sunessful,  attempts  to  extract  pecuniary  profit  from  his  purchased  claim,  rendered  himscJI 
( xtrpmely  odious  to  the  people.  Belknap.  He  was  superseded  in  the  office  of  governor  by 
Lord  Bellamont,  in  161>8.  a     .,  m.  . 

^  muher,  Ufe  of  Sir  IViliMm  Phips.  Neal.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  Bancroft.  "Innt 
rhnrter  effected  in  Massachusetts  as  perfect  and  thorough  a  revolution  as  ever  was  produced 
bv  a  similar  act  in  any  state  or  nation.  It  changed  not  only  the  form  of  the  government  and 
the  rplalions  of  power  among  the  people,  but  also  the  enUre  foundation  and  objects  ot  the 
government.  By  making  freehold  and  property,  instead  of  church-membership,  the  qualihca- 
tion  of  the  right  of  electing  and  being  elected  to  office,  religion  became  no  longer  the  end  and 
object  of  the  civil  government."  Quincy's  HiHory  of  Harvard  UniversUy  iTi.s  change  wiw 
for  a  while  diseiiised  by  the  coincidence  between  the  sentiments  of  the  first  boards  ot  new 
magistrates  and  the  ancient  system  of  municipal  polity. 


272 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  H. 


power  that  was  wrested  from  the  colonists,  and  appropriated  by  the  crown, 
was  quite  inadequate  to  the  formation  of  an  efficient  royal  parly  in  the  prov- 
ince     The  usurped  prerogative  of  nominating  the  governor  and  other  offi. 
cers'was  regarded  as  a  badge  of  dependence,  instead  of  forming  a  bond  of 
union      The  popular  assemblies  retained  sufficient  influence  over  the  gov- 
ernors to  curb  them  in  the  administration  of  an  illiberal  policy,  and  suf- 
ficient power  to  restrain  them  from  making  any  serious  mroad  on  the  consti- 
tution.    It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  the  dissensions  between  the  two  coun- 
tries,  which  eventuaUy  terminated  in  the  dissolution  of  the  British  empire  in 
America,  were  not  a  little  promoted  by  the  pernicious  counsels  and  errone- 
ous information  conveyed  to  the  English  ministry  by  the  governors  of  those 
provinces  in  which  the  appointment  to  that  office  was  exercised  by  the  king. 
Aware  of  the  dissatisfaction  with  which  the  new  charter  was  regarded,  the 
ministe.a  of  WiUiam  judged  it  prudent  to  waive  m  tne  outset  the  full  exer- 
cise of  the  invidious  prerogative,  and  desired  the  provmcial  deputies  to  name 
the  person  whom  they  considered  most  likely  to  be  acceptable  to  their 
countrymen  as  governor  of  Massachusetts  ;  and  the  deputies  having  united 
in  recommending  Sir  William  Phips,  the  appointment  to  this  office  was  be- 
stowed on  him  accordingly.     This  act  of  courtesy  was  attended  with  a  de- 
eree  of  success  in  mollifying  the  ill-humor  of  the  people,  that  attests  the 
high  estimation  in  which  Phips  was  held  by  his  countrymen  ;  for  on  his 
arrival  at  Boston  [May,  1692],  though  some  discontent  was  betrayed,  and 
several  of  the  members  of  the  General  Court  warmly  insisted  that  the  new 
charter  should  be  absolutely  rejected,^  yet  the  great  body  of  the  people  re- 
ceived him  with  acclamations  ;  and  a  majority  of  the  General  Court  resolved 
that  the  charter  should  be  heariily  accepted,  and  appointed  a  day  of  thanks- 
giving for  the  safe  arrival  of  their  worthy  governor  and  of  Increase  MaUier, 
whose  services  they  acknowledged  with  grateful  commemoration.    Ihe  new 
governor  hastened  to  approve  himself  worthy  of  the  favorable  regard  thus 
expressed  for  him.     Having  convoked  the  General  Court  of  the  province, 
he  addressed  the  members  in  a  short,  characteristic  speech,  recommending 
to  them  the  composition  of  a  code  of  good  laws  with  all  the  expedition  they 
could  exprt.     "  Gentlemen,"  soid  he,  "  you  may  make  yourselves  as  easy 
as  you  will  for  ever.    Consider  what  may  have  a  tendency  to  your  welfare; 
and  you  may  be  sure  that  whatever  bills  you  oflfer  to  me,  consistent  with  the 
honor  and  interest  of  the  crown,  I  '11  pass  them  readily.     I  do  but  seek 
opportunities  to  serve  you.     Had  it  not  been  for  the  sake  of  this  thing,  1 
had  never  accepted  of  this  office.     And  whenever  you  have  settled  such 
a  body  of  good  laws,  that  no  person  coming  after  me  may  make  you  un- 
easy, I  shall  desire  not  one  day  longer  to  continue  in  the  government.     His 
conduct  seems  in  general  to  have  corresponded  with  these  professions. 

And  yet,  the  administration  of  Sir  William  Phips  was  neither  long  no. 
prosperous.  Though  he  might  give  his  sanction  as  governor  to  popular  laws. 
It  was  not  in  his  power  to  prevent  jhem  from  being  rescinded  by  jhe  crown ; 

'  Mather  and  the  other  deputies,  when  they  found  Tt  impossible  to  obtain  an  alteration  of 
the  new  Charter,  proposed  at^fir«t  'to  reject  it  altogether,  and  to  institute  a  Fo^e^'/o' ^J?. 
h^  vaiWitv  of  thelurfiment  pronounce.^  on  the  quo  warranto.  They  were  deterred  from  th, 
S^ceeS  by  IK  iolemn  a  Juran.e  of  Treby,  s'cmen,,  and  the  two  -^-^J-^:^^^^^'}^1 
\Ylo\t  and  Pollexfon),  that,  if  the  judgment  were  reversed,  a  new  ^nojtarranjo  ^""JJ  ^«,~ 
and  inevitably  followed  by  a  sentence  exempt  from  all  BJ°"M'»/ ^/'='."*'"«l,,jF,S  TCt 
persons  assured  the  deputies,  that  the  colonists,  by  erecting  ludicatones,  «°^^'  '"^"8  "  h' "^ 
if  reprewsntatives,  and  incorporating  cf  -es,  had  forfeited  their  charter,  which  gave  no  iM-nc 
lion  io  such  acm  of  autiiorily.       HuietiKiiton. 

*  WtXhn,  Uft  of  Phipi.    Neal.    Hutchinson. 


chap;  V-] 


ADMINISTRATION'  OP  SIR  WILLIAM  I*HIPS. 


3^ 


and  this  fate  soon  befell  a  law  that  was  passed  by  the  proviriclal  assembly, 
declaring  the  colonists  exempt  from  all  taxes  but  such  as  should  be  imposed 
by  their  own  representatives,  and  asserting  their  right  to  share  all  the  privi- 
leges of  Magna  Charta.  He  found  the  province  involved  in  a  distressing 
,var  with  the  French  and  Indians,  and  in  the  still  more  formidable  calamity 
of  that  delusion  which  has  been  termed  the  JVew  England  witchcraft.  When 
the  Indians  were  informed  of  the  elevation  of  Sir  William  Phips  to  the  office 
of  governor  of  Massachusetts,  they  were  Struck  with  amazement  at  the  for- 
tunes of  the  man  whose  humble  origin  they  perfectly  well  knew,  and  with 
whom  they  had  familiarly  associated  but  a  few  years  before  in  the  obscurity 
of  his  prirnitive  condition.  Impressed  with  a  high  opinion  of  his  courage 
and  resolution,  and  a  superstitious  dread  of  that  fortune  that  seemed  destined 
10  surmount  every  obstacle  and  prerail  over  every  disadvantage,  they  would 
willingly  have  niade  peace  with  him  and  his  countrymen,  but  were  induced 
to  continue  the  war  by  the  artifices  and  intrigues  of  the  French.  A  few 
months  after  his  arrival,  the  governor,  at  the  head  of  a  small  army,  marched 
to  Pemmaquid,  on  the  Merrimack  River,  and  there  caused  to  be  erected  a 
fort  of  considerable  strength,  and  calculated  by  its  situation  to  form  a  power- 
ful barrier  to  the  province,  and  to  overawe  the  neighbouring  tribes  of  In- 
dians, and  interrupt  their  mutual  communication. 

The  beneficial  effect  of  this  operation  was  experienced  in  the  following 
year  [1693],  when  the  Indians  seut  ambassadors  to  the  fort  at  Pemmaquid, 
and  there  concluded  with  English  commissioners  a  treaty  of  peace,  by  which 
they  renouncfed  for  ever  the  interests  of  the  French,  and  pledged  themselves 
to  perpetual  amity  with  the  inhabitants  of  New  England. >  The  colonists, 
who  had  suffered  severely  from  the  recent  depredations  of  these  savages,** 
and  were  sliM  laboring  under  the  burdens  entailed  on  them  by  former  wars, 
were  not  slow  to  embrace  the  first  overtures  of  peace  ;  and  yet  they  mur- 
mured with  great  discontent  a^d  ill-humor  at  the  measure  to  which  they  were 
principally  indebted  for  the  deliverance  they  had  so  ardently  desired.  The 
expense  of  building  the  fort,  and  of  maintaining  its  garrison  and  stores,  occa- 
sioned an  addition  to  the  existing  taxes,  which  provoked  their  impatience. 
The  party  who  had  opposed  submission  to  the  new  charter  eagerly  promoted 
every  complaint  against  the  conduct  of  a  system  which  they  regarded  with 
rooted  aversion  ;  and  labored  so  successfully  on  this  occasion  to  vilify  the 
person  and  government  of  Sir  William  Phips  in  the  eyes  of  his  counUy- 
men,  that  his  popularity  sustained  a  shock  from  which  it  never  afterwards 
entirely  recovered.  The  people  were  easily  persuaded  to  regard  the  in- 
crease  of  taxation  as  the  effect  of  the  recent  abi-idgment  of  their  political 
'  Neal.    Hiitchingon.  ~     ~~  " 

'  The  situation  of  the  people  6f  New  Hampshire,  in  particular,  had  becom*  bo  irksome  and 
(langmug,  that  at  one  time  they  entertaineil  the  purpose  of  abandoning  the  province.  BelFiiap. 
Wheii  Adam  Smith  declared  that  "  nothing  can  be  more  contemptible  than  nn  Indian  war  m 
North  America,"  ho  alluded  to  a  period  much  later  than  this,  and  in  which  the  proportion 
betwcon  the  norabers  of  the  savage  and  civilized  races  had  undergone  a  great  alteration.  Even 
then,  the  observntion  was  just  only  in  so  fur  as  respected  apprehensions  of  conquest ;  for  no 
hosulities  were  ever  more  fraught  with  cruelty,  misery,  and  horror,  than  those  of  the  North 
American  Indians.  When  Chalmers  pronounced  the  Indians  "  a  fim  that  has  never  proved 
dangeroup,  except  to  the  efleminute,  the  factious,  and  the  cowardly,"  he  was  transported  into 
ihis  iiriustice  by  the  desire  of  lowering  the  reputation  of  the  people  of  New  Hampshire,  — 
a  portion  of  the  American  population  who  seem  to  have  provoked  in  a  peculiar  degree  hid. 
fiplcen  and  malevolence.  New  Hampshire  has  been  mere  justly  characterized  by  an  American 
nutorian  as  "a  nursery  of  stern  horoisin  ;  producing  men  of  firmness  and  valor,  who  can 
traverse  mountointi  and  <d«Mrta,  encounter  hardahipd,  oimI  &«»  »fi  «ge!By  without  terror." 


iielkiiap. 
VOL.   I. 


35 


274 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


fjTf 


privileges,  and  to  believe,  that,  if  they  had  retained  their  ancient  control  over 
the  officers  of  government,  the  administration  of  their  affairs  would  have  been 
more  economically  conducted.  But  another  cause,  which  we  have  already 
cursorily  remarked,  and  must  now  more  attentively  consider,  rendered  tlie 
minds  of  the  colonists  at  this  time  unusually  susceptible  of  gloomy  impres- 
sions,  and  of  suspicions  equally  irritating  and  unreasonable.  [1693.] 

The  belief  of  witchcraft  was  at  this  period  almost  universal  in  Christian 
countries ;  and  the  existence  and  criminality  of  the  practice  were  recognized 
in  tlie  penal  code  of  every  civilized  state.  Persons  suspected  of  being 
witches  and  wizards  were  frequently  tried,  condemned,  and  put  to  death  by 
the  authority  of  the  most  enlightened  tribunals  in  Europe  ;  and,  in  particular, 
but  a  few  years  before  the  present  epoch,  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  a  man  highly 
and  justly  renowned  for  the  strength  of  his  understanding,  the  variety  of  lijs 
knowledge,  and  the  eminent  Christian  graces  that  adorned  his  character, 
after  a  long  and  anxious  investigation,  adjudged  a  number  of  men  and  women 
to  die  for  this  offence  at  an  assize  in  Suffolk.^  The  reality  of  witchcraft  had 
never  yet  been  questioned  ;  nor  were  there  any  individuals  to  whom  that 
reality  appeared  unimportant  or  incredible,  except  those  who  regarded  the 
spiritual  world  altogether  p.s  a  mere  speculation  of  visionary  fancy,  and  de- 
lusive. Among  other  believers  in  the  practice,  were  some  of  the  unfor- 
tunate beings  themselves  who  were  put  to  death  as  witches.  Instigated  by 
fraud,  folly,  or  malignity,  or  possessed  by  demoniacal  frenzy,  sonie  of  these 
unhappy  persons  professed,  more  or  less  openly,  to  hold  communication 
with  the  powers  of  darkness  ;  and  by  the  administration  of  subtle  poisons, 
by  disturbing  the  imagination  of  their  victims,  or  by  an  actual  appropriation 
of  that  unhallowed  agency  which  Scripture  assures  us  did  once  operate  in 
the  world,  and  of  which  no  equal  authority  has  ever  proclaimed  the  extinc- 
tion,  they  committed  crimes  and  inflicted  injuries  which  were  punished, 
doubtless  sometimes,  perhaps  frequently,  under  an  erroneous  name. 

The  colonists  of  New  England,  participating  in  the  general  belief  of  this 
practice,  regarded  it  with  a  degree  of  abhorrence  and  indignation  corre- 
sponding to  the  piety  for  which  they  were  so  remarkably  distinguished. 
Their  experience  in  America  had  tended  to  strengthen  the  sentiments  on 
this  subject  which  they  brought  with  them  from  Europe  ;  for  they  found  the 
belief  of  witchcraft  firmly  rooted  among  the  Indian  tribes,  and  the  practice 
(or  what  was  so  termed  and  esteemed)  prevailing  extensively,  and  with  per- 
fect impunity,  among  those  people,  whom,  as  heathens,  they  regarded  as  the 
worshippers  of  demons.'*  Their  conviction  of  the  reality  of  witchcraft  was, 
not  unreasonably,  confirmed  by  such  evidence  of  the  universal  assent  of  man- 
kind ;  anc:  their  resentment  of  its  enormity  was  proportionally  increased  bv 
the  honor  and  acceptance  which  they  saw  it  enjoy  under  the  shelter  ol 
superstitions  that  denied  and  jishonor^d^the  true  God.     The  first  trials  for 

"*  lIolvilT'rs<a^7Vi^."Ev^rrMlatc  ns  the  micldlo  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  convic- 
tion of  the  witches  of  Wnrboig,  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  was  still  comrncmoratcd  in 
„n  annual  sermon  at  Huntingdon.  Johnson's  mnks  Ohservatwns  an  the  Tra^^^  nf  MaM^ 
The  scceders  from  the  established  church  in  Scotland  P^MrMf  nn  act  "f  th^.r  a^or 
presbytery  at  Edinburgh,  in  1743  (reprinted  atdla.gow  m  176(.  ,  denouncing  the  repeal  oftt,« 
Lenaflaws  against  witchcraft  as  a  national  sin.  Am  fn  Criminal  Trial,  m  SrothnjL 
The  last  executions  for  witchcraft  in  the  British  dominions  were  at  Huntingdon  in  Mfi, 

""'  iyuSblS;  a  PuSrn  miSr,  an^'dTne  of  the  earliest  historian,  of  New  England,  ci.es.i.h 
Vol.  HI. 


CHAP  v.] 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 


276 


witchcraft  in  New  England  occurred  in  the  year  1645,  when  four  persons 
charged  vyith  this  crime  were  put  to  death  in  Massachusetts.     Gotfe,  the 
regicide,  in  his  Diary,  records  the  conviction  of  three  others  at  Hartford, 
in  Connecticut,  m  1662,  and  remarks,  that,  after  one  of  them  was  hanged,  a 
young  woman,  who  had  been  bewitched,  was  restored  to  health.    For  more 
than  twenty  years  after,  few  instances  occurred,  and  little  notice  has  been 
preserved  of  similar  prosecutions.   But  in  the  year  1688,  a  woman  was  exe- 
cuted for  witchcraft  at  Boston,  after  an  investigation  conducted  with  a  de- 
gree of  solemnity  ihat  made  a  deep  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  people. 
An  account  of  the  wiiole  transaction  was  published  ;  and  so  generally  were 
the  wise  and  good  persuaded  of  the  justice  of  the  proceeding,  that  Richard 
Baxter,  the  celebrated  Non-conformist  divine,  wrote  a  preface  to  the  narra- 
tive, in  which  he  scrupled  not  to  declare  every  one  who  refused  to  believe 
it  an  obdurate  Sadducee.     The  attention  of  the  people  being  thus  strongly 
excited,  and  their  suspicions  awakened  and  attracted  in  this  dangerous  di- 
rection, the  charges  of  witchcraft  became  gradually  more  frequent,  till,  at 
length,  there  commenced  at  Salem  that  dreadful  tragedy  which  rendered 
New  England  for  many  months  a  scene  of  bloodshed,  terror,  and  madness. 
In  the  beginning  of  the  year  1692,  Massachusetts  was  visited  with  aii 
epidemical  complaini  resembling  epilepsy,  which  the  physicians,  unable  to 
explain  or  cure,  readily  imputed  to  supernatural  operation.     Some  young 
women,  and  among  others  the  daughter  and  niece  of  Paris,  the  minister  of 
Salem  village,  were  first  attacked  by  this  distemper,  and  induced  by  the 
suggestions  of  their  medical  attendants  to  ascribe  it  to  withcraft.    The  delu- 
sion was  encouraged  by  a  perverted  application  of  the  means  best  fitted  to 
strengthen  and  enlighten  the  understanding.     Solemn  fasts  were  observed, 
and  assemblies  convoked  for  extraordinary  prayer  ;  and  the  supposition  of 
witchcraft,  which  in  reality  had  been  previously  assumed,  was  thus  confirmed 
and  consecrated  in  the  apprehension  of  the  pubhc.     The  imaginations  of 
the  patients,  disturbed  by  morbid  sensation,  and  inflamed  by  the  contagious 
terror  which  their  supposed  malady  excited,  readily  prompted  accusations 
against  particalar  individuals  as  the  authors  of  the  calamity.    The  flame  was 
now  kindled,  and  finding  ample  nourishment  in  all  the  strongest  passions  and 
most  inveterate  weaknesses  of  human  nature,  carried  havoc,  and  destruction 
through  the  community.     The  bodily  symptoms  of  the  prevailing  epidemic, 
frequently  pondered  by  timorous  and  susceptible  persons,  were  propagated 
with  amazing  rapidity ;  and  having  been  once  regarded  as  symptoms  of  witch- 
craft, were  ever  after  referred  to  the  same  diabolical  origin.    The  usual  and 
well  known  contagion  of  nervous  disorders  was  quickened  by  dread  of  the 
horrid  and  mysterious  agency  from  which  they  were  now  supposed  to  arise ; 
and  this  appalling  dread,  enfeebling  the  reason  of  its  victims,  led  them  to 
confound  the  visions  of  their  disturbed  apprehension  with  the  realities  of 
sound  experience.     To  think  earnestly  upon  any  thing  implies  its  influence 
and  engraves  its  presence  on  the  mind  ;  and  to  dread  it  is  partly  to  reahze 
and  still  farther  to  invite  its  dominion.     Symptoms  before  unheard  of,  and 
unusually  terrific,^  attended  the  cases  of  the  sufFerers,  and  were  supposed 

'  Swelling  of  the  throat,  in  particular,  now  well  known  to  be  a  symptom  of  hysterical  aii'ec- 
Uon,  was  considered  at  that  time  a  horrible  prodigy.     Medical  science  was  still  depraved  by 


an  admixture  of  gross  superstition.  The  touch  of  a  king  was  believed  to  be  capable  of  curing 
some  diseases  ;  and  astrology  formed  a  part  of  the  course  of  medical  study,  because  the  efficacy 
of  driigs  was  believed  to  be  promoted  or  impeded  by  planetary  influence.  "  In  consequence 
01  tiio  gr«ul<;r  nervous  irritability  of  wrr.M>,n,"  saysDugald  Stewart,  "their  muscular  system 
seems  to  possess  a  greater  degree  of  that  mobility  by  which  the  principle  of  sympathetic  imi- 


276 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n. 


I 


to  prove  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  disorder  was  no  natural  ailment ;  while,  in 
truth,  they  denoted  nothing  else  than  the  extraordinary  terror  of  the  unhappy 
patients,  who  augmented  the  malignity  of  their  disease  by  the  darkness  and 
horror  of  the  source  to  which  they  traced  it.  Every  cas«  of  nervous  de- 
rangement WIS  now  referred  to  this  source,  and  every  morbid  affection  of 
the  spirits  and  fancy  diverted  into  the  most  dangerous  channel.  Accusations 
of  particular  individuals  easily  suggested  themselves  to  the  disordered  minds 
of  the  sufferers,  and  were  eagerly  preferred  by  themselves  and  their  relatives, 
in  the  hope  of  obtaining  deliverance  from  the  calamity  by  the  punishment  of 
its  guilty  authors. 

These  charges,  however  unsupported  by  proof,  and  however  remote  from 
probability,  alighted  with  fatal  influence  wherever  they  fell.     The  supernat- 
ural intimation,  by  which  they  were  supposed  to  be  dictated,  supplied  and 
excluded  all  ordinary  proof ;  and  when  a  patient,  under  the  dominion  of 
nervous  affections,  or  in  the  intervals  of  epileptic  paroxysms,  declared  that 
he  had  seen  the  apparition  of  a  particular  individual  occasioning  his  suffer- 
ings, no  consideration  of  previously  unblemished  character  could  screen  the 
accused  from  a  trial,  which,  if  the  patient  persisted  in  the  charge,  invariably 
terminated  in  a  conviction.     The  charges  were  frequently  admitted  without 
any  other  proof,  for  tlie  very  reason  for  which  they  should  have  been  abso- 
lutely rejected  by  human  tribunals,  —  that  their  truth  was  judged  incapable 
of  ordinary  proof,  or  of  being  kno^vn  to  any  but  the  accuser  and  thcf  accused. 
So  general  and  inveterate  was  the  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  supposed  witch- 
craft, that  no  one  dared  openly  to  gainsay  it,  whatever  might  really  be  his 
opinion  on  the  subj(  ct ;  and  the  innocent  victims  of  the  charges  were  con- 
strained to  argue  on  the  assumption,  that  the  apparitions  of  themselves,  de- 
scribed by  their  accusers,  had  actually  been  seen,  —  and  reduced  to  plead 
that  their  semblance  was  assumed  by  an  evil  spirit  that  sought  to  screen  his 
proper  instruments,  and  divert  the  public  indignation  upon  unoffending  per- 
sons.    It  was  maintained,  however,  by  Stoughton,  the  deputy -governor  of 
Massachusetts,  most  gratuitously,  but,  u-.happily,  to  the  conviction  of  the 
public,  that  an  evil  spirit  could  sustain  only  the  appearance  of  such  persons 
as  had  given  up  their  bodies  to  him  and  devoted  themselves  to  his  service. 
The  semblance*of  legal  proof,  besides,  was  very  soon  added  to  the  force 
of  those  charges  ;  and  seeming  to  put  tlieir  truth  past  doubt  in  some  cases, 
was  thought  to  confirm  it  in  all.     Some  of  the  accused,  terrified  by  their 
danger,  sought  safety  in  avowing  their  guilt,  recanting  their  supposed  .impi- 
ety, and  denouncing  others  as  their  tempters  and  associates.     In  order  to 
beget  favor  and  verify  their  recantation,  they  now  declared  themselves  the 
victims  of  the  witchcraft  they  had  formerly  practised,  counterfeited  the  ner- 
vous affections  of  their  own  accusers,  and  imputed  their  sufferings  to  ihe  ven 
geance  of  their  ancient  accomplices. 

These  artifices  and  the  general  delusion  were  promoted  by  the'  conduct 
of  the  magistrates,  who,  with  a  monstrous  inversion  of  equity  and  sound 
sense,  offered  impunity  to  all  who  would  confess  the  imputed  crime  and  be- 
tray their  associates,  while  they  inflexibly  doomed  to  death  every  accused 
})erson  who  maintained  his  innocence.  Thus  one  accusation  produced  a 
multitude  of  others,  —  the  accused  becoming  accusers  and  witnesses,  and 
hastening  to  escape  from  danger  by  fastening  the^gui^lt^  onjother^ereons. 


'P)i,(,  f,fs«  .r..i  <k<>  most  namerouf  of  th"  iiiinnKitRd  victims  of  witchcraA 
New  Knglnnd  were  yom«  women,    It  is  not  improbable,  that,  in  gome  cases,  the  ("•»">'  mn 
l)id  Bymptoma  were  complicated  with  the  mytterious  phenomena  of  Bomnambuliiin. 


mnp.  v.] 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 


277 


l^rora  Salem,  where  its  mam  fury  was  exerted,  die  evil  spread  over  the 

'?f  ?r;T°^^T'f  "'^''^  '  ^^  ''^«''«^«'  "  was  able  to  penetrate,  k 
effectually  subverted  the  happmess  and  security  of  life.     The  sword  of  the 
law  vvas  wrested  from  dbe  hand  of  dispassionate  justice,  and  committed  to 
,l,e  grasp  orthe  wdde^t  fear  and  fury,  while  the  shield  of  the  law  was  denied 
to  the  unfortunate  objects  ofth.se  headlong  and  dangerous  passions.  Alarrn 
and  terror  pervaded  a    ranks  of  society.     The  first  Ind  the  favorite  ohjecS 
of  arraignment  were  jll-favored  old  wdmen,  whose  dismal  aspect  exdtine 
horror  and  aversion  instead  of  tenderness  and  compassion   wrreikoneS  a 
proof  of  their  guilt,  and  seemed  to  designate  the  appropriate  agems  of  mys- 
terious and  unearthly  wickedness.     But  the  sphere  of  accusation  wa    pro- 
gresslvely  enlarged  to  such  a  degree,  that  at  length  neither  age  nor  sex 
neitlier  ignorance  nor  irinocence    neither  l^ning^nor  piety,  ndther  tIZI 
tation  nor  office,  could  afford  the  slightest  safe^ard  against  a  charS 
witchcraft.     Even  irrational  creatures  were  not  exempted  from  this  fatal 
charge ;  and  a  dog,  belonging  to  a  person  accused  of  witchcraft,  was  hanged 
as  the  accomphce  of  a  crime  which  the  poor  brute  was  alike  incapabKf 
confessmg,^deny,ng,  or  comprehending.     tJnder  the  dominion  of  terror!  Si 
mutual  confidence  was  destroyed,  and  the  kindest  feelings  of  human  naLre 
were  trampled  under  foot.     The  nearest  relations  became  each  other"s^! 
cusers  ;  and  one  unhappy  man,  in  particular,  was  condemned  and  executed 
on  the  testimony  of  his  wife  and  daughter,  who  impeached  him  merely  with 
the  view  of  preserving  iJiemselves.    Many  respectable  persons  fled  from  the 
colony  ;  others,  maintaining  their  innocence,  were  capitally  convicted,  arid 
died  with  a  serene  courage  and  piety,  that  affected,  but  could  not  disabuse 
the  spectators.  ""uoc. 

The  accounts  that  have  been  preserved  of  the  trials  of  these  unfortunate 
persons  pesent  a  most  revoltmg  and  humiliating  picture  of  frenzy,  folly,  and 
.njustice.     Iti  support  of  the  charge  of  witchcraft  agamst  some  of  the  pris- 
oners, the  court  permitted  testimony  to  be  given  of  losses  and  mishaps  that 
had  be  alien  the  accusers  or  their  cattle  (even  as  long  as  twenty  years  before 
(he  trial),  after  some  rneeting  or  some  disagreement  b. :    sen  them  and  the 
prisoners.    Against  others  it  was  deposed,  that  they  had  performed  greater 
leats  of  strength,  and  walked  from  one  place  to  another  in  a  shorter  space  of 
time,  than  the  accusers  ludged  possible  without  diaboHcal  assistance.     But 
the  mam  article  of  prpof  was  the  spectral  apparitions  of  the  persons  of  the 
pretended  witches  to  the  eyes  of  their  supposed  victims  during  the  paroxysms 
ot  their  malady.     The  accusers  sometimes  declared  that  they  could  not  see 
the  prisoners  at  the  bar  of  the  court ;  which  was  construed  into  a  proof  of 
itie  immediate  exertion  of  Satanic  influence  in  rendering  the  persons  of  the 
ciilprits  invisible  to  those  who  were  to  testify  against  them.     The  bodies  of 
the  prisoners  were  commonly  examined  for  the  discovery  of  what  were 
termed  vvitch-marics  ;  and  as  the  examiners  did  not  know  what  they  were 
seeking  for,  and  yet  earnestly  desired  ^o  find  it,  every  little  puncture  or  dis- 
coloration of  the  skm  was  easily  ?)r]iov,d  to  be  the  impress  of  infernal  touch. 
n  general,  the  accusers  fell  into  fiti,       complained  of  violent  uneasiness,  at 
lie  sight  of  the  prisoners.     On  the  itvc.  of  Burroughs,  a  clergyman  of  the 
iighest  respectability,  some  of  the  witnesses  being  affectod  in  this  manner, 
tne  judges  replied  to  his  protestations  of  innocence,  by  askir-  If  he  would 
venture  to  deny  that  these  persons  were  then  laboring  under  the  malignant 
.nSuencc  ox  the  powers  of  hell.     He  answered  that  he  did  not  deny  it,  but 


^8 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


i  j; 


,  •  J  u  •„»  ontr  onnrpm  with  it.  "  If  vou  Were  not  a  friend  of 
r  d  :i V' ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  liS;  ''  he  .oul/not  exert  himself  in  this 
manner  to  prevent  these  persons  from  speaking  against  you.  When  a 
Soner  n  hs  defence  uttered  any  thing  that  seemed  to  move  the  audience 
?nWs  favor,  some  of  the  accusers  were  ready  to  exclaim  that  they  saw  the 
devi  stand  ng  by  afld  putting  the  words  in  his  mouth  ;  and  every  feelmg  of 
human itv  was  chased  away  by  such  absurd  and  frantic  exclamations.  While 
onfof  the  convicts,  at  the  foot  of  the  scaffold,  was  addressing  a  last  assur- 
ance of  hU  innocence  to  the  spectators,  the  executioner  sat  by  him  smoW 
tobacco  ;  and  some  of  the  smoke  having  been  wafted  by  the  wind  into  the 
eves  of  thT  dying  man,  the  accusers  thereupon  set  up  a  shout  of  bruta 
Sph,  a^d  exclaimed,  "  See  how  the  devil  wraps  him  m  smoke  ! " 
It  cTnnot  be  doubted  that  frayd  and  mahgnity  had  a  share  m  inciting  these 

prosecutions^       that  was  practically  avowed  in  the  courts  of  justice,  that  in 
cases  of  witchcraft,  accusation  was  equivalent  to  conviction,  presen  ed  the 
most  subUe  and  powerful  allurements  to  the  indulgence  of  natural  ferocity 
and  the  gratification  of  fantastic  terror  and  suspicion  ;  and  there  is  but  too 
much  rea  on  to  believe,  that  rapacity,  malice,  and  revenge  were  not  vainly 
h^vUed  to  seize  this  opportunity  of  satiating  their  appetites  m  confiscation 
and  bloodshed      So  slrong  meanwhile  was  the  popular  delusion  that  even 
?he  detection  of  manifest  pirjury,  on  one  of  the  trials,  proved  insufficient  to 
weaken  the  credit  of  the  most  unsupported  accusation     Sir  William  Ph.ps 
he  governor,  Stoughton,  the  lieutenant-governor,  and  the  most  learned  an 
erSinlnt  persons,  both  among  the  clergy  and  laity  of  the  province,  partook 
Td  promoted  the  general  infSuaUon.  Nothing  but  an  outrageous  zeal  agamst 
wi?chcraTseemed  capable  of  assuring  cny  individual  of  the  safety  of  his  hfe ; 
ind  temptations,  that  but  too  frequently  overpowered  human  courage  and 
virtue   amse  from  the  conviction  impressed  on  every  person  that  there  re- 
mSne'd  no  other^lternative  than  that  of  becoming  the  oppressor  or  the  op- 
messed      The  afflicted  (as  the  accusers  were  termed)  and  their  witnesses 
Jnd  partisans  began  to  form  a  numerous  and  united  party  m  every  commu- 
Sy   wS  none  dared  to  oppose,  and  which  none  who  once  joined  or  sup- 
porter  could  forsake  with  impunity.     A  magistrate,  who  for  a  while  took 
inactive  part  in  examining  and  committing  the  supposed  delinquents,  begm- 
nhiSto  suspect  that  the  charges  originated  in  some  .fatal  mistake,  showed 
an  incUnS  to  discourage  them,  and  straightway  found  that  he  had  drawn 
the  ZKerous  imputation  on  himself.     A  constable,  who  had  apprehended 
many  of  tU  accused,  was  smitten  with  a  similar  suspicion,  and  hastily  de- 
dared  tha  he  would  meddle  in  this  matter  no  farther.    Reflecting  with  alarm 
on  the  danger  he  had  provoked,  he  attempted  to  fly  the  country,  but  was  over- 
°aken  in  hii  flight  by  the  vengeance  of  the  accusers ;  and,  havmg  been  brought 
back  to  Salem,  was  tried  for  witchcraft,  convicted,  and  executed.     Some 
person,  whom  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  had  induced  to  accuse  the. 
Friends  or  kinsfolk,  touched  with  remorse,  confessed  the  crime  they  had  been 
S  of  and  retr'acted  their  testimonv.     They  were  convicted  of  relapse 
into  witchcraft,  and  died  the  victims  of  their  returning  virtue. 

It  ksr  he  very  excess  of  the  evil  brought  about  its  cure.    About  fifteen 
months  hid  elapsJd  since  it  first  broke  forth  ;  and  so  far  from  being  ex   • 
wished  or  abated,  it  was  growing  every  day  more  formidable.     Of  tvvent 
eight  persons  capitally  convicted,  nmeleeu  uad  been  baiiguu,  b»u  v.v,  .or 


CHAP,  v.] 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 


279 


refusing  to  plead,  was  pressed  to  death  ;  —  the  only  instance  in  which  this 
engine  of  legal  barbarity  was  ever  employed  in  North  America.  The  num- 
ber of  the  accusers  and  pardoned  witnesses  multiplied  with  alarming  rapidity. 
The  sons  of  Governor  Bradsteet,  and  other  individuals  of  eminent  station 
and  character,  had  fled  from  a  charge  belied  by  tJie  whole  tenor  of  their  lives. 
A  hundred  and  fifty  persons  were  in  prison  on  the  same  charge,  and  im- 
peachments of  no  less  than  two  hundred  others  had  been  presented  to  the 
magistrates.  Men  began  to  ask  where  this  would  end.  The  constancy  and 
piety  with  which  the  unfortunate  victims  encountered  their  fate  produced  an 
impression  on  the  minds  of  the  people,  which,  though  counterbalanced  at  the 
time  by  the  testimony  of  the  pardoned  witnesses,  gained  strength  from  the 
reflection  that  these  witnesses  purchased  their  lives  by  their  testimony,  while 
the  persons  against  whom  they  had  borne  evidence  sealed  their  own  testi- 
mony with  their  blood. 

It  was  happy,  perhaps,  for  the  country,  that,  while  the  minds  of  the  peo- 
ple were  awakening  to  reflections  thus  reasonable  and  humane,  some  of  the 
accusers  carried  the  audacity  of  their  arraignment  to  such  a  pitch,  as  to 
prefer  charges  of  witchcraft  against  Lady  Phips,  the  governor's  wife,  and 
against  certain  of  the  nearest  relatives  of  Dr.  Increase  Mather,  the  most 
pious  minister  and  popular  citizen  of  Massachusetts.  This  circumstance 
at  once  opened  the  eyes  of  Sir  "William  Phips  and  Dr.  Mather ;  so  far,  at 
least,  as  to  induce  a  strong  suspicion  that  many  of  the  late  proceedings  which 
they  had  countenanced  were  rash  and  indefensible.  They  felt  that  they  had 
dealt  with  others  in  a  manner  very  different  from  that  in  which  they  were 
now  reduced  to  desire  that  others  should  deal  with  them.  A  kindred  senti- 
ment beginning  also  to  prevail  in  the  public  mind  encouraged  the  resolute 
exertion  by  which  a  citizen  of  Boston  succeeded  in  stemming  the  fury  of 
these  terrible  proscriptions.  Having  been  charged  with  witchcraft  by  some 
persons  at  Andover,  he  anticipated  an  arrest,  by  promptly  arresting  his  ac- 
cusers for  defamation,  and  preferring  on  oath  against  them  a  claim  of  damages 
to  the  amount  of  a  thousand  pounds.  The  eftect  of  this  vigorous  conduct 
surpassed  his  most  sanguine  expectations.  It  seemed  as  if  a  spell  that  had 
been  cast  over  the  people  of  Andover  was  dissolved  by  one  bold  touch  ; 
the  frenzy  subsided  in  a  moment,  and  witchcraft  was  heard  of  in  that  town 
no  more.  The  impression  was  quickly  diffused  throughout  the  province  ; 
and  the  influence  of  it  appeared  at  the  very  next  assize  that  was  held  for 
the  trial  of  witchcraft,  when,  of  fifty  prisoners  who  were  tried  on  such  evi- 
dence as  was  formerly  deemed  sufficient,  the  accusers  could  obtain  the  con- 
viction of  no  more  than  three,  who  were  instantly  reprieved  by  the  governor. 
These  acquittals  were  doubtless  in  part  produced  by  a  change  which  the 
public  opinion  underwent  as  to  the  sufficiency  of  what  was  denominated  spec- 
tral evidence  of  witchcraft. 

An  assembly  of  the  most  eminent  divines  of  the  province,  convoked  for 
the  purpose  by  the  governor  [June  15th,  1693],  after  solemn  consideration, 
pronounced  and  promulgated  as  their  deliberate  judgment,  "  That  the  ap- 
paritions of  persons  afflicting  others  was  no  proof  of  their  being  witches," 
and  that  it  was  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  Scripture  or  reason  that  the 
devil  should  assume  the  shape  of  a  good  man,  or  even  cause  the  real  aspect 
of  that  man  to  produce  impressions  of  pain  on  the  bodies  of  persons  be- 
witched. The  ministers,  nevertheless,  united  in  strongly  recommending  to 
the  government  the  rigorous  prosecution  of  all  persons  still  accused  of  witcU 


280 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  11. 


craft.     But  the  judgment  they  pronounced  respecting  the  validity  of  the 
customary  evidence  rendered  it  almost  impossible  to  procure  a  iudicial  con- 
viction  ;  and  produced,  at  the  same  time,  so  complete  a  revolution  in  the 
public  mind  respecting  the  late  executions,  that  charges  of  witchcraft  were 
found  to  exfcite  no  other  sentiments  than  deep  disgust,  and  angry  suspicion 
of  the  parties  who  preferred  them.     The  dark  cloud  that  had  overcast  the 
peace  and  happiness  of  the  colony  vanished  entirely  away,  — and  universal 
shame  and  remorse  succeeded  to  the  frenzy  that  previously  prevailed.  Even 
those  who  continued  to  beheve  in  the  reaUty  of  the  diabohcal  mfluence  of 
which  the  accusers  had  complained,  were  satisfied  that  most,  if  not  all,  of 
the  unfortunate  convicts  were  unjustly  condemned,  and  that  their  accusers, 
in  charging  them,  were  deluded  by  the  same  infernal  agency  by  which  their 
sufferings  were  occasioned.     Many  of  the  witnesses  now  came  forward  and 
published  the  most  solemn  recantations  of  the  testimony  they  formerly  gave, 
both  against  themselves  and  others  ;  apologizing  for  their  perjury,  by  a 
protestation,  of  which  all  were  constrained  to  admit  the  force,  that  no  other 
means  of  saving  tlieir  lives  had  been  left  to  them.     These  testimonies  were 
not  able  to  shake  the  opinion  which  was  still  retained  by  a  considerable 
party  botJi  among  the  late  accusers  and  the  public  at  large,  that  the  recent 
maladv  was  caused  in  part  by  real  witchcraft,  whether  the  real  culprits  had 
yet  be'en  detected  or  not.     This  opinion  was  supported  in  learned  treatises 
by  Dr.  Mather  and  other  eminent  divines.  But  it  was  found  impo^'ble  ever 
after  to  reiterate  prosecutions  that  excited  such  painful  remembrances,  and 
liad  been  rendered  instrumental  to  so  much  barbarity  and  injustice.    Sir 
William  Phips,  soon  after  he  reprieved  the  three  persons  last  convicted, 
gave  order  that  all  who  were  in  custody  on  charges  of  witchcraft  should  be 
released  ;  and,  with  prevenient  dread  of  the  dissensions  that  might  arise  from 
retributory  proceedings  against  the  accusers  and  their  witnesses,  he  pro- 
claimed a  general  pardon  to  all  persons  for  any  participation  imputable  to 
them  in  the  recent  prosecutions.     The  surviving  sufferers  front  those  perse- 
cutions, however,  and  the  relatives  of  those  who  had  perished,  were  enabled 
to  enjoy  whatever  consolation  they  could  derive  from  the  sympathy  of  their 
countrymen  and  the  earnest  regret  of  their  persecutors. 

The  House  of  Assembly  appointed  a  general  fast  and  solemn  supplica- 
tion, "  that  God  would  pardon  all  the  errors  of  his  servants  and  people  in  a 
late  tragedy  raised  among  us  by  Satan  and  his  instruments."  Sewell,  one 
of  the  judges  who  had  presided  on  die  trials  at  Salem,  stood  up  in  his  place 
in  church ^on  this  occasion,"  and  implored  the  prayers  of  the  people  that  the 
errors  which  he  bad  committed  might  not  be  visited  by  the  judgments  of  an 
avenging  God  on  his  country,  his  family,  or  himself.  Many  of  the  jurymen 
subscribed  and  published  a  declaration  lamenting  and  condemning  the  delu- 
sion to  which  they  had  yielded,  and  acknowledging  that  they  had  brought 
the  reproach  of  wrongful  bloodshed  on  their  native  land.  Paris,  the  clergy- 
man who  instituted  the  first  prosecutions  and  promoted  all  the  rest,  found 
himself  exposed  to  a  resentment  not  loud  or  violent,  but  fixed  and  deep ; 
and  was  at  length  generally  shunned  byjiis  fellow-citizens,  and  entiiely  for- 

Looks  dark  an  ignorance,  as  frenzy  wild."  —  Savage. 
»  When  Stoiigliton,  tlie  dofity-governor  and  chief  justice,  was  informed  of  this,  lie  ob- 
served for  himself,  that  when  he  sat  in  judgment  he,  hud  the  fear  of  (lod  heforc  hiH  eyes,  nnd 
gave  his  opinion  according  to  the  best  of  liis  understanding;  nnd^  although  it  might  appcnr 
afterwards  that  he  hud  btrnu  \u  etror,  jet  ho  saw  no  ricctasity  o.  »  jjUyhc  acknowsoftgrnen. 
of  it.'       Hutchinson. 


OHAP.  v.] 


THE  WITCHCRAFT  DELUSION. 


2ai 


jaken  by  bis  congregation.  He  appears,  throughout  the  whole  prooeedings, 
to  have  acteci  with  perfect  sincerity,  but  to  have  been  transported  by  a  vio- 
lent temper,  and  a  strong  conviction  of  the  rightfulness  of  the  ends  he  pur- 
sueH.  uito  the  adoption  of  means  for  their  attainment,  inconsistent  with  honor, 
justice,  or  humanity.  While  the  delusion  lasted,  his  violence  was  applauded 
as  zeal  in  a  righteous  cause,  and  little  heed  was  given  to  accusations  of  arti- 
fice and  partiality  in  conducting  what  was  believed  to  be  a  controversy  with 
the  devil.  But  when  it  appeared  that  all  these  efforts  had  in  reality  been 
directed  to  the  shedding  of  mnocent  blood,  his  popularity  gave  place  to  in- 
curable odium  and  disgust.  [1694.]  Perceiving,  too  late,  how  dreadfully 
he  had  erred,  he  hastened  to  make  a  public  profession  of  repentance,  and 
solemnly  begged  forgiveness  of  God  and  man.  But  as  the  people  declared 
their  fixed  resolution  never  more  to  attend  the  ministry  of  an  individual  who 
had  been  the  instrument  of  misery  and  ruin  to  so  many  of  their  countrymen, 
he  was  obliged  to  resign  his  charge  and  depart  from  Salem.i 

Thus  terminated  a  scene  of  fury  and  delusion  that  justly  excited  the 
:stonishment  ol  the  civilized  world,  and  exhibited  a  fearful  picture  of  the 
weakness  of  human  nature  in  the  sudden  transformation  of  a  people  re- 
nowned over  all  the  earth  for  piety  and  virtue  into  the  slaves  or  associates 
the  terrified  dupes  or  helpless  prey,  of  a  band  of  ferocious  lunatics  and 
assassins.  Among  the  various  evil  consequences  that  resulted  from  the  pre- 
ceding events,  not  the  least  important  was  the  effect  they  produced  on  the 
minds  of  the  Indian  tribes,  who  began  to  conceive  a  very  unfavorable  opin- 
ion of  a  people  that  could  inflict  such  barbarities  on  their  own  countrymen, 
and  of  a  icligion  that  seemed  to  instigate  its  professors  to  their  mutual  de- 
struction. Thijs  impression  was  the  more  disadvantageous  to  the  colonists, 
as  there  had  existed  for  some  time  a  competition  between  their  missionaries 
and  the  priests  of  the  French  settlements,  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians,'* 
who  invariably  embraced  the  political  interests  of  that  nation  whose  religious 
instructors  were  most  popular  among  them.  The  French  did  not  fail  to  im- 
prove to  their  own  advantage  the  odious  spectacle  that  the  late  frenzy  of  the 
people  of  New  England  had  exhibited  ;  and  to  this  end  they  labored  with 
such  diligence  and  success,  that  in  the  following  year,  when  Sir  William 
Phips  paid  a  visit  to  the  tribes  with  whom  he  had  concluded  the  treaty  of 
Peinmaquid,  and  endeavoured  to  unite  thera  in  a  solid  and  lasting  friendship 
with  his  own  people,  he  found  them  more  firmly  wedded  than  ever  to  the 
interests  of  the  French,  and  prepossessed  with  sentiments  unfavorable  in  the 

'  Mather,  Ufeg  SirWiUiamPhivs.  Increase  Mather's  Cases  of  Conscience  concerning  Eml 
Spirits.    Neal.    Hutchinson     Calefs  fVonders  of  the  Invisible  World.    Oldmixon.    "1  finA 

hcse  entries  in  the  MS.  Diary  of  Judge  Sewell  :  « Went  to  Salem,  where,  in  the  meeting- 
house,  the  persons  accused  of  witchcraft  were  examined  ;  a  very  great  assembly.  'T  was 
awful  to  see  how  the  afflicted  persons  were  agitated.'  But  in  the  margin  is  written,  in  a 
tremulous  hand,  probablv  on  a  subsenuent  review,  the  lamenting  Latin  interjection,  F«,  ivr, 
CL      e1^\     ^v  ''.'?'    'T  Wynne,  "  that  this  frenzy  contributed  to  work  off  th^  ill- 

mmorsofthe  New  England  people, -to  dissipate  their  bigotry, -and  to  bring  them  to  a 
more  tree  use  of  their  reason.  ^     j'  b 

•  It  was  a  very  corrupted  edition  of  Christianity  that  the  French  priests  unfolded  to  the  In- 
dians -  a  system  that  harmonized  too  well  with  the  passions  and  sentiments  which  genuine 
S?"  '^  "1°". .'"'""/'y  condemns.  By  rites  and  devices,  material  and  yet  mysterious,  it 
brought  some  porUon  of  the  sn.ntuul  doctrine  of  Christianity  within  the  range  of  the  coarse 
capaci  y  of  the  Indians,  and  fliciJitnted  the  transition  from  their  ancient  and  peculiar  mode  of 
^upOTtition  and  idolatry  ;  while,  by  stigmatizing  their  enemies  as  heretics,  it  afforded  additional 

Zlr^.h    I  ".i- '**""•'"'  ^1  '"•■■■•"*'  '■'"•^'  "n*!  '■'■"''••.V.     The  French  priests  who  ministered 
amonRst  the  Indians  were  Jesuits;  and  tl.eif-  muxim,  that  it  was  unnecessary  to  keep  faith  with 
heretics,  proved  but  too  congenial  to  the  savage  ethics  of  their  piinib. 
VOL.    I.  36  "  X* 


282 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


i 


hiehest  deeree  to  the  formation  of  friendly  relations  with  the  English     To 

fnroposUion  of  renewing  the  treaty  of  peace  tliey  readdy  agreed  ;  but  all 

he  Tg^ency  which  he  exerted  to  induce  them  to  desist  from    he.r  corre- 

nonEe  with   the  French  proved  unava.hng.     They  refVoed  to  l.s  en  lo 

r  missionaries  who  accomuanied  him ;  havmg  learned  from  the  French 
kLs    o  believe  that  the- 4glish  were  heretics,  and  enemies  to  the  tru. 

ie  Sn  of  Clirist.     Some  of  them,  with  blunt  smcer^y,  acquainted  1  h.ps 

that  s  nee  they  had  received  the  instructions  of  the  1  rench,  witchcraft  had 
OS  'a  perceptible  existence  among  their  tribes  and  that  they  desired  not 
o  recall  its  presence  by  familiar  intercourse  with  a  people  among  whom  ,t 

was  refuted  Vo  prevail  still  more  extensively  than  it  Ld  ever  yet  done  with 

'''Thel-rwlre  not  wanting  signs  foreboding  the  renewal  of  war  between  the 
Jnists  and  the  Indians,  ^which  f^^^or^^^^X^-^^TiZ 


:^s^3i:r^^;^Z:i;^d  i;;;  S.  support  of  the  ^n^cailonat 
Pemmaquid,  combining  with  the  resentments  and  enmities  which  the  prose- 
cutes for  witchcraft  gave  rise  to,  produced  a  party  m  the  province  who 
Eed  on  every  occasion  to  thwart  the  measures  and  vilify  the  character 
of  the  governor      Finding  tlieir  exertions  in  Massachusetts  .nsufTicient  to 
SepHve^Tm  of  the  esteem^hich  a  great  majority  of  the  people  entertained 
forTm,  h^s  political  enemies  transmitted  articles  of  impeachment  against 
hi  to  England,  and  petitioned  the  king  and  council  for  his  recdl  and  pun- 
isllent      King  William  having  declared  that  he  would  hear  and  judge  t^ie 
conToversy  himself,  an  order  was  communicated  to  the  governor  to  meet  h. 
accusers  b  the  ropl  presence  at  Whitehall  ;  in  compliance  with  winch, 
PWps    et  sail  for  England  [November,  1694],  carrymg  with  h.m  an  address 
of  the  a  sembly  expressive  of  the  strongest  attachment  to  his  person  and 
beseech-ing  thai  the  province  might  not  be  deprived  of  the  services  of  so 
able  and  meritorious  an  officer.     On  his  appearance  at  court,  his  accusers 
vanished,ld  their  charges  were  dismissed;  and  having  rendered  a  satis- 
fy account  of  his  administration,  he  was  preparing  to  return  o  ,.,0 
ernment,  when  a  malignant  fever  put  an  end  to  his  life.     [February,  10J5,j 
AsTsoder,  Phips,  if  not  preeminently  skilful,  was  active  and  brave;  as  a 
dvirrZ    he  wL  upright    magnanimous,  and  disinterested.     It  was  re- 
ml  ked  of  him,  as  of^AWstides,  that,  with  a  constaiit  and  generous  under- 
b Taring  o    his  fortune,  he  was  never  visibly  elated  by  any  mark  of  honor  or 
coSnce  that  he  received  from  his  countrymen  ;  nor  could  aU  his  success 
and  advancement  ever  make  him  ashamed  to  recall  the  humbleness  of  his 
original  condhion.     In  the  midst  of  a  fleet  that  was  conveying  an  armament 
St  commanded  on  a  military  expedition,  ^^^  f -sed^l^^^^^^ 
vounc  soldiers  and  sailors  who  were  standmg  on  the  deck  ol  his  vessel,  and, 
Sr to  a  particular  spot  on  the  shore,  said,  "  Young  nien,  1    was  uoo 
^3  that  I  kept  sheep  a  few  vears  ago  j-you  see  to  what  advancement 
AlmS  t    God  Ims  brought  me  ;  do  you,  then,  learn  to  fear  God  and  act  up- 
diS  f-  and  Yo  1  also  may  rise  as  I  have  done."     His  natural  temper  was 
somewhat  hasw  and  impetus  ;   and  the  occasional  ebulhtions  of  tins  n 

■ ^  '  Ncul. 


CHAP,  v.] 


WAR  WITH   THE   FRENCH   AND  INDIANS. 


283 


with  the  other  causes  which  we  have  remarked,  to  attaint  the  lustre  of  his 
reputation.' 

On  the  departure  of  Sir  William  Phips,  the  supreme  authority  m  Massa- 
chusetts devolved  on  Stoughton,  the  lieutenant-governor  [1G95J,  who  con- 
tinued to  exercise  it  during  the  three  following  years ;  the  king  being  so 
much  engrossed  with  his  wars- and  negotiations  on  the  continent  of  Europe,' 
that  it  was  not  till  after  the  peace  of  Ryswick  that  he  found  leisure  even  to 
nominate  a  siiccessor  to  Phips.  During  this  period,  the  colony  was  much 
disturbed  by  internal  dissension,  and  harassed  by  the  dangers  and  calamities 
of  war.  The  passions  bequeathed  by  the  prosecutions  for  witchcraft  (which 
Stoughton  had  zealously  promoted)  continued  long  to  divide  and  agitate  the 
people ;  and  the  political  factions  which  sprung  up  during  the  administration 
of  Phips  prevailed  with  increased  virulence  after  his  departure.  The  mutual 
animosities  of  the  colonists  attained  such  a  height,  that  they  seemed  to  be 
on  the  point  of  kindling  a  civil  war  ;  and  the  operations  of  the  provincial 
government  were  cramped  and  obstructed  at  the  very  time  when  the  utmost 
exertions  of  vigor  and  unanimity  were  requisite  to  encounter  the  hostile 
enterprises  of  the  French  and  the  Indians.  [June,  1G95.]  Incited  by  their 
French  allies,  the  Indians  recommenced  the  war  with  all  tlie  suddenness 
and  fury  of  their  military  operations.  Wherever  surprise  or  superior  num- 
bers enabled  them  to  prevail  over  parties  of  the  colonists,  or  detached 
plantations,  their  victory  was  signalized  by  the  extremities  of  barbarous  cru- 
elty.*^  The  colony  of  Acadia,  or  Nova  Scotia,  once  more  reverted  to  the 
dominion  of  France.  It  had  been  annexed,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  Massachusetts,  and  governed  hitherto  by  officers  deputed  from  the 
seat  of  the  superior  authority  at  Boston.  But  Port  Royal  (or  Annapolis, 
1^  it  was  afterwards  termed)  having  been  now  recaptured  by  a  French  arma- 
ment, the  whole  settlement  revolted,  and  reannexed  itself  to  the  French  em- 
pire, —  a  change  that  was  ratified  by  the  subsequent  treaty  of  Ryswick. 

A  much  more  serious  loss  was  sustained  by  Massachusetts  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  when,  in  consequence  of  a  combined  assault  by  the  French  and 
Indians,  the  fort  erected  by  Sir  William  Phips  at  Pemmaquid  was  com- 
pelled to  surrender  to  their  arms,  and  was  levelled  with  the  ground.  [1696.] 

'  Mather,  Ufe  of  Sir  fVilliam  Phips.  Neal.  Constnntine,  son  of  Sir  William  Phips,  becoine 
Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland ;  and  his  descendants  have  since  enjoyed  the  titles  of  Eurl  of  Mul- 
gravo  and  Marquis  of  Normanby  in  Britain. 

•  Numerous  cases  are  related  by  the  provincial  historians  of  the  torture  and  slavery  inflicted 
by  the  Indians  on  their  captives,  and  of  the  desperate  efforts  of  many  of  the  colonists  to  defend 
tliemsclvcB  and  their  families,  or  to  escape  from  the  hands  of  their  savaee  enemies.  Wherever 
the  Indians  could  penetrate,  war  was  carried  into  the  bosom  of  every  family.  The  case  of  a 
Mrs.  Dunstan,  of  Haverhill,  in  Massachusetts,  is  remarkable.  She  was  made  prisoner  by  a 
narty  of  twelve  Indians,  and,  with  the  infant  of  which  she  had  been  deliverea  but  a  week 
before,  and  the  nurse  who  attended  lier,  forced  to  accompany  them  on  foot  into  the  woods. 
Her  infant's  head  was  dashed  to  pieces  on  a  tree  before  her  eyes ;  and  she  and  the  nurso, 
after  fatiguing  marches  in  the  deptn  of  winter,  were  lodged  in  an  Indian  hut,  a  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  from  thoir  homo.  Here  they  were  informed  that  they  were  to  be  made  slaves  for 
life,  but  were  first  to  be  conducted  to  a  distant  settlement,  where  they  would  be  stripped, 
scourged,  and  forced  to  run  the  gantlet,  naked,  between  two  files  of  the  whole  tribe  to  wnich 
their  captors  belonged.  This  intelligence  determined  Mrs.  Dunstan  to  make  an  attempt  that 
would  issue  either  in  her  liberation  or  her  death.  Early  in  the  morning,  having  awaked  her 
nufBC,  and  a  young  man  who  was  their  fellow-prisoner,  she  got  possession  of  an  axe,  and,  with 
the  assistance  of  her  two  companions,  dcspatcned  no  fewer  than  ten  Indians  in  their  sleep. 
The  other  two  awoke  and  escaped.  Mrs.  Dunstan  returned  in  safety  with  her  companions 
to  Haverhill,  and  was  rewarded  for  her  intrepidity  by  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts.  — 
Dwiglit's  Traveh. 

Whatever  other  cruelties  the  Indians  might  exercise  on  the  bodies  of  their  captives,  it  is  ob- 
seFvable  thai  they  never  .ittcmptcd  to  violate  the  chastity  of  women.  They  showed  a  strong 
aversion  to  negroes,  and  generally  killed  them  whenever  they  fell  into  their  hands.      Belknap. 


284 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II 


'-^ 


Chubb,  the  cominander  of  this  fort,  at  first  replied  to  the  summons  of  the 
invulers  that  he  teould  not  surrender  tt,  even  though  the  sea  were  covered 
M  French  vessels,  and  the  land  u>ith  Indian  allies  of  France -Bui  the 
..auitulation  to  which  he  finally  acceded  was  extorted  from  h.m  bv  the  terror 
of  his  garrison,  to  whom  the  French  commander  announced,  that,  in  case 
of  a  successful  assault,  they  would  be  abandoned  to  the  rage  of  his  Indian 
auxiliaries.  This  severe  and  unexpected  blow  spread  equal  surprise  and 
.onstemation  ;  and  the  alarming  consciousness  of  the  danger,  imparted  by 
the  loss  of  a  barrier  of  such  consequence,  rebuked  in  the  strongest  manner 
tlie  factious  discontent  that  had  murmured  at  the  expense  of  maintaining  it. 
These  appreli  nsions  were  but  too  well  justified  by  the  increased  ravages  of 
[ndian  warfare,  and  the  increased  insolence  and  fury  with  which  a  triumph 
80  signal  inspired  the  Indian  tribes.  Stoughton  and  his  council  exerted  the 
utmost  promptitude  and  vigor  to  repair  or  retaliate  the  disaster,  and  de- 
snatched  forces  to  attack  the  enemy  both  by  land  and  sea  ;  but  miscarriage 
attended  both  these  expeditions  ;  and,  at  the  close  of  the  year,  the  provin- 
cial  troops  had  been  unublo,  by  the  slightest  advantage,  to  check  the  assaults 
of  the  enemy,  or  to  cheer  the  drooping  spirits  of  their  countrymen. 

In  the  following  y ear  [  1 697  M ,  the  province,  after  being  severely  harassed 
by  the  inroads  of  the  Indians,  was  alarmed  by  the  intelligence  of  a  lormidable 
invasion  which  the  French  wore  preparing,  with  a  view  to  its  entire  subju- 
Kaiion.     The  commander  of  a  French  squadron  which  was  cruising  on  the 
northern  coasts  of  America  had  concerted  with  Count  Frontignac,  the  gov- 
ernor  of  Canada,  a  joint  attack  by  sea  and  land,  with  the  whole  united  force 
of  the  French  and  Indians,  on  the  colony  of  Massachusetts ;  and  little  doubt 
was  entertained  of  the  conquest  of  this  people,  and  the  complete  destruction 
of  their  settlements.   On  the  first  intelligence  of  this  design,  all  the  daunt  eJs 
and  determined  spirit  of  New  England  seemed  again  to  awake  •  and,  fac- 
tious  animosities  being  swallowed  up  by  more  generous  passion,  the  people 
vied  with  each  other  in  zealous  cooperation  with  the  energetic  measures  by 
vhich  Stoughton  prepared  to  repel  the  threatened  assault.     He  caused  the 
torts  around  Boston  to  be  repaired,  the  whole  militia  of  the  province  to  be 
embodied  and  trained  with  the  strictest  discifiline,  and  every  other  precaution 
conducive  to  an  effectual  defence  to  be  promptly  employed.     In  order  to 
ascertain,  and,  if  possible,  anticipate,  the  operations  of  the  enemy  by  land, 
he  despatched  a  considerable  force  to  scour  the  eastern  frontiers  of  the 
province  :  and  these  troops,  encountering  a  detachment  of  the  Indians,  pro- 
ceeding to  ioin  the  French  invaders,  overthrew  and  dispp«ed  it,  after  a  short 
engagement.     This  check,  though  in  itself  of  little  irnpoi,u;uo,  so  deranged 
the  plans  of  the  governor  of  Canada  as  to  induce  him  t:.  d-j..-  ^.e  invasion 


of  Massachusetts  by  land  till  the  following  year  •.  ai  i  the  5rc;.ch  admiral, 
finding  his  fleet  weakened  by  a  storm,  and  apprized  of  the  vigorous  prepar- 
ations  for  his  reception,  judged  it  prudent,  in  like  manner,  to  abandon  the 
proiecicd  naval  attack.  During  the  whole  of  this  protracted  contest.  Con- 
neciic>n  and  Rhode  Island,  though  exempted  from  territorial  ravage  shared 
in  the  h-;rcMts  of  war.  Connecticut,  in  particular,  was  distinguished  by  the 
momi'Mxiu    and  liberality  of  the^ccourejvhich^he  extended  to  the  vvarfiirc 

--ri;iT»;;-a;;.;ro"f  thl^iri^^W.  died,  this  year,  fi.ll  of  day.  nnd  honor,  the  v«norable  ^mon 
Bradl.=.t,  he  !a.t  M.rvivor  of  the  original  planter., -for  many  years  governor  of  Mr««  • 
«.ttg  —  a.  d  torrnod  hv  his  countrymen  the  NeHtor  of  New  England  He  died  n  his  ninelv- 
fiilif '  .,.nr  «™.Iv  Zirin«  to  be  at  rc«t,  -  insomuch  (myn  Cotton  Mather)  that  .t  .eemod  a, 
if  death  were  oonfeViod  upon  him,  instead  of  life  being  taken  i.ou.  luia. 


CHAP  V  ]   TIIF.ATY  OF  I^EACK       KARI,  OF  nELLAMONT    GOVKUNOR 


28d 


„|  lier  friends,  both  in  ihe  easioru  parts  of  New  England  and  on  the  frontier* 
of  Now  Vork.' 

In  tho  coniniencenient  of  the  following  year  [1098],  inteUigence  reached 
America  of  the  treaty  of  Ityswick,  by  uhi(  h  peace  was  reesliibhshed  be- 
nveen  Britain  and  France.  By  this  treaty  it  was  agreed  that  the  two  con- 
iracting  powers  sliould  mutually  restore  to  each  other  all  conquests  that  had 
l,een  made  during  the  war,  and  that  commissioners  should  be  appointed  to 
investigate  and  determine  the  extent  and  limits  of  the  adjacent  territories  of 
both  nionarchs  in  America.  The  evil  consequences  of  thus  leaving  tho 
hoimdarios  of  growing  settlements  unascertained  were  sensibly  experienced 
at  no  distant  date. 

Count  I'rontignac,  on  receiving  notice  of  this  treaty,  acquainted  the  chiefs 
of  ihe  Indian  tribes,  whose  martial  cooperation  he  had  obtained,  that  he 
,  niild  no  lon^n-jr  assist  or  countenance  tlieir  hostilities  a^inst  the  English, 
r  d  adv'sed  them  to  deliver  up  their  captives,  and  make  peace  on  the  best 
terms  il.oy  could  obtain.  The  government  of  iVIassachusetts,  to  wliich  their 
pacific  overtures  were  addressed,  sent  two  commissioners  to  Penobscot  to 
meet  their  principal  sachems,  who  endeavoured  to  apologize  for  their  unpro- 
voked hostilities  by  ascribing  them  to  the  artifice  and  instigation  of  the  French 
Jesuits.  They  expressed,  at  the  same  time,  the  highest  esteem,  and  even 
a  filial  regard,  for  Count  Fronlignac,  and  an  earnest  desire,  that,  in  case  of 
iiuy  future  war  between  the  French  and  English,  the  Indians  might  be  per- 
iniited  to  observe  a  neutrality  between  the  belligerent  parties.  After  some 
conferences,  a  new  treaty  was  concluded  with  them,  in  which  they  consented 
to  acknowledge  a  more  unqualified  dependence  on  the  crown  of  England 
ihan  they  had  ever  before  admitted. 

On  the  settlement  of  his  affairs  in  Europe,  the  British  king  found  leisure 
to  direct  some  portion  of  his  attention  to  America,  and  nominate  a  successor 
to  the^  office  that  had  been  vacant  since  the  death  of  Sir  William  Phips. 
The  Earl  of  Bellamont  was  appointed  governor  of  New  York,  Massachu- 
setts, and  New  Hampshire.  [May,  1698.]  The  office  of  deputy-governor 
nf  tlie  two  latter  States  was  bestowed  by  this  nobleman  on  Stoughton,  whose 
recent  services  and  disinterested  patriotism  effaced  the  jealousy  with  which 
at  one  time  he  was  regarded  by  his  countrymen,  for  having  accepted  a  seat 
in  the  legislative  council  of  New  England  during  the  arbitrary  sway  of  Sir 
Edmund  Andros.** 

Having  pursued  the  separate  history  of  the  New  England  States  up  to 
this  period,  we  shall  now  leave  these  interesting  settlements  in  the  enjoyment 
(unhappily,  too  short-lived)  of  a  peace,  whereof  a  long  train  of  previous 
warfare  and  distresses  had  taught  the  inhabitants  fully  to  apj)reciaie  the  value. 
They  were  now  more  united  than  ever  among  themselves,  and  enriched  with 
an  ample  stock  of  experience  of  both  good  and  evil.  When  Lord  Bellamont 
visited  Massachusetts  in  the  following  year  [1699],  the  recent  heats  and 
animosities  had  entirely  subsided  ;  he  found  the  inhabitants  generally  dis- 

'  JJ"'!;®'-  Neal.  History  of  the  British  Uimimiovs  in  Jforth  America.  Trumbull.  Holmes. 
Mather.  Neal.  Hutchiimon.  Belknap.  Stoughton  died  in  the  year  1702.  As  the  colonial 
agent  m  Encland,  he  had  tendered  advice  that  proved  unacceptable  to  his  countrymen  ;  ae  a 
member  of  the  frand  council  of  Andros,  he  had  occupied  a  post  which  they  regarded  with 
aversion ;  and  as  licuK'nant-governor,  he  had  promoted  the  odious  prosecutions  for  witchcraft, 
let  hi8  repute  for  honest  and  disintereated  patriotism  finally  prevailed  over  all  the  obstructions 
of  these  untoward  circumstances ;  and  a  bright  reversion  of  honor  attended  the  close  of  his  life. 
"Instead  of  children,"  says  Hutchinson,  "  he  saw  before  his  death  a  coUefc  reared  at  his  ex- 

, , ,„,  ..,  .jni-JgFrrjB  noti,  (tiiu  vtm  uuusuiii  a  graicsui  ronicmoraocc,  01 

niB  name  to  lucooeding  ages." 


286 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


nosed  to  harmony  and  tranquillity,  and  he  contributed  to  cherish  this  dispo- 
Sn  W  a  policy  replete  with  wisdom,  integrity,  and  moderat.on.  The 
•  .  »  ;h.t  so  siJallv  distinguished  the  original  settlers  of  New  England  was 
:r  seen  "sS  Sth  aming  their  descendants  with  a  lustre  less  azzling, 
bulwith  an  influence  in  some  respects  more  amiable,  refined,  and  humane, 

XTof:'e  tZt^£^  conduced  to  the  restoration  of  harmony 
and  he  revival  of  ^iety  among  this  people,  was  the  publication  of  var.ous 
hSorles  'of  the  New  England  settlements,  written  with  a  spirit  and  fideluy 
we  rcalcurated  to  commend  to  the  minds  of  the  colonists  the  just  results  of 
he  rnSal  experience.  The  subject  was  deeply  interesting  ;  and,  happily, 
he  trea^^ent  of'it  was  undertaken  by  writers  -ho-  pnncipa^  was  to 

render  this  interest  subservient  to  the  promotion  of  p.ety  and  virtue. 

"riioud  New  England  might  be  considered  as  yet  ma  state  of  pol.t,ca 
infancy  h  had  passed  through  a  great  variety  of  fortune.  It  was  the  adopted 
ooS'  of  many  of  the  mo'st  excellent  men  of  the  age  m  which  its  coloni- 
zation be?a^,  and  the  native  land  of  others  ^yho  inherited  the  character  of 
theranceio  s,  and  transmitted  it  in  unimpaired  vigor  and  with  added  re- 
their  ^"cesiors  exhibited  an  effort  of  more  resolute  and 

Te  prishg  vSan  theoriginal  migration  of  the  Puritans  to  this  distant 
and  deSe  region  ;  nor  have  the  annals  of  colonization  ever  supplied 
another  ins  ance  of  the  foundation  of  a  commonwealth,  and  its  advancement 
ZZh  a  period  of  weakness  and  danger  to  strength  and  security,  in  whic 
h.?inciDal  actors  have  left  behind  them  a  reputation  more  illustrious  an 
su'  ied?togetLe?  ^^h  fewer  memorials  calculated  to  pervert  the  moral 
sen  "or  awaken  the  regret  of  mankind.    The  relation  of  their  acbevements 
h'd  a  powerful  tendency  to  animate  hope  and  perseverance  m  brave  and 
viruour  enterprise.     They  could  not,  indeed,  boast,  as  the  founders  of  the 
Sement  of  Pennsylvania  have  done,  that,  open  y  professing  non-res.stance 
of  hUiries,  and  faithfully  adhering  to  that  profession    they  had  so  fully 
mer^S  and  obtained  the  divine  protection  by  an  exclusive  dependence  on 
ka^  to  disarm  the  ferocity  of  barbarians,  and  conduct  the  estabhshment 
of  thp'r  commonwealth  without  violence  and  bloodshed.     But  if  they  were 
hvotd  in  nTme^ous  wars,  it  was  the  singular  and  honorable  charactensUc 
of  ttm  all,  that  they  were  invariably  the  offspring  of  self-defence  agamst  the 
unprroked  malevolence  of  their  adversaries,  and  that  not  one  of  them  .as 
un  Sen  from  motives  of  conquest  or  plunder.     Though  they  considered 
nhcse  wars    B  necessary  and  justifiable,  they  sincerely  deplored  them;;"; 
mo  e   han  once,  the  most  distressing  doubts  were  expressed,  at  the  clos 

hiR  labors  by  tho  following  order  "' '''"  *'""T'  , ,  ""i„„u^hont  upon  iis,  to  take  due  notice 
»  Whnren«  It  hns  befln  thouftht  nccegsary,  and  a  duly  ""''"r"J,  "P  "„|o'of  tbiB  iiirisdiclion 

^i,i..h  mnv  remain  to  nostoritv,  and  ihnt  thn  Rev.  Mr.  Wimam  nuoimr^^  ^^  ^^^  ^.^  r^^^^^ 

to  ■rompiloa  history  ofthm  nature,  .he  ^-'''•' «';'"  ;^^'"  "T;";;;;S  fi'i'l.v  into 


CHAP,  v.] 


CHARACTER  OF  THE  EARLY  SETTLERS. 


287 


tribes  with  as  rnuch  good  faith  and  justice  as  they  could  have  shown  to  a 
powerful  and  civilized  people,^  and  were  incited  by  the  manifest  inferiority 
of  those  savage  neighbours  to  no  other  acts  than  a  series  of  the  most 
Hiagnanimous  and  laudable  endeavours  to  instruct  their  ignorance  and  im- 
prove their  condition.  If  they  fell  short  of  the  colonists  of  Pennsylvania  in 
the  exhibition  of  Christian  meekness,  they  unquestionably  excelled  them  in 
extent  and  activity  of  Christian  exertion.  The  Quakers  succeeded  in  con- 
ciliating the  Indians ;  the  Puritans  endeavoured  to  civilize  them. 

The  chief,  if  not  the  only  fault,  with  which  impartial  history  must  ever 
reproach  the  conduct  of  these  people,  is  the  religious  intolerance  that  they 
cherished,  and  the  persecution,  which,  on  too  nj.:ny  occasions,  it  prompted 
them  to  inflict.  Happily  for  their  own  character,  the  provocation  which  in 
some  instances  they  received  from  the  objects  of  their  severity  tended 
greatly  to  extenuate  the  blame  ;  and  happily,  no  less,  for  the  legitimate  in- 
fluence of  their  character  on  the  minds  of  their  posterity,  the  fault  itself, 
notwithstanding  every  extenuation,  stood  so  manifestly  opposed  to  the  very 
principles  with  which  their  own  fame  was  for  ever  associated,  that  it  was 
impossible  for  a  wr'ter  of  common  integrity,  not  involved  in  the"  immediate 
heat  of  controversy,  to  render  a  just  tribute  to  their  excellence,  without  find- 
ing himself  obliged  to  remark  and  condemn  this  signal  departure  from  it. 
The  histories  that  were  now  published  were  the  compositions  of  the  friends, 
associates,  and  successors  of  the  original  colonists.  Written  with  an  energy 
of  just  encomium  that  elevated  every  man's  ideas  of  his  ancestors  and  his 
country,  and  of  the  duties  which  arose  from  these  natural  or  patriotic  rela- 
tions, these  works  excited  universally  a  generous  sympathy  with  the  charac- 
ters and  sentiments  of  the  fathers  of  New  England.  The  writers,  neverthe- 
less, were  too  conscientious  and  too  enlightened  to  confound  the  virtues  with 
the  defects  of  the  character  they  described  ;  and  while  they  dwelt  apologet- 
ically on  the  causes  by  which  persecution  had  been  provoked,  they  lamented 
the  infirmity  that  (under  any  degree  of  provocation)  had  betrayed  good  men 
into  conduct  so  oppressive  and  unchristian.  Even  Cotton  Mather,  the  most 
encomiastic  of  the  historians  of  New  England,  and  who  cherished  very  strong 
prejudices  against  the  Quakers  and  other  persecuted  sectaries,  has  express- 
ed still  stronger  disapprobation  of  the  severities  they  encountered  from  the 
ohjects  of  his  encomium.  These  representations  could  not  fail  to  produce 
a  beneficial  effect  on  the  people  of  New  England.  They  saw  that  the  glory 
of  their  native  land  was  associated  with  principles  that  could  never  coalesce 

'  Not  only  was  all  the  territory  occupied  by  the  colonists  fairly  purchased  from  its  Indian 
owners,  but,  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  the  lands  were  subject  to  quitrents  to  the  Indians, 
"which."  says  Belknnp,  in  1784,  "are  annually  paid  to  thoir  posterity."  A  great  English 
writer  hfts  represented  an  Indian  chief  as  moralizing  on  the  policy  and  pretensions  of  the 
European  colonists  in  the  following  strains  :  — "Others  pretend  to  have  purchased  a  right  of 
rcsldunco  and  tyranny ;  but  surely  tlio  insolence  of  such  bargains  is  more  offensive  than  the 
avowed  and  open  dominion  of  force."  Dr.  Johnson's  Idler.  The  Indians,  indeed,  were  no 
strangers  to  such  sentiments.  Beholding  with  ignorant  wonder  and  helpless  envy  the  aug- 
mented value  which  the  lands  they  had  sold  derived  from  the  industry  and  skill  of  the  pur- 
cliasers,  they  very  readily  admittca  the  belief  that  they  had  been  defrauded  in  the  origmal 
vendition.    But  abundant  evidence  has  been  preserved  by  (he  New  England  historians,  that 


the  prices  paid  by  the  colonists,  so  far  from  being  lower,  were  in  general  much  higher  than 
the  just  viilue  of  the  land. 

I  lun  sorry  to  observe  some  modern  (even  American)  writers  indulge  a  spirit  of  perverse 
paradox  in  palliating  and  even  defending  the  conduct  of  the  Indians  at  the  expense  of  the  first 
race  of  British  colonists,  who  in  reality  treated  the  Indians  with  an  equity  wliich  succeeding 
gK-liiratio.r.s  w.-.ssl-d  d«  Iset'er  liSjera'ly  *•->  imiiate  thnn  rnpti"«s!y  fo  dpprprinfp  Th?  nrv,-  his* 
torinn  of  already  recorded  times  ouglit  diligently  to  guard  at  once  against  the  force  of  prejudice 
and  tiio  eflects  of  novelty. 


288 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


•„.«ioranrP  •  and  that  every  instance  of  persecution  with 
vmh  or  sanction  .ntde^nce     and  iha       J^^^^  ^^  ^^^^^  principles,  and 

which  thejr  *""«^^f^"^'^;;^'„"'J,g^^^^^^  In- 

an  impeachment  of  ti.e.   co^^^^^^  ^„d  ,he  highest  respect 

TttTiMu     oTE  -^^^^^  were  forcibly  admonished  by  the  er. 

;:;ttrach  they  Had  Me-  -us^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

T^Z^IZr^^T:^  Llof  the  people  of  Ne. 
Vn^nnvas  no  loneer  perverted  bv  intolerance  or  disgraced  by  persecu- 
ttl  and  L  hfluence  li  Christianity,  in  mitigating  emnity  ai.d  promoting 
SneTs  and  indulgence,  derived  a  freer  scope  from  the  growmg  conviction 
K  the  principles  of  the  gospel  were  utterly^.rreconcilable  with  violence 
and  severFty  •  and  that,  revealing  to  every  man  his  own  mfirm.  y  much  more 
cLarlY  than  tlM  of  any  other  human  being,  they  were  equally  adverse  lo 
cieariy  man  umt  j  rondemnalion  of  others.     Cotton  Mather,  who 

retrtd  rdXro  oTfhe^^^^^^^^^^^^  first  colonists,  lived  to  witness  the 

success  of  hi  monitory  representations  m  the  chanty  and  hberahty  of  the.r 

'^'New'^Engknd,  having  been  colonized  by  men  not  less  eminent  for  learn- 
in.  than  P^y,  ^vas  distinguished  at  an  early  period  by  the  labors  of  her 
ing  tnan  pieiy,  '^"  .  &    .  ,      lUgrature  to  the  nurture  of  rel*gious  sen- 

Tthelr  rearrs,  and  to  which  the  writers  were  prompted,  in  some  measure 
at  least  bvth^  conviction  they  entertained  that  their  countrymen  had  been 
honored  with  the  signal  favor  and  especial  guidance  and  direction  o  D.yme 
Providence  This  conviction,  wliile  it  naturally  betrayed  these  wntersinto 
The  fault  of  prolixity,  enforced  by  the  strongest  sanctions  the  accuracy  and 
fideUv  of  their  narritions.  Recording  what  they  considered  the  p  cuhar 
dSL  of  aid  with  a  people  peculiarly  his  own,  they  presumed  not  to  d,s- 
Se  tl  e  infirmUres  of  their  coimtrymen  ;  nor  did  they  desire  to  magnify  the 
Se^acebthe  infusion  of  human  virtue  bevond  the  divme  patience  m 
e^durinf  human  frailty  and  imperfection.  Nay,  the  errors  and  fadings  of  the 
fllust^  OU3  men  whose  lives  ttiey  related  gave  additional  weight  to  die  im- 
presln  wSch  abovealUhe^^ 

,agfl  :  -  "  In  this  capital  city  of  Bo^t""  tj  o  "«  \^j^  "X^""^,,  ,he  offices  of  neighbourhood 
.unions,  who  live  so  lovingly  and  P«^„«f  j^7J"SjSe  r^^^^^  to  all  tho  bigots  of  uniformity, 
for  ono  another  in  such  a  manner,  as  may  g';°.«  **'."'';'^i'-„„  ^ '  be  with  tie  tranquillity  of 
and  show  them  how  cons.stent  a  vane ty  «f '^«^ . '"  jg*^  "^.eTutVn  for  conscientiou,  di«4nt, 

arrival  of  Andros) ;  am  the  ^^f  l^'r'^^"l'"V: 'X  k"Siho„se  was  built  at  Boston  in 
>f  Uie  Jacobin*  of  France." 


CHAP,  v.] 


EARLY  HISTORIES  OF  NEW  ENGLAND. 


289 


iVew  England  was  an  extraordinary  work  of  Heaven  ;  that  the  counsel  and 
the  virtue  by  which  it  was  conducted  and  achieved  were  not  of  human  origin ; 
aiid  that  tlie  glory  of  God  was  displayed  no  less  in  imparting  the  strength 
and  wisdom  than  in  controlling  the  weakness  and  perversity  of  the  insUu- 
ments  which  he  condescended  to  employ.* 

The  most  considerable  of  these  historical  works,  and  one  of  the  most 
interesting  performances  that  the  literature  of  New  England  has  ever  pro- 
duced, is  the  Magnalia  Christi  ^mericana^  or  History  of  New  England, 
by  Cotton  Mather.  Of  this  work,  the  arrangement  is  exceedingly  faulty  ; 
and  its  vast  bulk  must  continue  to  render  its  exterior  increasingly  repulsive 
to  modern  readers.  The  continuity  of  the  narrative  is  frequently  broken 
by  the  introduction  of  long  discourses,  epistles,  and  theological  reflections 
and  dissertations  ;  biography  is  intermixed  with  history ;  and  events  of  local 
or  temporary  interest  are  related  with  tedious  superfluity  of  detail.  It  is 
not  so  properly  a  single  or  continuous  historical  narration,  as  a  collection  of 
separate  works  illustrative  of  the  various  scenes  of  New  England  history, 
under  the  heads  of  Remarkable  Providences,  Remarkable  Trials^  and  num- 
berless other  subdivisions.  A  plentiful  intermixture  of  puns,  anagrams,  and 
other  barbarous  conceits,  exemplifies  a  peculiarity  (the  offspring  partly  of 
bad  taste  and  partly  of  superstition)  which  was  very  prevalent  among  tho 
prose-writers,  and  especially  the  theologians,  of  that  age.  Notwithstanding 
these  defects,  the  work  will  amply  repay  the  labor  of  every  reader.  The 
biographical  portions,  in  particular,  possess  the  highest  excellence,  and  are 
superior  in  dignity  and  interest  to  the  compositions  of  Plutarch.  Cotton 
Mather  was  the  author  of  a  great  many  other  works,^  some  of  which  have 
been  highly  popular  and  eminently  useful.  One  of  them  bears  the  title  of 
Essays  to  do  Good,  and  contains  a  lively  and  forcible  representation  (con- 
veyed with  more  brevity  than  the  author  usually  exemplifies)  of  the  oppor- 
tunities which  every  rank  and  every  relation  of  human  life  may  present  to  a 
devout  mind,  of  promoting  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  mankind.  Dr. 
Franklin,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  active  and  useful  life,  declared  that  all 
the  good  he  had  ever  done  to  his  country  or  his  fellow-creatures  must  be 
ascribed  to  the  impression  produced  on  his  mind  by  perusing  that  little  work 
in  his  youth.-*     It  is  curious  to  find  an  infidel  philosopher  thus  ascribe  his 

'  "If  we  look  on  the  dark  side,  the  human  side,  of  this  work,  th^re^ ia^ch  of  human 
weakness  and  imperfection  hath  appeared  in  all  that  hath  heen  done  by  man,  as  was  ac- 
knowledged by  our  fathers  before  us.  Neither  was  New  England  ever  without  some  fatherly 
chastisements  from  God  ;  showing  that  he  is  not  fond  of  the  formalities  of  any  people  upon 
earth,  but  expects  the  realities  of  practical  godliness  according  to  our  profession  and  engage- 
ment unto  hun."  Iligginson's  .^<iM<a<ion,  prefixed  to  Cotton  Mather's  Hislirry.  "To  vin- 
dicate the  errors  of  our  ancestors,"  says  Jefferson,  "  is  to  make  them  our  own." 

•  His  biographers  have  given  us  a  catalogue  of  his  works,  amounting  to  no  fewer  than  tkrre 
hundred  and  eighty-two, —  many,  no  doubt,  of  small  dimensions,  but  others  of  considerable 
bulk.  He  was  a  singular  economist  of  time,  and  at  once  the  most  voluminous  and  popular 
writer  and  the  most  zealous  and  active  minister  of  his  age.  Among  his  manuscripts  was  a 
theologiual  work  which  he  had  prepared  for  publication,  and  which  is  reported  to  have  been 
"enough  constantly  to  employ  a  man,  unless  he  be  a  miracle  of  diligence,  the  half  of  tin- 
threescore  years  and  ten  allowed  us."  Holmes.  In  conversation  he  is  saic}  to  have  particu- 
larly excelled :  —  "  Here  it  was  soon  how  his  wit  and  fancy,  his  invention,  his  quicknos.s  of 
thought,  and  ready  apprehension  were  all  consecrated  to  God,  as  well  as  his  will  and  affrr- 
tions."  Ibid.  Above  his  study  door  was  inscribed  this  iinpressivs  admonition  to  hix  vi.«itorf<, 
"Be  short."  He  was  the  son  of  Dr.  Increase  Mather.  Born  in  1663,  he  died  in  1727.  From 
President  Quincy's  History  of  Harvard  University,  it  appears  to  me,  much  more  clearly  thati 
agreeably,  that,  in  tho  instance  of  Cotton  Mather  as  well  as  of  his  father,  a  strung  and  acutr 
understanding,  though  united  with  real  piety,  waa  sometimes  corrupted  by  a  deep  vein  of  pa*- 
wonate  vanity  and  aoaurdity. 

'  Frankiin'i  iVorks. 

VOL.  I.  37  X 


290 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  n 


the 


own  practical  wisdom  to  the  lessons  of  a  Christian  divme,  and  trace 
stream  of  his  beneficence  to  the  fountam  of  the  gospel. 

Hktory  and  divinity  were  the  chief,  but  not  the  only  subjects  which  ex- 
ercised the  labors  of  the  scholars  of  New  England.  John  Sherman,  an 
eminent  Puritan  divine,  who  was  one  of  the  first  emigrants  from  Britain  to 
Massachusetts,  where  he  died  in  1685,  obtained  a  high  and  just  renown  as 
fmathemadcian  and  astronomer.  He  left  at  his  death  a  large  manuscnpt 
collection  of  astronomical  calculations  ;  and  for  several  years  published  an 
almanac  which  was  interspersed  with  pious  reflections  and  admonitions  i 

A  traveller,  who  visited  Boston  in  the  year  1686,  mentions  severa  book- 
sellers  there  who  had  already  made  fortunes  by  their  trade.  The  learned 
and  ingenious  author  of  the  History  of  Printing  tnJmtnca  has  given  a 
catalogue  of  the  works  published  by  the  first  New  England  printers  m  the 
seventeenth  century.  Considering  the  circumstances  and  numbers  o  the 
people,  the  catalogue  is  amazingly  copious.  One  of  the  prmters  of  that  age 
was  an  Indian,  the  son  of  one  of  the  first  Indian  conver  s. 

The  education  and  habits  of  the  people  of  New  England  prepared  them 
to  receive  the  full  force  of  those  impressions  which  their  national  literature 
was  fitted  to  produce.     In  no  country  have  the  benefits  of  knovyledge  been 
Tver  more  highly  prized  or  more  generally  diffused.     Institutions  for  the 
education  of  youth  were  coeval  with  the  foundation  of  the  first  provincia 
community,  and  were  propagated  with  every  accession  to  the  population  and 
evSy  extension  of  the  settlements.     Education  was  facihtated  in  New  Eng- 
land by  the  peculiar  manner  in  which  its  colonization  was  conducted.    In 
many  other  parts  of  America,  the  planters  dispersed  themselves  over  the  face 
of  the  country  ;  each  residing  on  his  own  I'arm,  and,  m  choosing  the  spot 
where  his  house  was  to  be  placed,  guided  merely  by  considerations  of  agn- 
cultural  convenience.     The  advantages  resuhmg  from  this  mode  of  inhabi- 
lation  were  gained  at  the  expense  of  such  dispersion  of  dwellings  as  rendered 
it  difficult  to  fix  upon  proper  spots  for  the  erection  of  churches  and  schools, 
and  obstructed  the  enjoyment  of  social  intercourse.     But  the  colon.zat.on 
of  New  England  was  conducted  in  a  manner  much  more  favorable  to  the 
improvement  of  human  character  and  manners.     All  the  original  townships 
were  formed  in  what  is  termed  in  America  the  village  manner  ;3  the  inhab- 
itants havinc  originally  planted  themselves  in  societies,  from  regard  to  the 
Sance   of  religion  and  the  convenience  of  education.     Every  town  con- 
"abing  fifty  householders  was  obliged  by  law  to  provide  a  schoolmaster  qual- 
fied  to    each  reading  and  writing;   and  every  town  containing  a  hundre 
householders,  to  maintain  a  grammar  school.;     But  the  generous  ardor  ot 
r  people  continually  outstripped  the  provisions  of  this  law.  We  have  seen 
Harvard  College  arise  in  Massachusetts  within  a  few  years  after  the  founda- 
ion  of  the  cobny  was  laid.*     With  allusion  to  the  flourishing  and  efficient 
condition  of  this  seminary,  Lord  Bellamont,  the  provincial  governor,  m  an 
addtrto  the  General  Court,  in  1699,  remarked,  "  It  is  a  very  great  a  ■ 
vana^e  you  have  above  other  provinces,  that  your  youth  are  not  put  to 
Tvef  for^eaming,  but  have  the  Muses  at  their  doors."     The  other  States, 
fo/'ome^^^^^^^        were  destitjUeofthewealtha^^ 

'  ^'^^^^^^£2t^T^orn..'s  HUtory  of  Printing  in  America, 


•  Dunton 

»  Dwight'8  Travels. 

t    ai~-:j~-^f.t  sf  tki  Ij&w*  of  ffft"  England, 

»  See  i?ote  xiV'i  aUhe'erid  of  the  volume 


Neal. 


GHAP.  v.]    GENERAL  DIFFUSION  OF  KNOWLEDGE. -POPULATION,        29; 

support  similar  establishments  within  their  own  territories  ;  but  they  fre- 
quently assessed  themselves  in  the  most  liberal  contributions  for  the  main- 
tenance and  enlargement  of  Harvard  College.  The  contributions,  even  at 
a  very  early  period,  of  Connecticut,  New  Haven,  and  New  Hampshire, 
have  been  particularly  and  deservedly  noted  for  their  liberality.  ^  The  close 
of  the  same  century  was  illustrated  by  the  establishment  of  Yale  College  in 
Connecticut.  So  high  was  the  repute  which  this  quarter  of  North  America 
long  continued  to  enjoy  for  the  moral  excellence  and  intellectual  efficiency 
of  its  seminaries  of  education,  that  many  respectable  persons,  both  in  the 
other  American  States  and  in  Europe,  and  even  some  of  patrician  rank  and 
lineage  in  Britain,  sent  their  children  to  be  educated  in  New  England. ^ 

A  general  appetite  for  knowledge,  and  a  universal  familiarity  with  letters, 
were  thus  maintained  from  the  beginning  of  their  national  existence  among 
the  New  England  colonists.  The  rigid  discouragement  of  frivolous  amuse- 
ments, and  of  every  recreation  that  bordered  upon  vice,  tended  to  devote 
their  leisure  hours  to  reading  ;  and  the  sentiments  and  opinions  derived 
through  this  avenue  of  knowledge  sunk  deeply  into  vigorous  and  undissipat- 
ed  minds.  The  historical  retrospections  of  this  people  were  peculiaj-ly  cal- 
culated to  exercise  a  favorable  influence  on  their  character  and  turn  of  think- 
ing, by  awakening  a  generous  emulation,  and  connecting  them  with  a  uniform 
and  progressive  course  of  manly,  patient,  and  successful  virtue. 

Notwithstanding  the  general  dift'usion  of  knowledge  among  the  early  col- 
onists of  New  England,  the  lower  classes  of  the  people  were  not  entirely 
exempt  from  the  prevalent  delusions  of  the  age.  In  particular,  the  notion 
then  generally  received  in  the  parent  state,  and  consecrated  by  a  special 
office  long  retained  in  her  church  liturgy,  of  the  efficacy  of  the  royal  toucli 
for  the  cure  of  the  disorder  called  the  king's  evil,  was  imported  into  New 
England,  to  the  great  inconvenience  of  those  victims  of  the  malady  who 
were  so  unhappy  as  to  entertain  it.  Belknap  has  transcribed  from  the  rec- 
ords of  the  town  of  Portsmouth,  in  New  Hampshire,  the  petition  of  an  in- 
habitant to  the  assembly  of  this  province,  in  the  year  1687,  for  assistance  to 
undertake  a  journey  to  England,  that  he  might  be  cured  of  his  disease  by 
coming  in  contact  with  a  king  ;  ^  a  circumstance  which  Heaven  (it  may  be 
hoped)  has  decreed  a  perpetual  impossibility  within  the  confines  of  North 
America. 

The  amount  of  the  population  of  New  England  at  the  present  era  has 
been  very  differently  estimated  by  different  writers.  According  to  Sir  Wil- 
liam Petty,  the  number  of  inhabitants  amounied,  in  the  year  1691,  to  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand.*  A  much  lower  computation  is  adopted  by  Neal ; 
and  a  much  higher  by  a  later  historian. ^  The  population,  it  is  certain,  had 
been  considerably  augmented,  both  by  the  emigration  of  Dissenters  from 
various  of  the  European  states,  and  by  domestic  propagation  in  circumstan- 
ces so  favorable  to  increase.  Yet  no  quarter  of  North  America  has  had  its 
own  population  so  extensively  drained  by  emigration  as  New  England,  which, 
from  a  very  early  period  of  its  history,  has  continually  furnished  swarms  of 
'  Trumbuii.    Belknap.  ~~~ 

•  Hulory  of  the  BritM  Dominions  in  Jlmtrica.    Peirce's  and  duincy's  Histories  of  Hanaid 
UmtersUy.    In  aid  of  tho  library  of  Yale  Collego,  copies  of  their  works  were  contributed  by 

IfltrinllA  IVrltAra  in   Rnirlnn/l  •    anA    an\nnn    n*\\nw^  K.r  fi||.  Tgnn/.  NpWtOH     Sir  Iliohfir^ 

Dr.  lialley,  Dr.  Bentley,  CaJ 


the  most  illustrious  writers  in  England  ;  and  among  others  by  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  Sir  Richard 
Blackinore,  Sir  Richard  Steele,  Bishop  Burnet,  Dr.  Woodward,  ^""       »-     •>     -• 


amy,  Henry,  and  Whiston.  —  Holmes 
'  Belknap.     Smollett'ii  Hiainry  of  Enfland. 
'  Hittory'of  tht  Brilisk  Dominiona  inJVbrtA  America 


4    Pnliliad.    OmitUmm^tia 


292 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  H. 


hardy  sober,  intelligent,  enterprising,  and  educated  men  to  recruit  and  im- 
prove  every  successive  settlement  that  has  offered  its  resources  to  industry 
and  virtue.  The  severe  restraint  of  licentious  intercourse,  the  facility  of 
acquiring  property  and  maintaining  a  family,  and  the  prevalence  of  industri- 
ous  and  frugal  habits  among  all  classes  of  people  combmed  wjUi  happy  efR. 
cacy  to  render  marriages  both  frequent  and  prolific  in  New  England.  Boston, 
the  capital  of  Massachusetts,  and  during  many  years  the  largest  city  in  North 
America,  appears  to  have  contained  a  population  of  more  than  10,000  per- 
sons at  the  close  of  this  century.  In  the  year  1720,  its  inhabitants  amounted 
to  20,000.  Every  inhabitant  of  the  province  was  required  by  law  to  keep 
a  stock  of  arms  and  ammunition  in  his  house  ;  and  all  males  above  sixteen 
years  of  age  were  enrolled  in  the  militia,  which  was  assembled  for  exercise 

four  times  a  year.^  „     ,     ,  u    j    i    »  .u- 

The  whole  territory  of  New  England  was  comprehended  at  this  pencil 
in  four  jurisdictions,  —  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  Connecticut,  and 
Rhode  Island.     To  Massachusetts  there  were  annexed  the  settlements  of 
New  Plymouth  and  Maine,  and  to  Connecticut  that  of  New  Haven.    The 
territories  of  these  governments  were  divided  mto  constituted  districts  called 
townships,  each  of  which  was  represented  by  one  or  two  deputies  (according 
to  the  number  of  freeholders)  in  the  assembly  of  the  State  to  which  it  be- 
longed     Besides  this  elective  franchise,  the  freeholders  of  each  township 
enioved  the  right  of  appointing  the  municipal  officers  denominated  select- 
men, by  whom  the  domestic  government  of  the  township  was  exercised. 
The  qualification  of  a  freeholder  in  Massachusetts  was  declared  by  its  char- 
ter to  be  an  estate  of  the  value  of  forty  shillings  per  annum,  or  the  possession 
of  personal  property  to  the  amount  of  fifty  pounds  ;  communion  with  tlie 
Congregational  churches  having  ceased  to  be  requisite  to  the  enjoyment  oi 
political  privileges.     In  the  other  States  of  New  England,  the  qualification 
was  nearly  the  same  as  in  Massachusetts.     The  expenses  of  government 
were  defrayed  originally  by  temporary  assessments,  to  which  every  man  was 
rated  according  to  the  value  of  his  whole  property ;  but  since  the  year  1645, 
excises,  imposts,  and  poll  taxes  were  in  use.    The  judicial  procedure  m  tiie 
provincial  courts  was  conducted  with  great  expedition,  cheapness,  and  suii- 
plicity.     In  all  trials  by  jury  in  New  England,  whether  of  civil  or  criminal 
causes,  the  juries  were  not,  as  in  Britain,  nominated  by  the  slienffs,  but 
elected  by  the  inhabitants  ;  and  these  elections  were  conducted  with  the 
strictest  precautions  for  preventing  the  intrusion  of  partiality  or  corruption.- 
Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  —  the  one  enjoying  a  chartered,  the 
other  an  unchartered  municipal  constitution  —  were  the  only  two  provinces 
of  New  England  in  which  the  superior  officers  of  the  domestic  government 
were  appointed  by  the  crown,  and  from  the  tribunals  of  which  an  appeal 
was  admitted  to  the  king  in  council.     As  New  Hampshire  was  too  incon- 
sriderable  to  support  Uie  substance  as  well  as  the  title  of  a  separate  govern- 
ment, it  was  the  practice  at  this  period,  and  for  some  time  alter,  to  appoint 
the  same  person  to  be  governor  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  In 
Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  all  the  officers  of  government  (exceptmi? 
the  members  of  the  Court  of  Admiralty)  were  elected  by  the  inhabitants; 
and  so  resolutely  was  this  highly  valued  privilege  defended,  that,  when  King 
William  appointed  Fletcher,  the  governor  of  New  York,  to  commandjiie 

»  'UiMorp  ^  tkt  British  Vominioru  in  North  America.    VVyuiw'-  UMoty  of  British  .fmcnta, 


CHAP,  v.]  POLITICAL  CONDITION  AND  SENTIMENTS. 


293 


it»lory  of  British  .Imttita. 


Connecticut  militia,  the  province  refused  to  acknowledge  his  authority.!  It 
was  not  provided  by  the  cliarters  of  these  States  that  their  laws  should  be 
subject  to  the  negative,  or  the  judgments  of  their  tribunals  to  the  review,  of 
the  king.  But  the  validity  of  their  laws  was  declared  to  depend  on  a  very 
uncertain  criterion,  — a  conformity,  as  close  as  circumstances  would  admit, 
to  tlie  jurisprudence  of  England."  So  perfectly  democratic  were  the  con- 
stitutions ot  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  that  in  neither  of  them  was  the 
governor  suffered  to  withhold  his  formal  sanction  from  the  resolutions  of  the 
assembly.  The  spirit  of  liberty  was  not  suppressed  in  Massachusetts  by  the 
encroachments  of  royal  prerogative  on  the  ancient  privileges  of  the  people 
but  was  vigorously  exerted  through  the  remaining  and  important  organ  of  the 
provincial  assembly.  All  the  patronage  that  was  vested  in  the  royal  governor 
was  never  able  to  create  more  than  a  very  inconsiderable  royalist  party  in 
this  State.  The  functionaries  whom  he  or  whom  the  crown  appointed  de- 
pended on  the  popular  assembly  for  the  emoluments  of  their  offices  ;  and 
ahhough  the  most  strenuous  efforts  and  the  most  formidable  threats  were 
employed  by  the  British  ministers  to  free  the  governor  himself  from  the  same 
dependence,  they  were  never  able  to  prevail  with  the  assembly  to  annex  a 
fixed  salary  to  his  office.  The  people  and  the  popular  authorities  of  Mas- 
sachusetts  were  always  ready  to  sot  an  example  to  the  other  colonies  of  a 
determined  resistance  to  the  encroachments  of  royal  prerogative. 

In  all  the  provinces  of  North  America,  and  especially  in  those  of  New 
Kngland,  there  existed  at  this  period,  and  for  a  long  time  afterwards,  a  mix- 
ture of  very  opposite  sentiments  towards  Great  Britain.  As  the  posterity  of 
Knghshnien,  the  colonists  cherished  a  warm  attachment  to  a  land  which  they 
habitually  termed  the  Mother  Country  or  Home,^  and  to  a  people  whom, 
though  contemporaries  with  themselves,  they  regarded  as  holding  an  ances- 
tral relation  to  them.  As  Americans,  their  liberty  and  happiness,  and  even 
their  national  existence,  were  associated  with  the  idea  of  escape  from  royal 
persecution  in  Britain  ;  and  the  jealous  and  unfriendly  sentiments  engendered 
hy  this  consideration  were  preserved,  more  particularly  in  Massachusetts,  by 
the  unjust  abridgment  of  the  privileges  which  she  had  originally  enjoyed,  and 
which  still  subsisted  unimpaired  in  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island;  and  were 
maintained  in  every  one  of  the  provinces  by  the  oppressive  commercial  pol- 
icy which  Great  Britain  pursued  towards  them,  and  of  which  their  increas- 
ing  resources  rendered  them  increasingly  sensible  and  proportionally  impa- 

'  Wynne.    Trumbull.    Book  V.,  Cflmp.  II.,  post.  " ' 

«  There  were  no  prescribed  or  customary  means  of  nsccrtaining  this  conformity  ;  these 
folates  not  being  obliged,  like  Massachusetts,  to  transmit  tiicir  laws  to  England.  On  a  com- 
plaint from  an  inhabitunt  of  Connecticut,  aggrieved  by  the  operation  of  a  particular  law,  it  was 
declared  by  the  king  in  council,  »  that  their  law,  concerning  dividing  land-inheritance  of  an 
intestate,  was  contrary  to  the  law  of  England,  and  void  "  ;  but  the  colony  paid  no  regard  to 
tins  declaration.       Iltstory  of  the  British  Dominions  in  A'urth  America. 

.  ^7>'  ll^y?  j'^^  one  indestructible  mark  of  their  origin,  and  their  kindly  remembrance  of 
It,  m  tlie  British  names  which  they  extended  to  American  i>lacps.  When  New  London,  in 
tonnecticut,  was  founded  in  the  year  1648,  the  assembly  of  the  province  assigned  its  name  bv 
an  act  commencing  with  the  following  preamble  :  —  "  Whereas  it  hath  been  the  commendable 
practice  of  the  inhabitants  of  all  the  colonies  of  these  parts,  that,  as  this  country  hath  its  de- 
nomination from  our  dear  native  country  of  England,  and  thence  is  called  New  England,  m 
the  planters,  in  their  first  settling  of  most  new  plantations,  have  given  names  to  these  plan, 
ations  of  some  cities  and  towns  in  England,  thereby  intending  to  keep  up  and  leave  to  pos- 
lerity  the  memorial  of  several  places  of  note  there,"  «&c.,  "  this  court,  considering  that  there 
Tr    Ti?"      "  '"  ""^  **'"  **'*'  '^"'''"•es  been  named  in  memory  of  the  city  of  London,"  &c. 

"Gertua  enim  nromi.-sit  Apollo 
Ambiguam  telluro  nova  Salamina  futuram."  —  Horace. 


294 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


tient.  The  loyalty  of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  was  in  no  degree 
promoted  by  the  preservation  of  their  ancient  charters,  —  an  advantage 
which  they  well  knew  had  been  yielded  to  them  with  the  utmost  reluctance 
by  the  British  government,  and  of  which  numerous  attempts  to  divest  iheni 
by  act  of  parliament  were  made  by  King  William  and  his  immediate  suc- 
cessors. Even  the  new  charter  of  Massachusetts  was  not  exempted  from 
such  attacks ;  and  the  defensive  spirit  that  was  thus  excited  and  kept  alive 
by  the  aggressive  policy  of  Britain  contributed,  no  doubt,  to  influence,  in  a 
material  degree,  t\»e  subsequent  destinies  of  America. 

In  return  for  the  articles  which  they  required  from  Europe,  and  of  which 
the  English  merchants  monopolized  the  supply,  the  inhabitants  of  NewEng- 
land  could  offer  no  staple  commodity  which  might  not  be  obtained  more 
cheaply  in  Europe  by  their  customers.     They  possessed,  indeed,  good 
mines  of  iron  and  copper,  which  might  have  been  wrought  with  advantage ; 
but  the  manufacture  of  these  metals  in  the  colonies  was  obstructed  by  the 
dearness  of  labor  ;  and  till  the  year  1750,  the  export  of  American  iron,  even 
to  the  mother  country,  was  restrained  by  heavy  duties.    The  prmcipal  com- 
modities exported  from  New  England  were  the  produce  and  refuse  of  her 
forests,  or,  as  it  was  commonly  termed,  lumber,  and  the  produce  of  her  cod- 
fishery.     In  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  annual  imports  into 
these  provinces  from  Britain  were  estimated  by  Neal  at  £100,000.    The 
exports  by  the  English  merchants  consisted  of  a  hunted  thousand  quintals 
(the  quintal  weighing  one  hundred  and  twelve  pounds)  of  dried  codfish,  which 
were  sold  in  Europe  for  JE  80,000,  and  of  three  thousand  tons  of  naval 
stores.     To  the  other  American  plantations,  and  to  the  West  Indies,  New 
England  sent  lumber,  fish,  and  other  provisions,  valued  at  f  50,000  annually, 
An  extensive  manufacture  of  linen  cloth  was  established  about  this  time  in 
New  England  ;  —  an  advantage  for  which  this  country  was  indebted  to  the 
migration  of  many  thousands  of  Irish  Presbyterians  to  her  shores  about  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.    Ship-building  was  from  an  early  period 
carried  on  to  a  considerable  extent  at  Boston  and  other  seaport  towns.    It 
was  the  practice  of  some  merchants  to  freight  their  vessels,  as  soon  as  they 
were  built,  with  cargoes  of  colonial  produce,  and  to  sell  the  vessels  in  the 
ports  where  the  cargoes  were  disposed  of.     The  manufacture  of  tar  was  pro- 
moted for  some  time  in  New  Hampshire  by  an  ordinance  of  the  assembly  of 
this  province  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  which  allowed  the 
inhabitants  to  pay  their  taxes  in  tar  rated  at  twenty  shillings  per  barrel.    A 
great  part  of  the  trade  of  the  other  American  colonies  was  conducted  by 
the  shipping  of  New  England.     For  many  years  both  before  and  after  the 
present  era,  specie  was  so  scarce  in  this  quarter  of  America,  that  paper 
money  formed  almost  exclusively  the  circulating  medium  in  use  among  the 
inhabitants.     Bills,   or   notes,  were  circulated  for  sums  as  low  as  haif-a- 

crown.*  <.,,  .  1111 

The  progress  of  population  in  the  district  of  Maine  was  remarkably  slow. 
For  many  years  after  its  first  colonization,  the  greater  number  of  the  emi- 
grants to  this  region  were  not  husbandmen,  but  traders  and  fishermen,— a 
description  of  persons  qualified  neither  by  their  views  nor  their  habits  to  pro- 
mote the  culture  and  population  of  a  desert.  The  soil  of  a  great  part  of 
Maine  was  erroneously  supposed,  by  the  first  European  colonists,  to  be  un- 
grateful to  tillage,  and  incapablejof  yielding  a  suflicicnt  supply  of  bi'ead  tn 
>  Neal.    Bt'lknap.    WynneT   Rnyiial.    Douglaw.     Winterbotham. 


CHAP,  v.] 


STATE  OF  RELIGION. 


296 


This  notion  produced  the  deficiency  which  it  presupposed  ; 
13  It  was  to  the  increase  and  prosperity  of  the  inhabitants/it 

till    thn  nc^rinrl  nP   <k^     A : h  _       i    .f  t.-  .. 


lis  inhabitants. 

and,  injurious  as       __  _^  i^.u^uc.i;.  u.  u.t 

prevailed  even  till  the  period  of  the  American  Revolution.  Prior  to  this 
event,  the  greater  part  of  the  bread  consumed  in  the  district  of  Maine  was 
imported  from  the  middle  colonies.'  New  England  was  long  infested  with 
wolves ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  laws  were  still  enacted 
by  the  provincial  assemblies,  offering  bounties  for  the  destruction  of  those 
animals.'' 

Except  in  Rhode  Island,  the  system  of  religious  doctrine  and  ecclesi- 
astical order  embraced  by  the  Congregational  church  established  by  the  first 
colonists  prevailed  generally  in  New  England.  Every  township  was  required 
by  law  to  choose  a  minister,  and  to  fix  his  salary  by  mutual  agreement  of 
the  parties  ;  in  default  of  which,  a  salary  proportioned  to  the  ability  of  the 
township  was  decreed  to  him  by  the  justices  of  the  peace.  In  case  of  the 
neglect  of  any  township  to  appoint  a  minister  within  a  certain  period  of  time 
prescribed  by  law,  the  right  of  appointment  for  the  occasion  devolved  on 
the  Court  of  Quarter  Sessions.  By  a  special  custom  of  the  town  of  Boston, 
the  salaries  of  its  ministers  were  derived  from  the  voluntary  contributions  of 
their  respective  congregations,  collected  every  Sunday  on  their  assembling 
for  divine  service  ;  and  it  was  remarked  that  none  of  the  ministers  of  New 
England  were  so  liberally  provided  for  as  those  whose  emoluments,  unde- 
termined by  legal  provision,  thus  represented  the  diligence  of  their  labors, 
and  the  conscientious  regard  of  their  people.'  In  Rhode  Island  there  was 
no  legal  provision  for  the  celebration  of  divine  worship,  or  the  maintenance 
of  religious  institutions.  This  colony  was  peopled  by  a  mixed  multitude  of 
sectarians,  who,  having  separated  from  Christian  societies  in  other  places, 
had  continued  ever  since  in  a  broken  and  disunited  state.  In  their  political 
capacity,  the  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island  admitted  unbounded  liberty  of 
conscience,  and  disavowed  all  connection  between  church  and  state.  In 
their  Christian  relations,  they  made  no  account  of  the  virtue  of  mutual  for- 
bearance, and  absolutely  disowned  the  duty  of  submitting  to  one  another  on 
any  point,  whether  essential  or  circumstantial.  Few  of  them  held  regular 
assemblies  for  public  worship  ;  still  fewer  had  stated  places  for  such  assem- 
blage ;  and  an  aversion  to  every  thing  that  savored  of  rentraint  or  formality 
prevailed  among  them  all.  Notwithstanding  the  unlimited  toleration  that  was 
professedly  established  in  this  settlement,  its  rulers,  in  1665,  passed  an  ordi- 
nance to  outlaw  Quakers  and  confiscate  their  estates,  because  they  refused 
to  bear  arms.  But  the  people,  in  general,  resisted  this  regulation,  and  would 
not  suffer  it  to  be  executed."*  Cotton  Mather  declares,  that,  in  1655, 
"  Rhode  Island  colony  was  a  coUuvies  of  Antinomians,  Famalists,  Ana- 
baptists, Anti-sabbaiarians,  Arminians,  Socinians,  Quakers,  Ranters,  and 
every  thing  but  Roman  Catholics  and  true  Christians ;  bona  terra,  mala 
g-ens."  In  the  town  of  Providence,  which  was  included  in  this  colony,  and 
was  inhabited  by  the  descendants  of  those  schismatics  who  accompanied 
Roger  Williams  and  Mrs.  Hutchinson  in  their  exile  from  Massachusetts,  the 
aversion  to  legal  establishments  and  every  species  of  subordination  was  cai 

'  Sullivan's  Hlstwry  of  Maine.    Dwtght's  Travels.  ~ 

'  Trumbull.    Ordinances  of  JVew  England  to  the  Year  1700.    Chalmers. 

'  Neal. 

*  CdUctions  of  the  Massaehusetts  Historieal  Society.     In  the  year  1688,  an  inhabitant  of 
Mhode  Island  was  "  fined  by  the  Quarter  Sessions  for  planting  a  peach-tree  on  Sunday." 

IniB  occurred  durinir  the  adminiHtrntinn  nf  \ni\rna       rnll.cf'ni"  of  »'"■  PhsH'  l-l-a/l  UUinJrai 

Socitiy.  ^ 


296 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


ried  to  such  an  extreme,  that,  at  the  present  period,  the  inhahitants  had 
neither  magistrates  nor  ministers  among  them.  They  entertained  an  invin- 
cible antipathy  to  all  rates  and  taxes,  as  devices  invented  for  the  benefit  of 
hirelings, by  which  opprobrious  term  they  designated  all  civil  and  eccle- 
siastical functionaries  who  refused  to  serve  them  for  nothing.  Yet  they 
lived  in  great  amity  with  their  neighbours,  and,  though  every  man  did  what- 
ever seemed  right  m  his  own  eyes,  it  was  seldom  that  any  crime  was  com- 
mitted among  them  ;  "  which  may  be  attributed,"  says  the  historian  from 
whom  this  testimony  is  derived,  "  to  their  great  veneration  for  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  which  they  all  read,  from  the  least  to  the  greatest."  »  Massa- 
chusetts and  Connecticut,  as  they  were  the  most  considerable  of  the  New- 
England  States  in  respect  of  wealth  and  population,  so  were  they  the  most 
distinguished  for  piety,  morality,  and  the  cultivation  and  diffusion  of  knowl- 
edge.  At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  were  a  hundred  re- 
ligious assemblies  in  Massachusetts,  exclusive  of  numerous  congregations  of 
Christian  Indians.^  The  censorial  discipline  exercised  by  these  societies 
over  their  members  was  highly  conducive  to  the  preservation  of  sound  mo- 
rality, guarded  by  exact  and  sober  manners  ;  and  the  cfRcacy  of  this  and  of 
every  other  incitement  to  virtue  was  enhanced  by  the  thinly  peopled  state 
of  the  country,  where  no  person  could  screen  his  character  or  pursuits  from 
the  observation  of  the  public  eye.  •  ,    j    , 

Perhaps  no  country  in  the  world  was  ever  more  distinguished  tnan  New 
England  was  at  this  time  for  the  general  prevalence  of  those  sentiments  and 
habits  that  render  communities  respectable  and  happy.  Sobriety  and  indus- 
try reigned  among  all  classes  of  the  inhabitants.  The  laws  against  immo- 
ralities of  every  description  were  extremely  strict,  and  not  less  strictly  en- 
forced ;^  and,  being  cordially  supported  by  theexecutive  principle  of  jnib- 

•"NcaT  We  have  an  account  of  the  religious  condition  of  Rhode  lahind,  iibout  thirty  joarn 
lifter  the  period  to  which  we  have  conducted  the  separate  history  of  New  England,  from  the 
pen  of  the  great  and  good  Bishop  Berkeley,  who  resided  some  years  m  this  colony.  A  gen- 
'•ral  indifference  to  religion,  and  a  great  relaxation  of  morality,  had  then  become  the  cliarai- 
leristics  of  the  majority  of  the  people.  Several  churches,  however,  some  on  the  Congrcga- 
lional  and  others  on  the  Episcopal  model,  had  been  established;  and  through  their  mstrumen- 
tality.'the  blessings  of  religion  were  yet  preserved  in  the  colony.     Berkeley's  IVorks. 

"So  little,"  says  a  writer  much  esteemed  in  America,  "has  the  civil  authority  to  do  with 
religion  in  Rhode  Island,  that  no  contract  between  a  minister  and  a  society  (unless  incorpor- 
ated for  that  purpose)  is  of  any  force.  It  is  probably  for  these  reasons  that  so  many  sects  havs 
iverbeen  found  hero  ;  and  that  the  Sabbath  and  all  religious  institutions,  as  well  us  good 
morals,  have  been  less  regarded  in  this  than  in  any  other  of  the  New  England  States.     Jwle- 

So  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  legislature  of  Rhode  Island  discnnr- 
need  the  project  of  a  turnpike  road,  alleging  that  turnpike  duties  and  ecclesiastical  cstablbli- 
inents  were  Enfr!ish  practices,  and  badges  of  slavery,  —  from  which  their  people  were  distm- 
cuished  alwve  all  the  other  Americans  by  a  happy  exemption.  It  was  not  till  the  year  lH(l;j 
that  the  advantages  of  turnpike  roads  prevailed  over  the  imaginary  dignity  of  this  exemption. 

It' would  be  well  for  the  Americans,  if,  in  the  system  of  management  which  they  adopt  wiili 
regard  to  roads  and  canals  they  would  ponder  and  avoid  the  monstrous  vices  inherent  in  tk 
"iX  of  those  English  practices  to  which  the  people  of  Rhode  Island  were  opposed.  No  imini- 
cipal  government  in  the  world  has  greater  reason  than  the  American  to  dread  the  evil  cflccts 
of  those  vices  ;  and  from  iu  popular  structure,  none  is  so  well  fitted  to  adopt  the  on  y  mean? 
of  eftectually  preventing  or  eradicating  them.  This  important  subject  is  strikingly  elucidatfd 
in  Sir  Henry  Parnell's  Treatise  on  llmids,  but  especially  in  A  Treutise  on  Internal  Intercmrst 
and  Communication  in  Civilized  States,  by  Thomas  Grahame,  brother  of  the  author  of  this 
History. 

t  ^eal. 

»  Josselyn,  who  visited  New  England,  for  the  first  time,  in  1638,  relates,  that  in  the  tillait 
of  Boston  there  were  then  two  licensed  inns.  "  An  officer  visits  them,"  ho  adds,  "  w'.""!""' 
•  MiraiiK*>r  ko«s  into  them;  and  if  he  calls  fur  more  drink  than  the  officer  thinks  m  ni8  julj- 


CIIAF.  v.] 


SOCIETY  AND  MANNERS. 


297 


his 


lie  opinion,  they  rendered  every  vicious  and  profligate  excess  alike  danger- 
ous and  discreditable  to  the  perpetrator.  We  are  assured  by  a  well  informed 
writer,  that  at  this  period  there  was  not  a  single  beggar  in  the  whole  prov- 
ince ;  and  a  person  of  unquestioned  veracity,  who  resided  in  it  for  seven 
years,  relates,  that  during  all  that  period  he  never  heard  a  profane  oath,  nor 
witnessed  an  instance  of  inebriety.'  Labor  was  so  valuable,  land  so  cheap, 
and  the  elective  franchise  so  widely  extended,  that  every  industrious  man 
light  acquire  a  stake  in  the  soil,  and  a  voice  in  the  civil  administration  of 
is  country.  The  general  diffusion  of  education  caused  the  national  advan- 
tages, which  were  vigorously  improved,  to  be  justly  appreciated  ;  and  a 
steady  and  ardent  patriotism  knit  the  hearts  of  the  people  to  each  other  tind 
to  their  country. 

The  condition  of  society  in  New  England,  the  circumstances  and  habits 
of  the  people,  tended  to  form  among  their  leading  men  a  character  more 
solid  than  brilliant:  —  not  (as  some  have  imagined)  to  discourage  the  culti- 
vation or  exercise  of  talent,  but  to  repress  its  idle  display,  and  train  it  to 
its  legitimate  and  respectable  end,  of  giving  efficacy  to  wisdom,  prudence, 
and  virtue.     Yet  this  state  of  society  was  by  no  means  incompatible  either 
with  politeness  of  manners  or  with  innocent  hilarity.     Lord  Bellamont  was 
agreeably  surprised  with  the  graceful  and  courteous  behaviour  of  the  gentle- 
men and  clergy  of  Connecticut,  and  confessed  that  he  found  the  manners  and 
address  which  he  had  thought  peculiar  to  feudal  nobility  in  a  land  where 
this  aristocratical  distinction  was  unknown.^     From  Dunton's  account  of  his 
residence  in  Boston  in  1686,  it  appears  that  the  inhabitants  of  Massachu- 
setts were  at  that  time  distinguished  in  a  very  high  degree  by  their  cheerful 
vivacity,  their  hospitality,  and  a  courtesy  the  more  estimable  that  it  was  in- 
dicative of  genuine  benevolence.^     From  the  circumstances  of  the  country, 
it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  the  manners  of  its  inhabitants  could  exhibit 
that  perfection  of  exterior  polish  and  factitious  elegance  generated  in  old 
societies  by  leisure,  wealth,  and  the  necessity  of  refining  the  means  of  pro- 
curing social  distinction.     But  if  (as  has  been  finely  suggested  by  an  inge- 
nious American,  in  reference  to  a  later  period  in  his  country),  "in  the  equal 
intercourse  of  all  classes,  the  higher  had  some  degree  of  polish  rubbed  off, 
the  humbler  were  gainers  by  what  the  others  lost";  and  while  the  absence 
of  unsuitable  pretensions  and  mean  competitions  banished  the  most  copious 
source  of  vulgarity,  the  diffusion  of  literary  taste  and  of  liberal  piety  sup- 
plied an  influence  amply  sufficient  to  soften  and  ennoble  human  manners. 
Elegance  may  consist  with  great  plainness  of  external  circumstances  ;  nay, 
in  proportion  as  it  is  unaided  by  exterior  trapping  and  decoration,  its  origin 
seems  the  more  pure  and  exalted,  and  its  excellence  the  more  genuine  and 
durable.     It  was  a  remark  of  the  great  Prince  of  Conde,  that  the  New  Tes- 
tament displayed  the  most  perfect  model  of  a  kind  and  graceful  politeness 
that  he  had  ever  met  with.     Good  manners  consist  in  conducting  ourselves 

iiicnt  he  can  soberly  bear  nwny,  he  countermands  it,  and  appoints  the  proportion,  beyond 
wliich  he  cannot  get  one  drop."  Josselyn's  Voyage.  In  16!t4,  the  selectmen  of  the  several 
lowiis  in  Massachusetts  were  ordered  to  bans  up  in  every  alehouse  lists  of  all  re/>Mt«rf  tipplers 
and  drunkards  within  their  districts;  and  aleliouse-kecpors  were  forbidden  to  supply  liquor  to 
any  person  whose  name  was  thus  posted.  Holmes.  The  magistrates  of  some  of  the  towns 
of  Scotland  exercised  similar  acts  of  authority.  An  instance  occurred  in  the  town  of  Rulher- 
gleii  in  1668.     lire's  History  of  liutherglen. 

'  Neul.    Trumbull.  *  Trumbull.    Dwieht's  Travels. 

'  Dunton's  U/e  and  Errors.  Dunton,  who  was  familiar  with  the  tables  of  the  rich  in  Lon- 
don, was  yet  Rtruck  with  the  plenty  and  elegance  of  the  entertainments  he  witnessed  in 
Boston. 


VOL.    I. 


38 


298 


HISTORY  OF  NOETU  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


towards  every  person  with  a  demeanour  graciously  expressive  of  the  rela- 
tion  which  he  holds  to  ourselves  and  others.  Christianity  at  once  allords 
the  iustest,  the  most  endearing,  and  most  enlarged  view  ol  the  relations  of 
huiiian  beings  to  each  other,  and  enforces  by  the  strongest  sanctions  the  du- 
ties  and  courtesies  which  these  relations  infer.  Men  devoted  to  the  service 
of  God  like  the  first  generations  of  tlie  inhabitants  of  New  Lngland,  carried 
throuehout  their  lives  an  elevated  strain  of  sentiment  and  purpose,  which 
must  have  communicated  some  portion  of  its  own  grace  and  dignity  to  tlieir 

manners.  ,.  ,  •  ■         i 

In  the  historical  and  statistical  accounts  of  the  various  provinces'  we  con- 
tinually  meet  with  instances  of  the  beneficial  influence  exercised  by  superior 
minds  on  the  virtue,  industry,  and  happiness  of  particular  districts  and  infant 
settlements.     In  no  country  has  the  ascendency  of  talent  been  greater,  or 
been  more  advantageously  exerted.     The  dangers  ol  Indian  invasion  were 
encountered  and  repelled  ;  the  dejection  and  tmudity  produced  by  them 
surmounted  ;  Uie  feuds  and  contentions  peculiarly  incident  to  newly  iormed 
societies  of  men,  collected  from  d  Jerent  countries,  and  varying  in  race, 
habits,  and  opinions,  were  composed  ;.  the  temptations  to  slothful  and  degeii- 
erate  modes  of  living,  resisted  ;  the  self-denial  requisite  to  the  endowineni 
of  institutions  for  preaching  the  gospel  and  the  education  o    youth,  reso- 
Uitelv  practised.     In  founding  and  conducting  to  maturity  the  new  seitie- 
ments  that  progressively  arose,  men  of  talent  and  virtue  enjoyed  a  sphere 
of  noble  employment.     They  taught  both  by  action  and  example.     1  hey 
distinguished  themselves  from  the  rest  of  mankind  by  excelling  them  in  their 
common  pursuits,  and  exercising  a  manifest  superiority  of  understanding  on 
the  ordinary  subjects  of  human  reflection  and  consideration.      Ihey  exem- 
plified  a  species  of  dignity  at  once  the  most  substantial  and  the  most  gen- 
erallv  attainable ;  which  depends  not  on  opportunities  of  performing  remark- 
able  deeds,  but  consists  in  discharging  the  ordinary  duties  of  life  with  a 
generous  elevation  of  sentiment  and  view.     They  read  their  history  in  the 
approving  eyes,  and  improving  manners  and  condition,  of  a  free  and  happy 
people.     Mankind  have  a  greater  aptitude  to  copy  characters  than  to  yield 
obedience  to  precepts  ;  and  virtue  is  much  more  efTectually  recommended 
to  their  imitation  and  esteem  by  the  exhibition  of  zeal  than  by  the  force  of 
argument.     Let  the  votaries  of  glory  remember,  that,  if  a  life  thus  spent  c.r- 
cumscribe  the  diffusion  ol  the  patriot's  name,  it  extends  the  influence  of  his 
character  and  sentiments  to  distant  generations  ;  and  that,  if  posthumous 
fame  be  any  thing  more  than  a  brilliant  illusion,  it  is  such  distinction  as  this 
from  which  the  surest  and  most  lasting  satisfaction  will  be  derived. 

The  esteem  of  the  community  was  considered  so  valuable  a  part  ol  ihe 
emoluments  of  public  office,  that  the  salaries  of  all  municipal  officers,  except 
those  who  were  appointed  by  the  crown,  were,  if  not  scanty,  yet  exceed- 
inelv  moderate.  In  Connecticut,  where  the  public  expenditure,  without 
being  sordidly  or  unjustly  abridged,  was  contracted  to  the  greatest  exact- 
ness of  thrift,  it  was  remarked,  that  the  whole  annual  expense  of  its  public 
institutions  (about  £  800)  did  not  amount  to  the  salary  of  a  royal  governor. 
The  slender  emoluments  of  public  offices,  and  the  tenure  of  popular  pleas- 
ure by  which  they  were  held,  tended  very  much  to  exempt  them  from  the 
pretensions  of  unworthy  candidates,  and  those  who  were  invested  with  them 

•  See,  in  particular,  the  Histories  of  Trumbull  and  Belknnp,  and  the  Travels  oCUmgK 

parsim. 

»  Trumbull. 


CHAP,  v.] 


REWARDS  OF  PUBLIC  SKRVICE— SLAVERY. 


299 


o  Travels  of  Dwight, 


from  calumny  and  envy.  Virtue  and  ability  were  fairly  appreciated  ;  and 
we  frequently  lind  the  same  individuals  reelected  lor  a  long  series  of 
years  to  the  same  oflices,'  and  in  some  instances  succeeded  by  their  sons, 
when  inheritance  of  merit  recommended  inheritance  of  dignity.  In  more 
than  one  of  the  settlements,  the  first  codes  of  law  were  tlie  composition  of 
single  persons  ;  the  people  desiring  an  eminent  citizen  to  compose  for  them 
a  body  of  laws,  and  then  legislating  unanimously  in  conformity  with  his  sug- 
gestions. The  estimation  and  the  disinterestedness  of  public  services  were 
not  unfrequently  attested  by  legislative  appropriations  of  public  money  to 
defray  the  funeral  charges  of  men  who  for  many  years  had  enjoyed  the 
highest  oflicial  dignities.  The  public  respect  for  distinguished  patriots, 
though  not  perpetuated  by  titles  of  nobility,  was  preserved  in  the  recol- 
lection of  their  actions,  and  stimulated,  instead  of  relaxing,  the  ardor  of 
their  descendants.  The  virtue  of  remarkable  benefactors  of  their  country 
was  more  diffusively  beneficial  from  their  never  being  disjoined  from  the 
main  trunk  of  the  community  by  titular  distinctions.  Remaining  incorpo- 
rated with  the  general  order  of  citizens,  their  merit  more  visibly  reflected 
honor  upon  it,  than  if  they  had  been  advanced  to  an  imaginary  eminence, 
tending  to  engender  in  themselves  or  their  descendants  contempt  for  the 
mass  of  tlieir  countrymen. 

The  most  lasting,  if  not  the  most  effectually  pernicious,  evil  with  which 
New  England  has  been  afflicted,  was  the  institution  of  slavery,  which  con- 
tinued till  a  late  period  to  pollute  all  its  provinces,  and  lingered  the  latest, 
though  to  a  very  slight  extent,  in  the  province  of  New  Hampshire.''  The 
practice,  as  we  have  seen,  originated  in  the  supposed  necessity  created  by 
Lidian  hostilities  ;  but,  once  introduced,  it  was  banefully  calculated  to  per- 
petuate itself,  and  to  derive  accessions  from  various  other  sources.  For 
some  time,  indeed,  this  was  successfully  resisted ;  and  instances  have  been 
recorded  of  judicial  interposition  to  confine  the  mischief  within  its  original 
limits.  In  the  year  1645,  a  negro,  fraudfully  brought  from  Africa,  and  en- 
slaved within  the  New  England  territory,  was  liberated  by  the  magistrates 
and  sent  back  to  his  native  country.^  No  law  expressly  authorizing  slavery 
was  ever  enacted  by  any  of  the  New  England  States  ;  and  such  was  the 

'  In  the  year  1634,  the  people  of  MossachuHetts  having  elected  a  particular  individual  tu 
the  office  01  governor,  in  place  of  Winthrop,  who  had  previously  enjoyed  this  dignity,  their 
conduct  was  censured  by  John  Cotton,  wlio,  in  a  sermon  prench»'d  before  the  General  Court, 
maintained  thai  a  magistrate  ought  not  to  be  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  private  individual, 
without  some  cause  of  complaint  publicly  established  against  him.  This  curious  proposition 
was  discussed  by  the  Court,  and  "  referred  for  fiirther  consideration."      Winthrop's ./«»(/•»«//. 

Strikingly  applicable  to  the  early  magistrates  of  New  England  is  the  following  description, 
by  a  groat  German  writer,  of  the  regents  or  judges  of  I.^rael.  "They  were  not  only  simple 
in.  their  manners,  moderate  in  their  desires,  and  free  from  avarice  and  ambition,  but  noble  and 
nioenanimous  men,  who  felt  that  whatever  they  did  for  their  country  was  above  all  reward, 
and  could  not  bo  recompensed ;  who  desired  merely  to  promote  the  public  good,  and  who' 
chose  rather  to  deserve  well  of  their  country  than  to  be  enriched  by  its  wealth.  This  exalted 
patriotism  was  partly  of  a  religious  character;  and  these  regents  always  conducted  themselves 
aa  the  officers  of  God."      Jahn's  History  of  the  Hebreie  Commonweiiltli. 

*  Tiic  a.ssembly  of  this  province,  as  early  as  the  reign  of  George  the  First,  passed  a  law, 
enacting,  that,  "  if  any  man  smite  out  the  eye  or  tooth  of  his  man  or  maid  servant,  or  other- 
wise maim  or  disfigure  them,  he  shall  let  him  or  her  go  free  from  his  service,  and  shall  allow 
such  farther  recompense  as  the  Court  of  Quarter  Sessions  shall  adjudge";  and  that,  "if  any 
person  kill  his  Indian  or  negro  servant,  he  shall  be  punished  with  death."  The  slaves  in 
this  province  are  said  to  have  been  treated  in  nil  respects  like  white  servants.  Warden's 
United  States.  By  an  act  of  the  legislature  of  Rhode  Island,  in  the  year  1704,  all  nraroes 
and  Indians  were  prohibited  from  being  abroad  after  nine  o'clock  of  the  evening.  Culleeliims 
of  the  Rhode  h!ana  Historical  Societi/.  Yet  Rhode  Island  writers  eagerly  vaunt  the  superior 
fquity  r>f  the  treatsncnt  experienced  by  the  Indir.sis  from  their  countrymen. 

'  Belknap. 


300 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  II. 


influence  of  religious  and  moral  feeling  in  all  these  States,  that,  even  while 
there  was  no  law  prohibiting  the  continuance  of  slavery,  it  never  succeed- 
ed in  gaining  any  considerable  prevalence.     To  this  end  the  qualities  and 
produce  of  the  soil  cooperated  with  the  moral  sentiments  of  the  people, 
who  were  not  exposed  to  the  same  temptations  to  the  employment  oi  slave 
labor  that  presented  themselves  in  the  Southern  provinces  of  America. 
Bv  the  early  laws  of  Connecticut,  man-stealing  was  declared  a  capital  crime. 
In  the  year  1703,  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  imposed  a  duty  of  four 
pounds  on  every  negro  imported  into  the  province  ;  and  nme  years  after, 
passed  an  act  prohibiting  the  importation  of  any  more  Indian  servants  or 
slaves.!     In  Massachusetts,,  the  slaves  never  exceeded  the  hltieth  part  of 
the  whole  population  ;  in  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  when  slaves  were 
most  numerous  (about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century),  the  proportion 
was  nearly  the  same  ;  and  in  the  territory  that  afterwards  received  the  name 
of  Vermont,  when  the  number  of  inhabitants  amounted  to  nine  thousand, 
there  were  only  sixteen  persons  in  a  state  of  slavery .^     'Ihe  cnielties  and 
vices  that  slavery  tends  to  produce  were  repressed  at  once  by  so  great  a 
preponderance  of  the  sound  over  the  unhealthy  part  of  the  body  politic, 
and  by  the  moral  circumstances  to  which  this  preponderance  was  owing. 
The  majority  of  the  inhabitants  were  decidedly  hostile  to  slavery  ;  and  mi- 
merous  remonstrances  were  addressed  to  the  British  government  against 
the  encouragement  she  afforded  to  it  by  supporting  the  slave-trade.    When 
North  America  attained   independence,  the  New  England  States  adopted 
measures,  which,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  eflected  the  abolition  of  this 
vile  institution.' 

'  '  Mue  IjiwB  of  Connecticut.     Holmes.    "  In  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  Judge 
Sewell  ofXv-tngland,  came  forward  an  a  zealons  advocate  for  the  negroes.    He  addreBsed 
a  nTemorial  to  the  legislature,  which  he  entitled  The  Sellng  of  Josej,h,  and  m  winch  he  plead- 
cdthdr  else  both  as  a  lawyer  and  a  Christian.     This  memorial  produced  an  effect  upon 
manrb^'t  particularly  upon  tliose  of  hi.  own  religious  persuasion."    Clarkson  s  History  oj  tk 
MolUion  of  the  SUtte  Trade.  „    .  . . 

«  Warden      Winterbotham's  .'Imerica.     Uwigtit.  ....  .     r 

3  ThTreTsastranire  I  hope  not  a  disingenuous,  indistinctness  in  the  statements  of  some 
xvritlr   resnectin?th^  Winterbotham,  w-r.tmg  ,n  1795  asserts 

Zt  the^o^are  ifo  "lavef  in  Masichusetts.  If  he  meant  that  a  law  had  been  nassed  M 
Eounced  and  was  gradually  extinguishing  slavery,  he  was  right;  but  the  literal  sense  of  lus 
words  ircontrad3by  Warden's  TaM^,  which  dfemonstrate  that  fifteen  years  after  (he  law 
rtvehav"ng  produce.^  ^  ««vera    thousand  slaves  in  Massaohuset  s^ 

DwiS  relates  his  travels,  in  the  end  of  the  oiBhteenth  and  beginning  of  the  nmeteenth 
ccn  urv  through  every  part  of  New  England,  witfiout  giving  us  tT.e  slightest  reason  to  sup- 
pose t^atsucfbcSs  ,w  slave,  existed  in  any  one  of  its  provinces,  except  when  he  stops  to 
Scfcnd  the  legisla  ufe  of  Connecticut  from  an  imputation  on  the  manner  in  which  her  share 
of  the  aboli  ion  of  slavery  had  been  conducted.  It  was  actually  conducted  in  a  style  the 
mosVtcSSrregardXl  o/the  iniquitous  interests  of  the  whites,  and  disdainfully  negligent  of 
triustriLw  the  negroes.  Warden  himself  says,  in  one  page,  that  "  shwery  no  longer 
rxU  in  l^rw  EngLd,^'  even  while,  in  another,  he  admits  and  seeks  to  palliate  the  occur. 

'•insfaire/XZJtraVto^eTail'rn?^^^^^^^  Obstinate  and  „ro..rac,ed  are  its  eonso.uen- 
tial  Tvr  HatredTontempt,  ani  ill-usage  of  the  negro  race  liaye  long  continued,  m  New 
i^an^andE'ofthe  fiorth  American  communites,  to  survive  the  abolition  of  negro 
daSv  within  their  limito.     See  Note  XXXVIII.,  at  the  end  of  Vol.  II. 


BOOK    III. 


MARYLAND. 


•  1 

1 


Cliarter  of  Maryland  obtained  from  Charles  the  First  by  Lord  Baltimore.  —  Condition  of  the 
Roman  Catholics  in  England.  —  Emi^ation  of  Roman  Catholics  to  the  Province.  —  Friendly 
Treaty  with  the  Indians. —  Generosity  of  Lord  Baltimore. — Opposition  and  Intriaues  of 
Clayborne.  —  First  Assembly  of  Maryland,  —  Representative  Government  establisned. — 
Early  Introduction  of  Negro  Slavery.  —  An  Indian  War.  —  Clayborne's  Rebellion.  —  Re- 
ligious Toleration  established  in  the  Colony.  —  Separate  Establishment  of  the  House  of 
Burgesses.  —  Clayborne  declares  for  Cromwell  —  and  usurps  the  Administration.  —  Tolera- 
tion abolished.  —  Distractions  of  the  Colony  —  terminated  by  the  Restoration.  —  Establish- 
ment of  a  provincial  Mint.  —  Happy  State  of  the  Colony.  —  Naturalization  Acts.  —  Death 
of  the  first  Proprietary.  —  Wise  Government  of  his  Son  and  Successor.  —  Law  against  im- 
porting Felons.  —  Establishment  of  the  Church  of  England  suggested.  —  Dismemberment 
of  the  Delaware  Territory  from  Maryland.  —  Arbitrary  Projects  of  James  the  Second.  — 
Rumor  of  a  Popish  Plot.  — A  Protestant  Association  is  formed  —  and  usurps  the  Adminis- 
tration.—  The  Proprietary  Government  suspended  by  King  William.  —  Establishment  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  PersecMtion  of  the  Catholics.  —  State  of  the  Province.  —  Man- 
ners.—Laws. 

From  the  history  of  Massachusetts,  and  of  the  other  New  England  States, 
which  were  the  offspring  of  its  colonization,  our  inquiry  is  row  transferred 
to  the  origin  and  early  progress  of  a  colony  which  arose  from  the  plantation 
of  Virginia.  In  relating  the  history  of  this  province,  we  had  occasion  to  no- 
tice, among  other  circumstances  that  disquieted  its  inhabitants  during  the 
administration  of  Sir  John  Harvey,  the  arbitrary  grants,  obtained  by  certain 
courtiers  from  the  crown,  of  large  tracts  of  territory  situated  within  its 
chartered  limits.  The  most  remarkable  of  these  was  the  grant  of  Maryland 
to  Lord  Baltimore. 

Sir  George  Calvert,  afterwards  Lord  Baltimore,  was  secretary  of  state 
to  King  James  the  First,  and  one  of.  the  original  members  of  the  Virginian 
Company.  Conceiving  a  high  opinion  of  tiie  value  of  landed  property  in 
America,  and  foreseeing  the  improvement  it  must  derive  from  the  progress 
of  colonization,  he  employed  his  political  influence  to  secure  an  endowment 
of  it  to  himself  and  his  family.  He  was  a  strenuous  asserter  of  the  suprem- 
acy of  that  authority  from  the  exercise  of  which  he  expected  his  own  enrich- 
ment ;  and  when  a  bill  was  introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons  for  ren- 
dering the  Newfoundland  fishery  free  to  all  British  subjects  [1620],  he 
opposed  it,  on  the  plea  that  the  American  territory,  having  been  acquired 
by  conquest,  was  subject  exclusively  to  the  control  of  the  royal  prerogative. 
The  first  grant  that  he  succeeded  in  obtaining  was  of  a  district  in  Newfound- 
land which  he  named  Avalon  [1622],  and  where,  at  a  considerable  expense, 
he  formed  the  settlement  of  Ferryland  ;  *  but  finding  his  expectations  disap- 

>  His  colonial  policy  is  thus  contrasted  by  an  old  writer  with  that  of  Chief  Justice  Pophani, 
the  promoter  of  the  first  attempts  to  colonize  New  England:  "Judge  Popham  and  Sir  George 
Tnlvert  agreed  not  more  unanimously  in  the  public  design  of  planting,  than  they  differed  in 
the  private  way  of  it ;  the  first  was  for  extirpating  heathens,  the  second  for  converting  them. 
Ho  sent  away  the  lewdest,  this  the  soberest  people  ;  the  one  was  for  present  profit,  the  other 

for  a  reasonable  expectation  ; the  first  set  up  a  common  stcck,  out  of  vvhich  the  people 

nhmli  be  nrovided  by  nronnrtions :  the  second  left  every  one  to  provide  for  himself"  Llovd  « 
State  IVor&ies. 


■ 


302 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III. 


pointed  by  the  soil  and  climate  of  this  inhospitable  region,  he  paid  a  visit  to 
Vircinia,  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  if  some  part  of  its  territorial  re- 
sources might  not  be  rendered  more  subservient  to  his  advantage.     [1628.] 
But  he  had  now  embraced  and  professed  the  tenets  of  the  Church  of  Rome  ; 
and  the  officers  of  the  Virginian  government,  whether  from  jealousy  of  his 
territorial  views,  or  from  a  conscientious  regard  to  their  own  duty,  com- 
pelled him  after  a  short  stay  to  abandon  the  province,  by  msistmg  on  their 
right  to  administer  to  him  the  oath  of  supremacy.^     This  proceeding,  how- 
ever,  had  no  other  effect  than  to  prompt  him  to  consummate  his  purpose, 
and  pursue  the  very  encroachment  which  it  is  probable  that  the  Virginians 
apprehended.     His  visit  to  the  province  inspired  him  with  a  predilection 
for  its  soil  and  climate  ;  and  the  treatment  he  received  Irom  the  provincial 
authorities,  if  it  did  not  originally  suggest,  at  least  confirmed,  his  design  of 
procuring  a  grant  that  would  render  him  independent  of  their  jurisdiction. 
Observing  that  the  Virginians  had  not  yet  formed  any  settlements  to  the 
northward  of  the  river  Potomac,  he  resolved  to  apply  far  a  royal  donative 
of  territory  in  tliat  quarter  ;  and  easily  prevaded  with  Charles  the  h  irst  to 
bestow  on  him  the  investiture  he  "solicited.    With  the  intention  of  promoting 
the  aggrandizement  of  his  own  family  he  combined  the  more  generous  pro- 
ject of  founding  a  new  commonwealth,  and  colonizing  it  with  the  persecuted 
votaries  of  the  church  of  Rome.    But  the  design  to  which  he  had  paved  the 
way  by  an  act  of  injustice  he  was  not  permitted  himself  to  accomplish.  His 
proiect,  which  was  interrupted  by  his  death,  just  when  every  preparation 
was  made  for  carrying  it  into  effect,  was  resumed  by  his  son  and  successor, 
Cecilius,  Lord  Baltimore  [June,  1632],  in  whose  favor  the  king  completed 
the  charter  that  had  been  destined  for  his  father.^  r^.     ,     ,      ,. 

If  the  charter  which  shortly  before  was  obtained  from  Charles  by  the 
Puritan  colonists  of  Massachusetts  may  be  regarded  as  the  exercise  of  poli- 
cy the  investiture  which  he  now  bestowed  on  Lord  Baltimore  was  not  less 
manifestly  the  expression  of  favor.  This  nobleman,  like  his  father,  was  a 
Roman  Catholic  ;  and  his  avowed  purpose  was  to  people  his  territory  with 
colonists  of  the  same  persuasion,  and  erect  an  asylum  m  North  America 
for  the  Catholic  faith.  By  the  charter  which  he  received,  it  vvas  declared 
that  the  grantee  was  actuated  by  a  laudable  zeal  for  extending  the  Christian 
religion  and  the  territory  of  the  British  Empire  ;  and  the  district  assigned 
to  him  and  his  heirs  and  successors  was  described  as  "  that  region  bounded 
by  a  line  drawn  from  Watkins's  Point  of  Chesapeake  Bay  ;  thence  to  that 
part  of  the  estuary  of  Delaware  en  the  north  which  lies  under  the  fortieth 
decree,  where  New  England  is  terminated;  thence  in  a  right  line,  by  the 
degree  aforesaid,  to  the  meridian  of  the  fountain  of  Potomac  ;  thence  follow- 
ing its  course  by  the  farther  bank  to  its  confluence."  In  compliment  to  the 
queen,  the  province  thus  bestowed  on  a  nobleman  of  the  same  faith  with  her 
Maiesty  was  denominated  Maryland ;  and  in  compliment,  perhaps,  to  her 
Majesty's  creed,  the  endowment  was  accompanied  with  immunities  more 

"•  The  formula  of  the  oath  of  supremacy  then  in  use  (prescribed  by  Stnt.  1  Eliis.,  cap.  1,  §  lit) 
declared  the  king  governor  of  all'  his  dominions  and  .-..untries,  "  aa  well  in  all  spiritual  or  • 
Hea'aaUca  S  or  causes  a.  temporal."  Lord  Ballimpre,  though  an  Englishman  by  b.rtli, 
w^s  a  p^er  of  Iceland,  and  doubtle'ss  knew  that  Pope  Urban  the  Eighth  had  but  a  few  )^a« 
Zle  Sesaed  a  bull  to  the  Irish  Catl.olics,  charging  them  "rather  to  lose  th«';l'veMha 
fn  -ake  that  wicked  and  pesUlent  oath  of  supromacv,  whereby  the  ,re*'?j;.l''°oSi 
church  was  wrested  from  the  hand  of  tho  vicar  of  Ood  Almighty.      Leland  a  History  «/ 

•  Chalmen.     Bozman's  History  of  Maryland. 


BOOK  in.] 


CHART55R  C.    .MARYLAND. 


303 


ample  than  any  of  the  other  colonial  establishments  possessed.  The  new 
province  was  declared  to  be  separated  from  Virginia,  and  no  longer  subor- 
dinate to  any  other  colony,  but  immediately  subject  to  the  crown  of  England, 
and  dependent  thereon  for  ever.  Lord  Baltimore  was  created  the  absolute 
proprietary  of  it ;  saving  the  allegiance  and  sovereign  dominion  due  to  the 
crown.  He  was  empowered,  with  the  assent  of  the  freemen  or  their  dele- 
gates, whom  he  was  required  to  assemble  for  this  purpose,  to  make  laws  for 
the  province,  not  repugnant  to  the  jurisprudence  of  England  ;  and  the  acts 
of  the  assembly  he  was  authorized  to  execute.  For  the  population  of  the 
new  colony,  Hcense  was  given  to  all  his  Majesty's  subjects  to  transport  them- 
selves thither  ;  and  the  emigrants  and  their  posterity  were  declared  to  be 
liegemen  of  the  king  and  his  successors,  and  entitled  to  the  same  liberties  as 
native-born  Englishmen.  The  proprietary  was  authorized,  with  the  consent 
of  the  people,  to  impose  all  just  and  proper  subsidies,  which  were  declared 
to  pertain  to  himself  for  ever  ;  and  it  was  covenanted  on  the  part  of  the  king, 
that  neither  he  nor  his  successors  should  at  any  time  impose,  or  cause  to  be 
imposed,  any  tallages  on  the  colonists,  or  on  their  goods,  tenements,  or 
commodities.  Thus  was  conferred  on  Maryland,  in  perpetuity,  the  same 
fiscal  benefit  which  had  been  granted  to  other  colonies  for  a  term  of  years. 
The  territory  was  erected  into  a  palatinate  ;  and  the  proprietary  was  invested 
with  the  same  royal  rights  which  were  enjoyed  by  the  palatine  Bishop  of 
Durham ;  and  authorized  to  appoint  provincial  officers,  to  repel  invasions, 
and  to  suppress  rebellions.  The  advowsons  of  all  churches,  which,  should 
be  established  in  conformity  with  the  ecclesiastical  constitutions  of  England, 
were  granted  to  him.  The  charter  finally  provided,  that,  if  any  doubt  should 
ever  arise  concerning  its  true  meaning,  the  interpretation  most  favorable  to 
the  proprietary  should  always  be  adopted  ;  excluding,  however,  any  con- 
siniction  derogatory  to  the  Christian  religion,  or  to  the  allegiance  due  to  the 
crown.' 

Though  the  sovereignty  of  the  crown  was  thus  reserved  over  the  prov- 
ince, and  a  conformity  enjoined  between  its  legislation  and  the  jurisprudence 
of  England,  no  means  were  provided  for  the  exercise  of  the  royal  dominion 
or  the  ascertainment  of  the  stipulated  conformity.  The  charter  contained 
no  definition  of  the  method  or  occasions  of  royal  interference  in  the  muni- 
cipal administration,  and  no  obligation  on  the  proprietary  to  transmit  the  acts 
of  assembly  for  confirmation  or  annulment  by  the  king.  In  erecting  the 
province  into  a  palatinate,  and  vesting  the  hereditary  government  of  it  in  the 
family  of  Lord  Baltimore,  the  king  exercised  the  highest  attributes  of  the 
prerogative  of  a  feudal  sovereign.  A  similar  trait  of  feudal  prerogative  ap- 
pears in  the  perpetual  exemption  from  royal  taxation  which  was  assured  to 
the  colonists  by  the  charter,  and  which,  at  a  later  period,  gave  rise  to  much 
intricate  and  elaborate  controversy.  It  was  maintained,  when  this  provision 
became  the  subject  of  critical  comment,  that  it  ought  not  to  be  construed  to 
import  an  exemption  from  parliamentary  taxation,  since  the  king  could  not 
be  supposed  to  mtend  to  abridge  the  jurisdiction  of  the  parliament,  or  to  re- 
nounce a  privilege  that  was  not  his  own  ;  ^  and  that,  even  if  such  construc- 
tion had  been  intended,  the  immunity  was  illegal,  and  incapable  of  restrain- 

'  Laws  of  Maryland.    Hazard. 

'  Yet,  at  an  ailer  period,  it  was  considered  by  English  lawyers  that  an  erclusion  of  parlia- 
mentary  taxation,  whether  efToctually  constituted,  would  be  at  least  imported  by  such  a  clause ; 
and.  in  the  Pennsylvania  charter,  when  an  exemption  from  customs  was  conceded,  it  waa 
qooiiScd  by  an  express  reserratioD  of  the  authority  of  the  English  parliament. 


304 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  HI. 


ine   the  functions  of  the  British  legislature.     In  addition  to  the  general 
reasoning  that  was  employed  to  demonstrate  this  illegality,  reference  was 
made  to  the  authority  of  a  pai  liaraentary  transacUon  related  by  bir  Ldward 
Coke   who,  in  a  debate  on  the  royal  prerogative  m  the  year  1620,  assured 
the  Ccmmons  Uiat  a  dispensation  from  subsidies,  granted  to  certain  individ- 
uals  within  the  realm  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Seventh,  had  been  subse- 
fluently  repealed  by  act  of  parliament.     But  even  if  this  authority  could  be 
reinforced  by  supposing  that  every  act  of  parliament  which  introduced  a 
particular  ordinance  was  also  declaratory  of  the  general  law  m  all  similar 
cases,  the  application  of  it  to  the  charter  of  Maryland  might,  nevertheless, 
very  fairly  be  questioned.     Colonies,  at  the  time  of  which  we  treat,  were 
regarded  entirely  as  dependencies  on  the  monarchical  branch  ol  the  govern- 
ment ;  the  rule  of  their  governance  was  the  royal  prerogative,  except  where 
this  authority  was  specially  limited  or  excluded  by  the  terms  of  a  royal  char- 
ter  •  and  the  same  power  that  gave  a  political  being  to  the  colony  was  con- 
sidered adequate  to  determine  the  political  privileges  of  its  inhabitants.   The 
colonists  of  Maryland  undoubtedly  conceived  that  their  charter  bestowed  on 
them  an  exemption  from  all  taxes  but  such  as  should  be  imposed  by  their 
own  provincial  assembly  ;  for  it  discharged  them  for  ever  from  the  taxation 
of  the  only  other  organ  of  power  that  was  deemed  competent  to  exercise 
this  authority  over  them.     Not  the  least  remarkable  peculiarity  of  this  char- 
ter is  that  it  affords  the  first  example  of  the  dismemberment  of  an  established 
colony,  and  the  creation  of  a  new  one  within  its  original  limits,  by  the  mere 

*^  L°ord  BaWmore  having  thus  obtained  the  charter  of  Maryland,  hastened 
to  execute  the  design  of  colonizing  the  new  province,  of  which  he  appointed 
his  brother,  Leonard  Calvert,  to  be  governor.    Of  a  ready  resort  of  inhabit- 
ants to  his  domain,  and  especially  of  persons,  who,  like  himseli,  professed 
the  faith  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  the  state  of  England  at  that  perod  encour- 
aeed  a  reasonable  expectation.     The  Roman  Cathohc  inhabitants  of  this 
kingdom  had  been  for  many  years  the  objects  of  increasmg  dread  and  an- 
tipathy to  all  other  classes  of  their  fellow-subjects,  and  had  experienced  from 
the  English  government  a  progressive  severity  of  persecution.     All  the  in- 
dulgence which  the  first  proceedings  of  Queen  Elizabeth  seemed  to  betoken 
to  them  was  defeated  by  the  sentence  of  excommunication  and  deposition 
fulminated  against  herself  by  the  head  of  the  Catholic  church,  and  by  the 
repeated  attempts  of  some  of  her  own  subjects,  who  were  votaries  of  this 
church,  to  effectuate  the  Papal  sentence  by  revolt  and  assassination ;  and, 
notwithstanding  the  generous  ardor  displayed  by  the  more  respectable  portion 
of  the  Enghsh  Catholics,  in  defending  her  agamst  the  Armada  of  Spam, 
which  was  expected  to  restore  the  preeminence  of  their  church,  the  progress 
of  her  reign  was  distinguished  by  the  enactment  ol  a  series  of  vindictive  and 
rigorous  llws  against  a  faith  which  was  believed  by  her  Protestant  subjects 
to  menace  her  with  unappeasable  hatred  and  continual  danger.     Iho  acces- 
sion of  the  House  of  Stuart  to  the  English  throne  produced  no  less  djsap- 
pointment  to  the  Catholics  than  to  the  Puritans  of  England.      The  favor 
which  the  Catholics  expected  from  the  birth  and  the  character  of  James  he 
First  was  intercepted  by  the  necessity  of  his  situation  ;  while  the  hopes  that 
the  Puritans  derived  from  his  early  education  and  habits  were  frustrated  by 
the  flattery  J  their  Protestant  adversaries,  and  his  unexpected  display  ot 


rancor  and  aversion 


toward  themselves.     In  th^;  parUcu.ar 


KaatoPV 


ew 


[BOOK  III. 

1  to  the  general 
ty,  reference  was 
[1  by  Sir  Edward 
!ar  1620,  assured 
;o  certain  individ- 

had  been  subse- 
uthority  could  be 
lich  introduced  a 
law  in  all  similar 
ght,  nevertheless, 
ch  we  treat,  were 
jch  of  the  govern- 
ive,  except  where 
ns  of  a  royal  char- 
e  colony  was  con- 
i  inhabitants.  The 
larter  bestowed  on 

imposed  by  Uieir 
•  from  the  taxation 
petent  to  exercise 
liarity  of  this  char- 
[)t  of  an  established 
limits,  by  the  mere 

Maryland,  hastened 
svhich  he  appointed 
y  resort  of  inhabit- 
himself,  professed 
that  per'od  encour- 
inhabitants  of  this 
sing  dread  and  an- 
d  experienced  from 
jtion.     All  the  in- 
seemed  to  betoken 
tion  and  deposition 
church,  and  by  the 
ere  votaries  of  this 
assassination ;  and, 
I  respectable  portion 
Armada  of  Spain, 
?.hurch,  the  progress 
ies  of  vindictive  and 
Protestant  subjects 
anger.     The  acces- 
luced  no  less  disap- 
ngland.     The  favor 
iracter  of  James  the 
while  the  hopes  that 
s  were  frustrated  by 
expected  display  of 
ular  hi3«ory  of  New 


BOOK  UI]         CONDITION  OF  THE  ENGLISH  CATHOLICS. 


306 


England,  we  have  had  occasion  to  consider  the  treatment  which  the  Puritans 
experienced  from  this  prince.  To  the  application  which  he  received  from 
the  Catholics  on  his  accession  to  the  crown,  his  answet  was,  that  he  reck- 
oned himself  obliged  to  support  the  system  which  he  found  established  in 
the  kingdom  ;  and,  though  he  was  compelled  to  maintain  and  even  enlarge 
the  code  of  legal  severity  to  which  they  were  subjected,  he  frequently  inter- 
posed to  mitigate  tlie  actual  infliction  of  its  rigor,  by  the  exercise  of  his 
royal  prerogative. 

The  tenets  of  the  Puritans  and  the  Catholics  could  hardly  differ  more 
widely  than  the  conduct  which  ensued  on  the  disappointment  of  their  re- 
spective expectations.     The  Catholics,  whose  hopes  had  been  the  most 
cliimerical,  and  who  plainly  perceived  the  indulgence  which  the  king  enter- 
tained, and  would  willingly  have  demonstrated  more  unreservedly  to  them, 
were  at  first  transported  with  indignation,  and  stimulated  to  revenge  ;  while 
the  Puritans,  whose  hopes  had  been  more  reasonable,  and  whose  expe- 
rience of  the  actual  regards  of  their  sovereign  was  more  fraught  with  sub- 
stantial disappointment,  expressed  much  less  resentment  than  regret.     It 
was  long  before  the  Puritans  were  provoked  to  resistance  and  civil  war  ; 
and  emigration  was  the  earliest  remedial  measure  to  which  the  more  zealous 
of  their  number  had  recourse.     The  sentiments  that  were  at  first  excited  in 
the  zealots  of  the  Catholic  persuasion  were  of  a  very  different  complexion  ; 
and  one  of  the  earliest  measures  which  they  embraced  was  the  atrocious 
contrivance  of  the  Gunpowder  Plot,     The  detection  of  that  horrid  enter- 
prise, though  it  was  unable  to  extinguish  the  king's  partiality  to  the  Catholics, 
rendered  this  sentiment  much  less  available  than  it  might  o^erwise  have 
proved  for  the  relief  of  their  suffermgs.     New  statutes  of  persecution  were 
enacted  by  the  parliament  against  the  Catholics  ;  and  new  disabilities,  re- 
straints, penalties,  and  forfeitures  were  inflicted  on  the  whole  Catholic  body, 
for  an  action  which  truly  indicated  only  the  extravagant  zeal  and  criminal 
rage  of  a  few  of  its  most  intemperate  members.  The  assassination  of  Henry 
the  Fourth,  of  France,  which  occurred  not  long  afterwards,  increased  the 
antijiathy  of  all  classes  of  English  Protestants  against  the  Ca.tholics,  and, 
leading  James  to  believe  that  nothing  short  of  an  entire  devotion  to  the 
church  of  Rome  could  enable  him  securely  to  associate  with  its  vota.rles, 
prompted  him,  from  an  increased  apprehension  of  personal  danger.to  employ 
more  than  once  his  roypl  proclamations  to  quicken,  instead  of  restraining, 
the  execution  of  the  penal  laws.     And  although  the  deliberate  sentiments 
both  c''  this  monarch  and  his  successor  were  averse  .to  the  infliction  of  the 
extreme  of  legal  rigor  on  the  Catholics,  yet  to  discerning  eyes  the  advantage 
of  this  circumstance  was  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  increasing  influ- 
ence of  the  Puritans  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  and  the  increasmg 
nropaga'ion  of  Puritan  sentiments  in  the  minds  of  the  English  people. 

Thus  exposed  to  molestation  from  the  existing  authorities  in  Englaiid,  and 
apprehending  still  greater  sevejity  from  the  predominance  of  a  party  gradu- 
ally advancing  in  strength  and  hardening  in  sternness  of  spirit,  many  of  the 
Catholics  were  led  to  meditate  a  retreat  from  the  scene  of  persecution  to 
some  vacant  corner  in  the  British  dominions.  The  most  liberal  and  moderate 
of  the  metnbers  pf  the  Romish  church  were  the  most  forward  to  embrace 
this  purpose,  and  of  such  consisted  the  first  emigrants  to  Lord  Baltimore's 
territory.  Sensible  of  the  inveterate  odium  that  their  persuasiori  had  incurred 
in  England,  both  from  the  criminal  enterprises  pf  unworthy  votaries,  and 
vol;  I.  39  z?      '      ■' ' 


306 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III. 


from  the  bisotry  of  intolerant  adversaries,  ihey  purposed,  perhaps,  to  redeem 
its  reputation,  and  to  teach  a  lesson  of  wisdom  and  charity  both  to  Catholics 
and  Protestants,  by  conducting  their  colonial  settlement  on  principles  dia- 
metrically opposite  to  the  illiberal  maxims  and  practices  with  which  the 
church  of  Rome  was  reproached,  and  by  rendering  Maryland  a  scene  of 
greater  liberty  of  conscience  than  was  enjoyed  m  any  other  quarter  of  the 
world  Whether  in  the  commencement  of  their  enterprise  they  distinctly 
conceived  this  generous  design  or  not,  they  are  entitled  to  the  higher  praise 
of  halting  practically  realized  it.  .      j    j         , 

The  first  band  of  emigrants,  consisting  of  about  two  hundred  gentlemen 
of  considerable  rank  and  fortune,  professing  the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  with 
a  number  of  inferior  adherents,  in  a  vessel  called  The  Ark  and  the  Dove, 
sailed  from  England,  under  the  command  of  Lepnard  Calvert,  in  IMovember, 
1632  ;  and,  after  a  prosperous  voyage,  reached  the  coast  of  Maryland,  near 
the  mouth  of  the  river  Potomac,  in  the  beginning  of  the  following  year. 
1 1633  1   The  governor,  as  soon  as  he  landed,  erected  a  cross  on  the  shore, 
and  took  possession  of  the  country  for  our  Saviour  and  for  our  sovereign 
lord  the  king  of  England.     Aware  that  the  first  settlers  of  Virginia  had 
given  umbrage  to  the  Indians  by  occupying  their  territory  without  demanding 
their  permission,  he  determined  to  imhate  the  wiser  and  juster  policy  that 
was  pursued  by  the  colonists  of  New  England,  and  to  unite  the  new  with  the 
ancient  race  of  inhabitants  by  the  ties  of  equity,  good-will,  and  mutiial  advan- 
taee.  The  Indian  chief,  to  whom  he  addressed  his  proposition  ol  occupyme 
a  portion  of  the  country,  answered  at  first  with  a  sullen  affectation  of  indif- 
ference, —the  result,  most  probably,  of  aversion  to  the  measure  and  of  con- 
scious inability  to  resist  it,  —  that  he  would  not  bid  the  English  go,  neither 
would  he  bid  them  stay,  but  that  he  left  them  to  their  own  discretion.    The 
liberality  and  courtesy,  however,  of  the  governor's  demeanour  succeeded  at 
length  in  conciliating  the  Indian's  regard  so  powerfully,  that  he  not  only 
estabhshed  a  friendly  league  between  the  colonists  and  his  own  people,  but 
persuaded  the  other  neighbouring  tribes  to  accede  to  the  treaty,  and  warmly 
declared,  /  love  the  English  so  mell,  that,  if  they  should  go  about  to  kill  me, 
if  I  had  so  much  breath  as  to  speak,  I  would  command  my  people  not  to 
revenge  my  death  ;  for  I  know  they  would  not  do  such  a  thing,  except  it 
were  through  my  own  fault.     Having  purchased  the  rights  of  the  aborigines 
at  a  price  which  gave  them  perfect  satisfaction,  the  colonists  obtained  pos- 
session of  a  large  district,  including  an  Indian  town,  which  they  forthwith 
occupied,  and  distinguished  by  the  name  of  St.  Mary's.     It  was  not  till 
theirnumbers  had  undergone  a  considerable  increase,  that  they  judged  it 
necessary  to  frame  a  code  of  laws  and  establish  their  political  constitution. 
'i'hey  lived  for  some  time  in  a  social  union,  resembling  the  domestic  regi- 
men of  a  patriarchal  family  ;  and  confined  their  attention  to  the  providing 
.)f  food  and  habitations  for  themselves  and  the  associates  by  whom  they  ex- 
pected to  be  reinforced.     The  lands  which  were  ceded  to  them  yielded  a 
ready  increase,  because  they  had  already  undergone  the  discipline  of  Indian 
tillage  ; '  and  this  circumstance,  as  well  as  the  proximity  of  yirginia,  which 
now  afforded  an  abundant  supply  of  the  necessaries  of  life,  enabled  the 
colonists  of  Maryland  to  escape  the  ravages  of  that  calamity  which  had 
afflicted  the  infancy,  and  nearly  proved  fatal  to  the  existence,  of  every  one 
of  the  other  settlements  of  the  English  in  America.     So  luxuriant  were 


'"'They  found  fut  pasture  and  good,  and^the  land  was  wide,  and  quiet,  and  peaceable;  for 
inev  of  Ham  tiad  dwelt  there  of  old."      '  ^' 


IChron.  iv  40. 


BOOK  III.] 


OPPOSITION  OF  VIRGINIA. 


307 


t,  and  peaceable ;  for 


their  crops,  that,  within  two  years  after  their  arrival  in  the  province,  they 
exported  ten  thousand  bushels  of  Indian  corn  to  New  England,  for  the  pur- 
chase of  salted  fish  and  other  provisions.  The  tidings  of  their  safe  and  conn- 
fortable  establishment,  conspiring  with  the  uneasiness  experienced  by  the 
Roman  Catholics  in  England,  induced  considerable  numbers  of  the  profes- 
sors of  this  faith  to  follow  the  original  emigrants  to  Maryland  ;  and  no  efforts 
of  wisdom  or  generosity  were  spared  by  Lord  Baltimore  to  promote  the 
population  and  the  happiness  of  the  colony.  The  transportation  of  people 
and  of  necessary  stores  and  provisions,  during  the  first  two  years,  cost  him 
upwards  of  forty  thousand  pounds.  To  every  emigrant  he  assigned  fifty 
acres  of  land  in  absolute  fee  ;  and  with  a  liberality  unparalleled  in  that  age, 
he  united  a  general  recognition  of  Christianity  as  the  established  faith  of  the 
land,  with  an  exclusion  of  the  political  predonnnance  or  superiority  of  any 
one  particular  sect  or  denomination  of  Christians.  This  wise  administration 
soon  converted  a  desolate  wilderness  into  a  flourishing  commonwealth,  en- 
livened by  industry  and  adorned  by  civilization.  It  is  a  proof  at  once  of 
the  success  cf  his  policy,  and  of  the  prosperity  and  happiness  of  the  colo- 
nists, that,  a  very  few  years  after  the  first  occupation  of  the  province,  they 
granted  to  their  proprietary  a  large  subsidy  of  tobacco,  in  grateful  acknowl- 
edgment of  his  liberality  and  beneficence.*  Similar  tributes  continued,  from 
time  to  time,  to  attest  the  merit  of  the  proprietary  and  the  attachment  of 
the  people. 

The  wisdom  and  virtue  by  which  the  colonization  of  the  new  province  was 
signalized  could  not  atone  for  the  arbitrary  encroachment  by  which  its  terri- 
tory had  been  wrested  from  the  jurisdiction  of  Virginia  ;  and  while  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  regret  the  troubles  which  this  circumstance  engendered,  there 
is  something  not  altogether  dissatisfactory  to  the  moral  eye  in  beholding  the 
evil  fruits  of  usurpation.  Such  lessons  are  most  agreeable,  when  the  requital 
which  they  exhibit  is  confined  to  the  immediate  perpetrfitors  of  wrong  ;  but 
they  are  not  the  less  salutary,  when  the  admonition  they  convey  is  derived 
from  punishment  extended  to  the  remote  accessories,  who  have  consented  to 
avail  themselves  of  the  injustice  of  the  actual  or  principal  delinquents.  The 
king  had  commanded  Sir  John  Harvey,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  to  render 
assistance  and  encouragement  to  Lord  Baltimore  in  establishing  himself  and 
his  associates  in  Maryland.  But  though  the  governor  and  his  eouncil  de- 
clared their  readiness,  in  humble  submission  to  his  Majesty's  will,  to  maintain 
a  good  correspondence  with  their  unwelcome  neighbours,  they  determined 
at  the  same  time  to  defend  the  rights  of  the  prior  settlement.  The  planters 
of  Virginia  presented  a  petition  against  the  charter  of  Lord  Baltimore  ;  and 
hoth  parties  were  admitted  to  discuss  their  contradictory  pretensions  before 
the  privy  council.  [July,  1633.]  After  vainly  endeavouring  to  promote  an 
amicable  adjustment,  the  council  decreed  that  Lord  Baltimore  should  retain 
his  charter,  and  the  petitioners  their  remedy  at  law,  —  a  remedy  which 
probably  had  no  existence,  and  for  which  the  Virginians  never  thought  it 
worth  while  to  inquire.  For  the  prevention  of  farther  differences,  it  was 
enjoined  by  the  council  that  free  and  mutual  commerce  should  be  permitted 
between  the  two  colonies  ;  that  neither  should  harbour  fugitives  from  the 
other,  nor  commit  any  act  that  might  provoke  a  war  with  the  natives  ;  and 
that  each  should  on  all  occasions  assist  and  befriend  the  other  in  a  manner 
becoming  fellow-subjects  of  the  same  empire. 

'  Oidmixon.    Chnimers.     Bozman. 


308 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  HI. 


But  althoueh  the  Virginian  planters  were  thus  compelled  to  withdraw  their 
ODDOsition,  and  the  Virginian  government  to  recognize  the  independence  of 
Maryland,  the  establislmient  of  this  colony  encountered  an  obstinate  resist- 
ance  from  interests  far  less  entitled  to  respect  ;  and  Uio  validity  of  Lord 
Baltimore's  grant  was  disputed  with  much  violence  and  pertinacity  by  a 
nrior,  but  less  legitimate,  intruder.  This  competitor  was  William  Clayborne, 
a  member  of  Sir  John  Harvey's  council,  and  secretary  of  the  province  of 
Virginia  ;  and  the  friendship  between  Harvey  and  this  individual  may  per- 
haps account  for  a  singularity  in  the  conduct  of  that  tyranmc^al  governor,  and 
explain  why,  on  one  occasion  at  least,  he  was  disposed  to  delend  the  inter- 
ests of  the  Virginian  planters  in  opposition  to  the  arbitrary  policy  of  the  kiujr. 
\bout  a  year  before  tlie  date  of  Lord  Baltimore's  charter,  the  kmg  granted 
to  Clayborne  a  license  under  the  sign  manual  to  traflic  in  those  parts  of 
America  not  comprehended  in  any  preceding  patent  of  exchjsive  trade;  and 
in  corroboration  of  this"  license,  Harvey  superadded  to  it  _ a  commission  in 
similar  terms  under  the  seal  of  his  own  autliority.    Tho  object  of  Clayborne 
and  his  associates  was,  to  monopolize  the  trade  ot  the  Chesapeake;  to 
which  end  they  had  established  a  small  trading  settlement  in  the  isle  of  Kent, 
which  is  situated  in  the  very  centre  of  Maryland,  and  which  Clayborne  now 
persisted  in  claiming  as  lus  own,  and  refused  to  subject  to  the  newly  erected 
lurisdiclion.     The  unreasonableness  of  a  plea,  wh.ch  engrafted  a  territorial 
grant  upon  a  mere  commercial  license,  did  not  prevent  the  government  of 
Virginia  from  countenancing  Clayborne,  who,  encouraged  by  the  approbation 
thus  afforded  to  his  pretensions,  scrupled  not  to  support  them  by  acts  of 
prodigate  intrigue  and  even  sangubary  violence.     He  mfuaed  a  spirit  of  in- 
Lbordination  into  the  inhabitants  of  the  isle  of  Kent,  and  scattered  jeal- 
ousies among  the  Indian  tribes,  some  of  whom  he  w^as  able  to  persuade  that 
Uie  new  settlers  were  Spaniards  and  enemies  to  the  Virgmians.    Lord  Balti- 
more, now  perceiving  the  necessity  of  a  vigorous  effort  m  defence  of  his 
rights,  commanded  the  governor  to  vindicate  the  proymcial  jurisdiction,  and 
maintain  an  entire  subordination  within  its  limits.    L^ept.,  1634.  j     lill  this 
emergency,  the  colony  had  subsisted  without  the  formal  establishment  of 
municipal  instiluUons  ;  but  the  same  occasion  that  now  called  forth  the 
powers  of  government  tended  also  to  develope  Us  o  gamzation.     Accord- 
ingly, in  the  commencement  of  the  foUowing  year  [Feb.,  1635],  was  con- 
vened the  first  popular  assembly  of  Maryland,  consisttng  of  the  whole  body 
of  the  freemen,  by  which  various  regulations  were  framed  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  good  order  in  the  province.     One  of  the  statutes  of  this  assembly 
ordained  that  all  perpetrators  of  murder  and  other  folomes  should  incur  the 
same  punishments  that  were  appointed  for  such  offences  by  the  laws  ot  Eng- 
land ;  an  enactment,  which,  besides  its  general  utility,  was  necessary  to  pave 
the  way  to  the  judicial  proceedings  that  were  contemplated  against  Clay- 
borne.'   This  individual,  still  persisting  in  his  outrages,  was  mdicted  soon 
after  for  murder,  piracy,  and  sedition.     Finding  that  thpse  who  had  encour- 
aged  his  pretensions  left  him  unaided  to  defend  his  crunes,  he  fled  from 
jenal  inquisition,  and  his  estate  was  confiscated.     Against  this  adjudication 
lie  appealed  to  the  king,  and  petitioned  at  the  same  U«ie  for  the  renewal  o 
hifi  license  and  the  grant  of  an  independent  territofy  adjoining  to  tie  islo  ot 
Kent.    By  tl>e  assistance  of  powerful  friends  and  the  4c?.tetrty  ol  his  repre- 
sentations, he  very  nearly  obtained  a  complete  tri«i«pfe.«wr  his  antagonists, 
and  eventually  prevailed  so  far  a&  to  uivolvu  L,Oid,  Baiumorc  and  die  co*- 


f, 


BOOK  III] 


LEGtISLATIVE  CODE. 


309 


nists  of  Maryland  in  a  controversy  thai  was  not  terminated  for  several  years 
At  length  the  Lords  Commissioners  of  the  Colonies,  to  whom  the  matter 
was  referred,  pronounced  a  final  sentence,  dismissing  Clayborne's  appeal, 
and  adjudging  that  the  whole  territory  belonged  to  Lord  Baltimore,  and  that 
no  plantation  or  trade  with  the  Indians,  unsanctioned  by  his  permission, 
could  be  lawfully  established  within  the  limits  of  his  patent.  Thus  divested 
of  every  semblance  of  legal  title,  Clayborne  exchanged  his  hopes  of  victory 
for  schemes  of  revenge  ;  and  watching  with  considerate  hate  every  oppor- 
tunity of  hostile  intrigue  that  the  situation  of  the  colony  might  present  to 
him,  he  was  unfortunately  enabled,  at  an  after  period,  to  wreak  the  ven- 
geance of  disappointed  rapacity  upon  his  successful  competitor.^ 

The  colony  meanwhile  continued  to  thrive,  and  the  numbers  of  its  inhab- 
itants to  be  augmented  by  copious  emigration  from  England.     With  the  m- 
crease  of  the  people  and  the  extension  of  the  settlements  to  a  gr3ater  dis- 
tance from  St.  Mary's,  the  necessity  of  a  legislative  code  became  apparent ; 
and  Lord  Baltimore,  having  composed  a  body  of  laws  for  the  province, 
transmitted  them  to  his  brother,  with  directions  to  propose  them  to  the  as- 
sembly of  the  freemen.     The  second  assembly  of  Maryland  was  in  conse- 
quence convoked  by  the  governor,  with  the  expectation,  doubtless,  of  an 
immediate  ratification  of  the  suggestions  of  the  proprietary.    [Jan.,  1637.] 
But  the  colonists,  along  with  a  sincere  attachment  to  Lord  Baltimore,  enter- 
tained a  just  and  liberal  conception  of  their  own  political  rights  ;  and  while 
they  made  an  ample  provision  for  the  support  of  his  government,  they  re- 
fused to  accept  his  legislative  propositions.   It  was  in  vain  that  the  governor 
urged  upon  them  that  the  provisions  of  this  code  were  confessedly  salutary 
and  judicious,  and  that  it  was  the  wish  of  the  proprietary  that  the  propo- 
sition of  all  laws  should  originate  with  himself,  and  that  they  should  restrict 
their  legislative  functions  to  the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  his  suggestions. 
This  was  an  arrangement  which  they  were  determined  not  to  admit.     In 
place  of  Lord  Baltimore's  code,  they  prepared  a  collection  of  ordinances 
for  themselves.     The  province  was  divided   into  baronies  and   manors. 
Various  regulations  were  enacted  for  securing  popular  liberty,  for  ascertain- 
ing the  tides  to  landed  property,  and  for  regulating  the  course  of  intestate 
succession.     A  law  was  passed  for  the  support  of  the  proprietary  govern- 
ment ;  and  an  act  of  attainder  against  Clayborne.     In  almost  all  the  laws, 
where  prices  were  stated  or  payments  prescribed,  tobacco,  and  not  money, 
was  assumed  as  the  measure  of  value.     The  first  colonists  of  Maryland  de- 
voted themselves  as  eagerly  as  the  Virginians  did  at  first  to  the  cultivation 
of  this  valuable  commodity.     With  indiscriminate  desire  to  enlarge  their 
contributions  to  the  market,  and  obtain  a  price  for  the  whole  produce  of 
their  fields,  they  refused  to  accede  to  the  regulations  by  which  the  planters 
of  Virginia  improved  the  quality  by  diminishing  the  quantity  of  their  supply  ; 
and  this  dissension  was  productive  of  much  ill-humor  and  jealousy  between 
the  two  colonies,  and  tended  to  keep  alive  the  original  disgust  which  the 
establishment  of  Maryland  had  inspired  in  Virginia. 

The  third  assembly  of  Maryland,  convoked  two  years  afterwards  [Feb., 
1639],  was  rendered  memorable  by  the  introduction  of  a  representative  body 
into  the  provincial  constitution.  The  population  of  the  province  had  derived 
so  large  an  increase  from  recent  emigrations,  that  it  was  impossible  for  all 
the  freeholders  to  continue  longer  to  exercise  the  right  of  legislation  by  per- 

""  '  Oldinixon.     Chalmers.     Hazard.     Bozman. 


310 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  111. 


sonal  attendance.     An  ordinance  was  consequently  established  for  the  elec- 
tion of  representatives,  and  the  modification  of  the  house  of  assembly.     It 
was  now  ordained,  that  the  persons,  elected  in  pursuance  of  writs  issued, 
should  be  termed  burgesses,  and  should  supply  the  place  of  the  freemen  who 
chose  them  in  the  same  manner  as  the  representatives  of  the  people  in  the 
parliament  of  England  ;  and  in  conjunction  with  a  smaller  body,  convoked 
by  the  special  nomination  of  the  proprietary,  together  with  the  governor  and 
secretary,  should  constitute  the  General  Assembly.  But  though  the  election 
of  representatives  was  thus  introduced  for  the  convenience  of  the  people, 
they  were  not  restricted  to  this  mode  of  exercising  their  legislatorial  rights ; 
for,  by  n  very  singular  provision,  it  was  ordained  that  all  freemen  declining; 
to  vote  at  the  election  of  burgesses  should  be  entitled  to  assume  a  personal 
share  in  the  deliberations  of  the  assembly.     The  several  branches  of  the 
legislature  were  appointed  to  meet  in  the  same  chamber  ;  and  all  acts  as- 
sented to  by  the  united  body  were  to  be  deemed  of  the  same  force  as  if  the 
proprietary  and  every  one  of  the  freemen  had  been  personally  present.     It 
was  not  long  before  the  people  were  sensible  of  the  advantage  that  the  demo- 
cratic  part  of  the  constitution  would  derive  from  the  separate  establishment 
of  its  appropriate  organ  ;  but,  although  this  innovation  was  suggested  by  tlic 
burgesses  very  shortly  afterwards,  the  form  of  convocation  that  was  now 
adopted  continued  to  be  retained  by  the  legislature  of  ^laryland  till  the  year 
1650.    Various  acts  were  passed  in  this  assembly  for  the  security  of  liberty, 
and  the  administration  of  justice,  according  to  the  laws  and  customs  of  Eng- 
land.   All  the  inhabitants  were  required  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 
king  ;  the  prerogatives  of  the  proprietary  were  distinctly  recognized  ;  and 
the  great  charter  of  England  was  declared  to  be  the  measure  of  the  liberties 
of  the  colonists.   To  obviate  the  inconveniences  that  were  apprehended  from 
the  almost  exclusive  attention  of  the  people  to  the  cuUivation  of  tobacco,  it 
was  judged  expedient  to  enjoin  tlie  planting  of  corn  by  law.    A  tax  was  im- 
posed for  the  supply  of  a  revenue  to  the  jiroprietary.     But  notwithstanding 
this  indication  ol  prosperity,  and  the  introduction  of  representative  govern- 
ment, that  the  colonists  were  not  yet  either  numerous  or  wealthy  may  be 
inferred  from  the  imposition  of  a  general  assessment  to  erect  a  water-mill  for 
the  use  of  the  province.      Slavery  seems  to  have  been  established  in  INIary- 
land  from  its  earliest  colonization  ;  for  an  act  of  this  assembly  describes  <Ae 
people  to  consist  of  all  Christian  inhabitants,  slaves  only  excepted.^     That 
slavery  should  gain  a  footing  in  any  community  of  professed  Christians  will 
excite  the  regret  of  every  one  who  knows  what  slavery  and  Christianity  mean. 
Some  surprise  may  mingle  with  our  regret,  when  we  behold  this  baneful  in- 
stitution adopted  in  a  community  of  Roman  Catholics,  and  of  men  who  not 
only  were  themselves  fugitives  from  persecution,  but  so  much  in  earnest  in 
the  profession  of  their  distinctive  faith,  as  for  its  sake  to  incur  exile  from 
their  native  country.     The  unlawfulness  of  slavery  had  been  solemnly  pro- 
claimed by  the  pontiff,  whom  the  Catholics  regarded  as  the  infallible  head 
of  their  church  ;  for  when  the  controversy  on  this  subject  was  submitted  to 
Leo  the  Tenth,  he  declared  that  "  not  only  the  Christian  religion,  but  na- 
ture herself,  cried  out  against  a  state  of  slavery.'"     But  the  good  which  an 
earthly  potentate  can  accomplish  or  promote  is  far  from  being  commensurate 
with  his  power  of  doing  evil.  JWhen  one  pope  divided  the  undiscovered 

"  •  Bacon'g  Laiii«r  01(lmixoir~"Clmlnier9.     Boimiin.     This  author,  unfortunately,  has  not 
continued  his  history  of  Mafyland  beyond  the  year  1G38. 


BOOK  HI] 


DISCONTENT  OF  VIRGINIA  QUIETED. 


311 


rtunatcly,  has  not 


parts  of  the  world  between  Castile  and  Portugal,  his  arrogant  distributive 
decree  was  held  sacred  ;  when  another  uttered  his  humane  and  equitable 
canon  against  the  lawfulness  of  slavery,  his  authority  was  contemned,  and 
proved  quite  inefficient. 

The  discontent  with  which  the  Virginians  regarded  the  establishment  of 
the  new  colony  was  heightened  by  the  contrast  between  the  liberty  and  hap- 
piness which  the  planters  of  Maryland  were  permitted  to  enjoy,  and  the 
tyranny  which  they  themselves  endured  from  the  government  of  Sir  John 
Harvey.    The  arguments  by  which  the  Maryland  charter  had  been  success- 
fully defended  against  them  tended  to  associate  the  invasion  of  their  liber- 
ties with  the  existence  of  this  colony  ;  for  the  complaint  of  dismemberment 
of  their  original  territory  was  encountered  by  the  plea,  that  the  designation 
of  the  territory  perished  with  the  charter  which  contained  it,  and  that,  by 
the  dissolution  of  the  company  to  which  the  charter  had  belonged,  all  the 
dominion  it  could  claim  over  unoccupied  regions  reverted  by  legal  necessity 
to  the  crown.     From  the  company,  or  at  least  during  its  existence,  the 
Virginians  had  obtained  a  degree  of  liberty,  which,  since  the  dissolution  of 
that  corporate  body,  was  greatly  circumscribed  by  the  encroachrnents  of  the 
royal  governor  ;  and  hence  their  ardent  wishes  for  the  restoration  of  their 
privileges  were  naturally  connected  with  the  reestablishment  of  a  corporation, 
whose  patent,  if  revived,  would  annul  the  charter  of  Maryland.     It  was 
fortunate  for  both  the  colonies,  that  the  king,  in  consenting  to  abandon  the 
illiberal  system  of  government  which  he  had  been  pursuing  in  Virginia, 
granted  to  the  inhabitants  rather  what  they  wanted  than  what  they  asked,  and 
restored  to  them  the  enjoyment  of  liberty,  without  the  appendage  of  the 
ancient  corporation  under  w'hich  it  had  been  acquired  ;  and  that  the  Virgin- 
ians, justly  appreciating  the  advantage  thus  accruing  to  them,  now  regarded 
with  aversion  the  proposed  revival  of  the  patent,  and  were  sensible  that  their 
iniercsts  would  be  rather  impaired  than  promoted  by  the  event  that  would 
enable  them  to  reannex  Maryland  to  their  territory.     Had  this  change  of 
circumstances  and  interests  been  deferred  but  a  short  time,  the  most  inju- 
rious consequences  might  have  resulted  to  both  the  colonies  ;  for  the  assem- 
bling of  the  Long  Parliament  [1640],  and  the  encouragement  which  it  be- 
stowed on  every  complaint  of  royal  misgovernment,  inspired  the  partners  of 
the  suppressed  Virginia  Company  with  the  hope  of  obtaining  a  restitution  of 
their  patent.     Fortified  by  the  opinion  of  eminent  lawyers  whom  they  con- 
sulted, and  who  confidently  assured  them  that  the  ancient  patents  of  Vir- 
ginia still  remained  in  force,  and  that  the  grant  of  Maryland,  as  derogatory 
to  them,  was  legally  void,  they  presented  an  application  to  the  parliament, 
complaining  of  the  unjust  invasion  that  their  privileges  had  suffered,  and 
demanding  that  the  government  of  Virginia  (embracing  all  tlie  territory  for- 
merly denoted  by  this  name)  should  be  restored  to  them.     This  application 
would  undoubtedly  have  prevailed,  if  it  had  been  seconded  by  the  Virginian 
colonists.     Its  failure  was  mainly  occasioned  by  the  vigorous  opposition  ot 
the  assembly  of  Virginia.^    [1641.] 

Under  the  constitution  which  was  thus  preserved  to  them  by  the  exertions 
of  their  formal  rivals,  the  colonists  of  Maryland  continued  to  flourish  m  the 
enjoyment  of  a  happy  and  prosperous  estate,  and  to  demonstrate,  by  their 
unabated  gratitude  to  the  proprietary,  that  the  spirit  of  liberty  rather  enhan- 
ces than  impairs  the  attachment  of  a  free^eop]e  to  its  ruler,  and  that  a 
~>~Chalniers.    ^nU,Boo\s.  I.,  Chap.  II. 


312 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOO^  IIL 


strong  sense  of  the  rights  of  men  is  no  way  incompntihlc  witlj  a  just  impres- 
sion of  tiieir  duties.  The  wise  and  friendly  policy  which  the  governor  pur- 
sued  towards  the  Indians  had  hitherto  preset /ed  a  peace  wliich  proved 
highly  beneficial  to  the  colony  in  its  infant  state.  But,  unfortunately,  the 
intrigues  of  Clayborne  had  inlected  the  minds  of  these  savages  with  a  jeal- 
ous suspicion,  which  was  nourished  by  the  visibly  increasing  strength  ol  the 
colony,  and  which  the  immoderate  avidity  of  some  of  the  planters  tended  to 
extend  and  inflame.  The  rapid  multiplication  of  the  stranger  race  sccnied 
to  threaten  the  extinction  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  ;  and  the  augmented 
value,  which  the  territory  they  sold  to  the  colonists  had  subsequently  derived 
from  the  industry  and  skill  of  its  new  nroprietors,  easily  suggested  to  their 
envy  and  ignorance  the  angry  surmise  that  they  had  been  defrauded  in  the 
original  vendition.  This  injurious  suspicion  was  confirmed  by  the  conduct 
of  various  individuals  among  the  planters,  who,  without  the  authority  of  gov- 
ernment,  procured  additional  grants  of  land  from  the  Indians,,  for  considera- 
tions which  were  grossly  inadequate,  and  which,  upon  reflection,  inspired  the 
(lefraiided  vendors  with  anger  and  discontent.*  '1  hese  causes  at  length  pro- 
duced the  calamity  which  the  governor  had  earnestly  labored  to  avert.  An 
Indian  war  broke  out  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1642,  and  continued  for 
two  years  after  to  administer  its  accustomed  evils,  without  the  occurrence 
of  any  decisive  issue,  or  the  attainment  of  any  considerable  advantage  by 
either  party.  Peace  having  been  with  some  difficulty  reestablished  [1644], 
the  provincial  assembly  enacted  laws  for  the  prevention  of  the  more  ob- 
vious causes  of  complaint  and  animosity.  All  acquisitions  of  land  from  the 
aborigines,  without  the  consent  of  the  proprietary,  were  pro'nouncec'  deroga- 
tory no  less  to  his  dignity  and  rights  than  to  the  safety  of  the  conii..anity, 
and  therefore  void  and  illegal.  It  wjis  declared  a  capital  felony  to  kidnap  or 
.sell  any  friendly  Indians  ;  and  a  high  misdemeanour  to  supph  them  with 
spirituous  liquors,  or  with  arms  or  ammunition.  Partly  by  these  regulations, 
hut  chiefly  by  the  humane  and  prudent  demeanour  of  the  officers  who  con- 
ducted the  proprietary  government,  the  peace  that  was  now  concluded  be- 
tween the  colonists  and  the  Indians  subsisted,  without  interruption,  for  a 
considerable  space  of  time.** 

But  the  province  was  not  long  permitted  to  enjoy  the  restoration  of  its 
tranquillity.  Scarcely  was  the  Indian  war  concluded,  when  the  intrigues  of 
Clayborne  exploded  in  mischiefs  of  far  greater  magnitude  and  more  lasting 

'  Similar  causes  of  offence  undoubtedly  begot  or  promoted  miiny  of  tlie  wars  between  the 
Indians  and  the  other  oolonics.  "  Such  things,"  snys  the  historian  of  New  Hampshire,  "  were 
indeed  disallowed  by  the  government,  and  would  always  have  been  punished,  if  the  Indians 
had  mode  complaint ;  but  they  knew  only  the  law  of  retaliation,  and  when  an  injury  was  in- 
flicted, it  was  never  forgotten  till  revenged."  The  fraud,  or  supposed  fraud,  of  an  individual 
might,  at  the  distaneo  of  many  years  from  its  perpetration,  involve  the  whole  colony  to  which 
he  belonged  in  an  Indian  war.     lielknap. 

"The  Indians,"  says  a  pious,  accurate,  and  impartial  writer,  "need  not  much  provocalinn  to 
begin  a  war  wilh  the  whiile  people  :  a  trifling  occurrence  is  readily  laid  hold  of  as  a  .fufliciont 
They  frequently  first  determine  upon  war,  and  iJien  wait  a  <-onvenient  opportunity 


to  find  reasons  (or  it.     Sometimes  they  liuvo  sold  districts  of  land  for  the  puriinse  oi  disputing 
the  transaction  and  finding  in  the  dispute  a  desired  occasion  of  war."      Loskiel's  History  of 


pretence.     T 

to  find  n 

the  trans 

the,  Mmarinn  Missions. 

"  Unprincipled  and  avaricious  traders  sometimes  resided  among  the  Indians ;  and,  that  tlicy 
niigiit  tne  more  easily  cheat  them,  first  filled  the  savages  drunk,  and  tlien  took  all  manner  of 
advantage  of  them  in  the  course  of  traffic.  When  the  Indian  recovers  from  his  fit  of  drtmkcn- 
ness,  and  finds  himself  robbed  of  his  treasures,  for  procuring  which  he  liad,  perhaps,  hunted 
a  whole  year,  he  is  filled  with  fury,  and  spurns  every  check  upon  his  vengeance."  Hewit's 
IlisUny  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia. 


DOOK  111] 


ACT  CONCERNING   RELIGION. 


313 


cti: 


malignity.     The  activity  of  this  entorprising  and  vindictive  spirit  had  been 
rhcd  hitherto  by  tlio  deference  which  he  affected  to  the  nleasiire  of  the 

hivated  his  interest  so  successfully,  that,  in  the 

the  king  the  appointment  of  treasurer  of  Vir- 

But  the  civil  wars  which  now  broke  out  in  Knglaiid,  leaving 


IJritisli  court,  at 
1642,  he  re 


ar 


giiua 


for  life.' 
hill)  no  longer  any  thing  to  hope  from  royal  patronage,  he  made  no  scruple 
to  declare  himself  a  partisan  of  the  popular  cause,  and  to  espouse  the  lor- 
tiiiics  of  a  party  f'\im  whose  predominance  he  expected  the  gratification  at 
once  of  his  aihoition  and  his  revenge.     In  conjunction  with  his  former  asso- 
ciates in  the  isle  of  Kent,  and  aided  !)y  the  contagious  ferment  of  the  times, 
lio  kindled   a   rebellion  in   Maryland   in  the  beginning  of  the  year   ini.'). 
Calvert,  destitute  of  forces  suitable  to  this  emergency,  was  constrained  to 
lake  shelte'    in  Virginia  ;  and  the  vacant  government  was  instantly  Jippro- 
piiatcd  by  t'le  insurgents,  and  exercised  with  a  violence  characteristic  ol  the 
ascendency  of  an  unpopular  and  unprincipled  faction.     Notwithstanding  the 
most  vigorous  exertions  of  the  governor,  seconded  by  the  well-affected  part 
of  the  community,  the  revolt  was  not  suppressed  till  the  autumn  of  the  fol- 
lowing year.    [August,  1646.]    The  afflictions  of  that  calamitous  period  are 
indicated  by  a  statute  of  the  assembly,  which  recites  ''that  the  province  has 
l,.cn  wasted  by  a  miserable  dissension  and  unhappy  war,  which  has  been 
closed  by  the  joyful  restitution  of  a  blessed  peace."     To  promote  the  gen- 
eral tranquillity  and  confidence,  an  act  of  pardon  and  oblivion  was  passed, 
from  the  benefits  of  which  only  a  few  leading  agitators  were  excepted  ;  and 
nil  suits  were  f^isallowed  for  wrongs  perpetrated  dining  the  revolt.     But  the 
additional  tributes  which  it  was  found  necessary  to  exact  from  the  people 
were  consequences  of  the  insurrection  that  did  not  so  soon  pass  away  ;  and 
three  years  afterwards  [1649],  a  temporary  impost  often  shillings  on  every 
liinulrcd-weight  of  tobacco  exported  in  Dutch  vessels  was  granted  to  the 
proprietary,  —  the  one  half  of  which  was  expressly  appropriated  to  the  liqui- 
dation of  expenses  incurred  for  tlio  recovery  and  defence  of  the  province,  — 
while  the  other  was  declared  to  be  conferred  on  him   for  the  purpose  of 
enabling  him  the  better  to  provide  for  the  public  safety  in  time  to  come.^ 

In  die  assembly  by  which  the  imposition  of  this  tribute  was  decreed,  a 
magnanimous  attempt  was  made  to  preserve  the  peace  of  the  colony,  by 
extinguishing  within  its  limits  one  of  the  most  fertile  sources  of  human  strife 
and  animosity.  It  had  been  proclaimed  from  the  very  beginning  by  the 
•  proprietary,  that  religious  toleration  should  constitute  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  social  union  over  which  he  presided  ;  and  the  assembly  of 
the  province,  composed  chiefly  of  Roman  Catholics,  now  proceeded,  by  a 
memorable  Jict  concerning  Religion,  to  interweave  this  noble  princi|)le  into 
its  legislative  constitutions.  The  statute  commenced  with  a  preamble,  de- 
claring that  the  enforcement  of  the  conscience  had  been  of  dangerous  conse- 
(juenct  in  those  countries  wherein  it  had  been  practised  ;  and  ordained,  that, 
thereafter,  no  persons  professing  to  believe  in  Jesus  Christ  should  be  mo- 
lested on  account  of  their  faith,  or  denied  the  free  exercise  of  their  particular 
modes  of  worship  ;  that  persons  molesting  any  individual,  on  account  of  his 
religious  tenets  or  ecclesiastical  practices,  should  pay  treble  damages  to  the 
party  aggrieved,  and  twenty  shillings  to  the  proprietary  ;  that  those  who 
should  reproach  their  neighbours  with  opprobrious  names  or  epithets,  infer- 
ring religious  distinctions,  should  forfeit  ten  shillings  to  the  persons  so  in- 
'^Ilaxard.  '  Preface  to  Bacon's  Ijnes.    Ch.-ilmcrs. 


VOL.    I. 


40 


AA 


314 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III, 


suited  ;  that  any  one  speaking  reproachfully  against  the  blessed  Virgin  or 
the  apostles  should  forfeit  five  pounds  ;  and  that  blasphemy  against  God 
bhould  be  punished  with  death.^     By  the  enactment  of  this  statute,  the 
Catholic  planters  of  Maryland  procured  to  their  adopted  country  the  dis- 
tineuished  praise  of  being  the  first  of  the  American  States  in  which  tolera- 
tion was  established  by  law  ;''  and  graced  their  peculiar  faith  wuh  the  sig- 
nal  and  unwonted  merit  of  protecting  those  rights  of  conscience  which  no 
other  Christian  association  in  the  world  was  yet  sufficiently  humane  and  en- 
lightened to  recognize.     It  is  a  striking  and  instructive  spectacle,  to  behold 
at  this  period  the  Puritans  persecuting  their  Protestant  brethi  n  in  New 
England;  the  Protestant  Episcopalians  inflicting  similar  rigor  and  injustice 
on  the  Puritans  in  Virginia ;  and  the  Catholics,  against  Nvhorn  all  the  others 
were  combined,  forming  in  Maryland  a  sanctuary  where  Christians  of  every 
denomination  might  worship,  yet  none  might  oppress,  and  vvhere  even  Prot- 
estants  sought  refuge  from  Protestant  intolerance.     If  the  dangers  to  which 
the  Maryland  Catholics  must  have  felt  themselves  exposed,  trom  the  dis- 
favor with  which  they  were  regarded  by  the  other  colonial  communities  in 
their  vicinity,  and  from  the  ascendency  which  their  most  zealous  adver- 
saries, the  Presbyterians,  were  acquiring  in  the  councils  oi  the  parent  state, 
may  be  supposed -to  account  in  some  degree  for  their  cultivation  of  a  prin- 
ciple  of  which  they  manifestly  needed  the  protection,  the  surmise  will  de- 
tract very  little  from  the  merit  of  the  authors  of  this  excellent  law.     The 
disposition  of  mankind  towards  moderation  has  ever  needed  adventitious 
support ;  and  Christian  sentiment  is  not  depreciated  by  the  supposition  that 
deems  it  capable  of  deriving  an  accession  to  its  purity  from  the  experience 
of  persecution.     It  is  by  divine  grace  alone  that  the  fire  of  persecution  thus 
sometimes  tends  to  refine  virtue  and  consume  the  dross  incident  even  to  this 
celestial  principle  in  its  coexistence  with  human  frailty ;  and  the  progress 
of  our  history  will  abundantly  demonstrate,  that,  without  such  overruling 
a-ency,  the  commission  of  injustice  naturally  tends  to  its  onvti  reproduction, 
and  that  the  experience  of  it  engenders  a  much  stronger  disposition  to  re- 
taliate  its  severities  than  to  sympathize  with  hs  victims.    It  had  been  happy 
for  the  credit  of  the  Protestants,  whose  hostility  perhaps  promoted  die 
moderation  of  the  Catholics  of  Maryland,  if  they  had  imitated  the  virtue  thus 
elicited  by  apprehension  of  their  own  violence  and  injustice.     But,  unor- 
tunatelv,  a  great  proportion  even  of  those  fugitives  who  were  constrained  to 
seek  shelter  among  the  Catholics  from  the  persecutions  of  their  own  Prot- . 
estant  brethren  carried  with  them  into  exile  the  same  intolerance  ol  which 
they  had  themselves  already  been  the  victims  ;  and  the  Presbyterians  and 
other  dissenters,  whonow_bcgaiUo  flock  in  considerable  numbers  froln^lr^ 

i  Rhode'llfand  was  at  this  time  the  only  one  of  the  Protestant  Bcftlements  in  «hi.h  tl,c 
nrinrinle  of  Sntion  was  r.Tn,;ni/.od  ;  an/nvon  there  Roman  Cathol.rs  were  excluded  from 
f.ar"icrpati«V^i  tl"e  polilieal  rights  that  were  enjoyed  hy  the  rest  of  the  connnun.  y . 
%''.^  I'rutbn  thus  early  established  in  Maryland  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  Mm 
the  no,  Irn  h  sturv  of  the^Catholic  ehurch.  if  this  ehurrh  (w  nch  obtained  en,p.,ral  power 
oL  Sore  nnvo^lhcr,  and  had  been  aecnstomed  to  excreisc  it  dur.n|?  «  peno.!  when  .t  w.s 
universa  Iv  .rfciated  vhku  fierce,  vindictive  spirit)  supplied  the  first  Cbr.sl.an  porscntors 
^iralts^.rpl^  tlu^^f^^^^^  professors  and  practitioners  of  toleration  "  One  is  asto.nsluMi 
says  I  RTerU  n  ///»<«ryV  JImericn,  Bof.k  V.),  "  to  llnd  a  Hpun.sh  monk  "f  l-^'Xtr'"' 
:Zurl  amon,  the    rst  ad^,<^tes  against  persecu..n.md  in    e^  N" 


No 

10 


^hoSteen^^iy   is  entitled  to  Veproich  another  with  intoleran.e    'rh,s  -f;-  ■"f-J- 
jeet  |.irre^ived  the  most  admirable  illustration  from  Mr.  Ilallam  in  his  ConmuUonul  //«• 


jee 

lory  of  England 


BOOK  HI]    ACTS  FOR  THE  SECURITY  OF  POLITICAL  FREEDOM.      3^5 

ginia  to  Maryland,'  gradually  formed  a  Protestant  confederacy  against  the 
interests  of  the  original  settlers  ;  and,  with  ingratitude  still  more  odious  than 
their  injustice,  projected  the  abrogation  not  only  of  the  Catholic  worship,  but 
of  every  part  of  that  system  of  toleration  under  whose  sheltering  hospitality 
they  were  enabled  to  conspire  its  downfall.  But  though  the  Catholics  were 
thus  ill  requited  by  their  Protestant  guests,  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  the  calamities  that  subsequently  desolated  the  province  were  produced 
by  the  toleration  which  her  assembly  now  established,  or  that  the  Catholics 
were  really  losers  by  this  act  of  justice  and  liberality.  From  the  disposition 
of  tlie  prevailing  party  in  England,  and  the  state  of  the  other  colonial  settle- 
ments, the  catastrophe  that  befell  the  liberties  of  the  Maryland  Cathohcs 
could  not  possibly  have  been  evaded  ;  and  if  tlie  virtue  they  now  displayed 
was  unable  to  avert  their  fate,  it  exempted  them  at  least  from  the  reproach 
of  deserving  it  ;  it  ridoubled  the  guilt  and  scandal  incurred  by  their  adver- 
saries, and  achieved  for  themselves  a  reputation  more  lasting  and  honorable 
than  political  triumph  or  temporal  elevation. 

From  the  establishment  of  religious  liberty  [1650],  the  assembly  of  Mary- 
land extended  its  attention  to  the  security  of  political  freedom  :  and  in  the 
following  year  the  constitution  of  this  provinc?  received  that  structure,  which, 
with  some  short  interruptions,  it  continued  to  retain  for  more  than  a  century 
after.     So  early  as  the  year  1642,  the  burgesses  who  were  then  elected 
members  of  the  existing  assembly  expre;.sed  a  desire  "  that  they  might  be 
separated,  and  sit  by  themselves,  and  have  a  negative."     Their  proposition 
was  disallowed  at  that  time  ;  but  now,  in  conformity  with  it,  a  statute  was 
enacted,  ordaining  that  members  called  to  the  assembly  by  special  writ  of 
the  proprietary  should  form  the  upper  house,  whilu  chose  who  were  chosen 
by  their  fellow-colonists  should  form  the  lower  house  ;   and  that  all  bills 
approved  by  the  two  branches  of  the  legislature  and  ratified  by  the  governor 
should  be  acknowledged  and  obeyed  as  the  laws  of  the  province.     An  act 
of  recognition  of  the  rights  of  Lord  Baltimore  was  passed  in  the  same  ses- 
sion.    The  assembly  declared  itself  bound  by  the  laws  both  of  God  and 
man  to  acknowledge  his  just  title  by  virtue  of  the  grant  of  the  late  King 
Charles  of  England  ;  it  accepted  his  authority,  and  obliged  its  constituerits 
and  their  posterity  for  ever  10  defend  him  and  his  heirs  in  his  seigniorial 
privileges  and  preeminences,  so  far  as  they  should  not  infringe  the  just  lib- 
erties of  the  fr  ae-born  subjects  of  England  ;  and  it  besought  him  to  accept 
this  act,  as  a  testimony  to  himself  and  his  posterity  of  its  fidelity  and  thank- 
fulness for  the  manifold  benefits  which  the  colony  had  derived  from  him. 
Blending  a  due  regard  to  the  rights  of  the  people  with  a  just  gratitude  to  the 
proprietary,  the  assembly  at  the  same  time  enacted  a  law  prohibiting  the 
imposition  of  taxes  without  the  consent  of  the  freemen,  and  declaring  in  its 
preamble,  "  that,  as  the  proprietary's  strength  doth  consist  in  the  affections 
of  his  people,  so  on  them  he  doth  rely  for  his  supplies,  not  doubting  of  their 
duty  and  assistance  on  all  just  occasions."  ^     In  prosecution  of  its  patriotic 
labors,  the  assembly  framed  laws  for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  and  the  encour- 
agement of  agriculture  and  commerce  ;  ^  and  a  short  gleam  of  tranquil  pros- 
perity preceded  the  calamities  which  tlie  province  was  fated  again  to  experi- 
ence from  the  evil  genius  of  Clayborne  and  the  mischievous  interference  of 

the  parent  state.  *  t-.     1     j    i    i 

The  parliament,  having  now  established  its  supremacy  in  England,  had 

1  niHmiicon     WvniuT    Pitkin.  *  Lam.  '  Ibid- 


nl 


m 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOR  HI. 


leisure  to  extend  its  views  beyond  the  Atlantic  ;  and  if  the  people  of  Vir- 
cinia  were  exposed  by  their  political  sentiments  to  a  coUision  with  this  for- 
midable power,  the  inhabitants  of  Maryland  were  not  less  obnoxious  to  its 
bicotrv  from  their  rehgious  tenets.     This  latter  province  was  not  denounced 
bv  the  parliamentary  ordinance  of  1650  as  in  a  state  of  rebellion,  like  Vir- 
einia  •  but  it  was  comprehended  in  that  part  of  the  ordmance  which  declared 
That  the  plantations  were,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  dependent  on  England, 
and  subject  to  her  laws.     In  prosecution  of  the  object  and  purpose  ol  this 
ordinance,  certain  commissioners,  of  whom  Clayborne  was  one,  were  ap- 
pointed  to  reduce  and  govern  the  colonies  within  the  Bay  ol  Chesapeake, 
r  September,  1651].  In  Virginia,  where  resistance  was  attempted,  the  exist. 
inc  administration  was  instantly  suppressed  :  but  as  the  proprietary  of  Mary, 
land  professed  his  willingness  to  acknowledge  the  parliamentary  jurisdiction, 
the  commissioiiers  were  compelled  (in  conformity  witHf  their  instructions)  to 
respect  his  rights  [1652]  ;  and  he  was  suffered  to  rule  the  province,  though 
as  a  dependent  functionary  of  the  keepers  of  the  liberties  of   -^ngland.i    But 
Clayborne  was  not  to  be  thus  deterred  from  availing  hunsell  ot  an  oppor- 
tunity so  favorable  to  the  gratification  of  his  malignity  ;  and,  unfortunately, 
his  designs  were  favored  by  the  distractions  in  Kngland  that  preceded  the 
elevation  of  Cromwell  to  the  protectorate,  and  by  the  disunion  which  began 
to  prevail  in  the  province  from  the  pretensions  oi  the  I  rotcstant.  exiles  who 
had  recently  united  themselves  to  its  population.  Ever  the  ally  of  the  strongest 
party,  Clayborne  hastened  to  espouse  the  fortunes  ot  Cromwell  [1653], 
whose  triumph  he  easily  foresaw  ;  and  inflamed  the  dissensions  of  the  prov- 
ince, by  encouraging  the  Protestants  to  combine  the  pursuit  of  their  om 
ascendency  with  the  recognition  of  the  protectoral  government,      llie  con- 
tentions of  the  two  parties  were  at  length  exasperated  to  the  extremity  of 
civil  war  •  and   after  various  skirmishes,  which  were  fought  with  alternate 
success,  the  Catholics  and  the  other  partisans  of  the  proprietary  were  de- 
feated in  a  decisive  engagement  [1654],  the  governor  deposed,  and  the 
admini.^tration  usurped  by  Clayborne  and  his  associates. 

Mthouf'h  the  victorious  party  did  not  consider  themselves  warranted  ex- 
pressly to'^deny  the  title  of  the  proprietary,  they  made  haste  to  signalize  their 
triumph  by  abolishing  his  institutions.  Fuller  and  Preston,  \v-liom  Clayborne 
appointed  I  .lulv]  commissioners  for  directing  the  affairs  of  Mary  and  under 
his  Highness  the  Lord  Protector,  convoked  a  provincial  assembly  [Octo- 
ber] •  and  some  of  the  persons  who  were  elected  burgesses  having  rokised 
to  serve  in  a  capacity  which  they  deemed  inconsistent  with  their  obligations 
to  Lord  Baltimore,^'  the  legislative  power  was  the  more  exclusively  appro- 
priated by  the  partisans  of  innovation.  The  assembly  having,  as  a  prehmi- 
nary  mca'sure,  passed  an  act  of  recognition  of  CromwelVs  just  title  and  au- 
thority, proceeded  to  frame  an  ordinance  concerning  religion,  which  dero- 
cnted  not  less  signally  from  the  credit  of  the  Protestant  cause  than  from  the 
justice  and  liberality  of  the  Protecior'sadministration.''     %  tins  oicbniuKo 

'"*  lUrnu-^l'rtfncr.     Tliurlow'.*  Slate  Papers "     »  Baron's  -rVc/jr*.  »  Chiilim.rs. 

*  C'o  W..1I  -m  at  lon.t  ol,n..xiouB  to  th.'  .•hnrgo  of  Inning  suflor...!  t  u,  fr.nn.p  ,  o  1ms  jnv 
nmt  of  h?ProU.«tnnt  <•.....«  to  be  .ignar.'/.ul  by  tbfi  ext  n.t.on  of  u  tol..n,t.on  .  stal.lish.,!  U 
1  ,  n  Cat .  .Ii.«.  Tbnt  bo  inrito.l,  or  even  upprov.ul,  tl.is  pro«-e.l.ns  ..  bv  no  n.cnns  n^  • 
tm  In  t  ■  roronlH  of  tb.  provin.e,  tb.To  is  .,  b-U.-r  fr^....  Imn  to  hs<..nun..s.o.M>rs  .l,>™g 
b  m  .to  b..HV  ibrnmolvo.  about  rdipion,  but  to  ...ttl..  tb.  .-.v.l  Rovornnu-nt  tliabno^^ 
YH  nlvriing  to  Ibo  govornor  nnd  roum-il  of  Virginin,  he  rrprombcd  tbern  wnb  nn,mt 
hnvin..yv;n'!=o«nten>.n,e  nnd  m.pport  to  tbe  Cntbobc  ...terrst  ;n  Mary Inn.l  _H«';k.  .l"  - 
twtorVoi  much  more  distinguished  by  Ib-j  vigor  ul  hi*  conauct  man  l!.c  pt.-r»pic«.t;  ol  ... 


*'■-«- 


i  i 


BOOK  III.] 


OVERTHROW  OF  RELIGIOUS  LIBERTY. 


ai7 


it  was  declared  that  no  persons  professing  the  doctrines  of  the  Romish  church 
could  be  protected  in  the  province  by  the  laws  of  England  formerly  estab- 
lished and  yet  unrepealed,  or  by  the  protector^l  government  ;  and  that  such 
as  professed  faith  in  God  by  Jesus  Christ,  though  dissenting  from  the  doc- 
trine and  discipline  generally  established  in  the  British  dominions,  should  not 
be  restrained  from  the  exercise  of  their  religion  ;  "  provided  such  liberty 
be  not  extended  to  popery  or  prelacy  ;  or  to  such  as,  under  the  profession 
of  Christianity,  practise  hcentiousness."  '  Thus  the  Roman  Catholics  were 
deprived  of  the  protection  of  law  in  the  commonwealth  which  their  own,  in- 
dustry and  virtue  had  reared,  and  by  those  Protestants  to  who.m  their  charity 
had  given  a  country  and  a  home.  This  unworthy  triumph  was  hailed  by  the 
zealots  against  popery  in  London,  where  a  book  was  pubUshed  soon  alter 
under  the  title  of  Babyloix's  Fall  in  Maryland.  But  the  Catholics  were  not 
the  only  parties  who  experienced  the  severity  of  the  new  government.  All 
die  Protestant  Dissenters  were  exposed  more  or  less  to  persecution  ;  and 
a  number  of  Quakers,  having  resorted  some  time  after  to  the  province,  and 
begun  to  preach  against  judicial  oaths  and  military  pursuits,  were  denounced 
l)y  the  government  as  heretical  vagabonds,  and  underwent  the  punishment  of 
tloe;ging  and .  imprisonment.'' 

As  Lord  Baltimore's  right  to  the  proprietariship  of  the  province  was  MJU 
outwardly  recognized,  the  commissioneis,  either  deeming  it  requisite  to  the 
formality  of  their  proceedings,  or  more  pi'^bably  studying  to  embroil  liim 
will)  the  Protector,  demanded  his  assent  to  the  changes  which  were  tlays, in- 
troduced.    But  he  firmly  refused  to  sanction  either  the  deposition  of,  lus 
governor,  or  any  one  of  the  recent  measures  of  the  coministsionersaBdi their 
adiierent?  ;  and  declared  in  particular,  with  respect  to  the  free  exercise  of 
religious  worship,  that  he  never  wpyld  assent  to  the  repesl  of  a  law  which 
protected  the  most  sacred  rights  of  mankind-   The  commissioners,  with.ex- 
[Messious  of  surprise  either  hypocritical  or  ridiculous,  coinplflined  of  his.Cioa- 
tuinacy  to  Cromwell,  to  whom  they  continued  from  time  to  time  to  tra,iwnit 
tliemost  elaborate  representations  of  the  tyranny,  6i^o.<»>j/,  and  royalist  pc-odi- 
lections  of  Lord  Bahimore,  and  the  expediency  of  depriving  him  of  .ihe 
|Hoprietariship  of  the  province.^  [1655.]    But  all  tl^ir  representations  .were 
ineffectual.     Lord  Baltinjore  was  allowed  by  Cromwell  to  retain,  at  ieast 
nominally,  the  rights  which  he  was  practically  debarred  from  enjoying  ;,  and 
the  commissioners  remained  in  the  province  to  exercise,  .the  tyranny  .and 
bigotry  of  which  they  falsely  accused  him.     Their  conduct,  as  intemperate 
a.s  their  counsels,  disturbed  the  peace  of  the  colony,  and  rendered  their,  owp 
power  insecure.    The  people,  lately  so  tranquil  and  happy,  were  now  a  >prey 
to  all  those  disorders  wliich  never  fail  to  result  from  religions  persecution 
embittered  by  the  triumph  of  party  in  civil  contention.     Inthis  situation. an 
insurrection  was  easily  raised  by  .losias  Fendal,  a  restless  and.  profligate  .ad- 
venturer, destined  by  his  intrigues  to  become  the  Clayborne  of  the  J(iext 
generation,  and  who  now  sought  occasion  to  indulge  his  iwtural  tiurbulence 

liiclion;  and  liis  correspondents  wore  sometimes  unable  to  discover  the  meaning  of  his  let- 
ter. In  one  of  his  communications  to  the  Mary  land  commisgion^re,  )v«;fio(l  liini  r^pfijiiapd- 
ing  tlicm  for  Imviiig  misunderstood  his  former  directions.  Clialmiers.  Hazard.  Ke.gcftpi^, 
nil  many  occasions,  to  have  studied  an  ambiguity  of  language,  that  left  him  free  to  apprSVe  or 
ilinapprove  the  moaeurcu  of  his  olllcers,  according  to  the  succt^ss  that  might  attend  them.  ' 

'  Ijivs.  ,  ^  Chalmers. 

'  Langfi)rd'8  Ii(futation  of  a  Scnndajn 
Clinlmers.    tiazard.    The  only  copy 
library  of  Ms ;  QJ^^sera. 


■^  v;namicnt. 
ot  Langford's  tract  that  I  havojeyer  me<;witn  vvaa  l|(,|(i0 


AA 


318 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III, 


under  pretence  of  supporting  the  rights  of  the  proprietary  and  the  original 
constitution  of  the  province.    [1656.]    This  insurrection  was  productive  of 
very  unhappy  consequences  to  the  colony.     It  induced  Lord  Baltimore  to 
repose  an  ill-grounded  confidence  in  Fendal ;  and  its  suppression  was  at- 
tended with  increased  severities  on  the  part  of  the  commissioners,  and  ad- 
ditional exactions  from  the  people.^  •    .u-  w  .        , 
The  affairs  of  the  colony  remained  for  two  years  longer  in  thisllistracted 
condition  ;  when  at  length  the  commissioners,  disgusted  with  the  disorders 
which  they  had  produced,  but  were  unable  to  compose,  and  finding  all  dieir 
efforts  unavailing  to  procure  the  abrogation  of  Lord  Baltimore  s  tide,  to 
which  they  ascribed  the  unappeasable  discontent  of  a  great  part  oi  the  popu- 
lation, surrendered  .the  municipal  administration  into  the  hands  of  Fendal, 
who  had  been  appointed  governor  by  the  proprietary.  [1658.  J     But  this 
measure,  so  far  from  restoring  the  public  quiet,  contributed  to  aggravate  the 
mischiefs  which  infested  the  province,  by  giving  scope  to  the  machinations 
of  that  unprincipled  agitator,  whose  habitual  restlessness  and  impetuosity  had 
been  mistaken  for  attachment  to  the  proprietary  systeni.    No  sooner  had  he 
convoked  an  assembly  [Februaiy,  1659],  than  with  unblushing  treachery  he 
surrendered  into  the  hands  of  the  burgesses  the  trust  which  Lord  Baltimore 
had  committed  to  him,  and  accepted  from  them  a  new  commission  as  gov 
ernor  :  and  the  burgesses,  at  his  instigation,  dissolved  the  upper  house  and 
assumed  to  themselves  the  whole  legislative  power  of  the  state.    I  endal  and 
his  associates  were  probably  encouraged  to  pursue  this  lawless  course  by  the 
distractions  of  the  Enghsh  commonwealth  that  followed  the  .death  of  the 
Protector.     Their  administration,  which  was  chiefly  distinguished  by  the 
imposition  of  heavy  taxes,  and  a  bitter  persecution  of  the  Quakers  ^as  hap- 
pily  soon  terminated  by  the  restoration  of  Charles  the  Second  [1660]  ;  when 
Philip  Calvert,  producing  a  commission  to  himself  from  the  proprietary,  and 
a  letter  from  the  king  commanding  all  his  officers  and  other  subjects  m 
Maryland  to  assist  in  the  reestablishment  of  Lord  Baltimore  s  jurisdiction, 
found  his  authority  universally  recognized  and  peaceably  obeyed.     1<  endal 
was  now  tried  for  high  treason,  and  found  guilty  ;  but  the  clemency  of  the 
proprietary  prevailed  over  his  resentment ;  and  he  granted  the  convict  a  par- 
don,  qualified  by  the  imposition  of  a  moderate  fine,  and  a  declaration  of  his 
perpetual  incapacity  of  public  trust.    This  lenity  was  very  ill-requited  by  its 
worthless  object,  who  was  reserved  by  farther  intrigues  and  treachery  to 
disturb  at  an  after  period  the  repose  of  the  province.  [1661 .]  His  accom- 
plices, upon  a  timely  submission,  were  pardoned  without  even  undergoing  a 
Trial.     The  recent  usurpations  were  passed  over  in  prudent  silence,  and 
buried  in  a  generous  oblivion  ;  toleration  was  forthwith  restored  ;  and  the 
inhabitants  of  Maryland  once  more  experienced  the  blessings  of  a  mild  gov- 
ernment and  internal  tranquillity." 

Happily  for  mankind,  amidst  the  contemions  of  political  factions  and  the 
revolutions  of  government,  there  generally  subsists,  in  every  community,  an 
under-current  of  peaceful  and  industrious  life,  which  pursues  its  course 
undisturbed  by  the  tempests  that  agitate  and  deform  the  upper  region  o. 
society.  Notwithstanding  the  disorders  to  which  Maryland  was  so  long  a 
prey,  the  province  had  continued  to  increase  in  population,  industry,  and 
weahh  ;  and  at  the  epoch  of  the  Restoration  it  contained  about  twelve 
thousand  inhabitants.'     The  reestablishment  of  a  humane  government  and 


'  Luot.    Chalmera. 


'  Ibid. 


'  ChoSmcn. 


BOOK  III]      '  GENERAL  PROSPERITY.  —  ALSOP'S  ACCOUNT. 


319 


issioners,  and  ad- 


eeneral  subordination,  however,  had  manifestly  the  effect  of  quickening  the 
march  of  prosperity  ;  for,  about  five  years  after  the  present  epoch,  we  find 
tlie  population  increased  to  sixteen  thousand  persons.    At  this  latter  period, 
the  number  of  ships  trading  from  England  and  other  parts  of  the  British 
dominions  to  Maryland  was  computed  at  one  hundred.^     So  great  was  the 
demand  for  labor  in  the  colony,  and  so  liberal  its  reward,  that  even  the  intro- 
duction <Jf  negro  slavery  had  not  been  able  to  degrade  it  in  public  esteem. 
Industry,  amply  recompensed,  was  animated  and  cheerful ;  and,  closely  con- 
nected with  independence  and  improvement  of  condition,  was  the  object  of 
general  respect.     Every  young  person  was  trained  to  useful  labor  ;  and 
though  a  legal  provision  was  made  for  the  support  of  the  poor,  pauperism 
and  beggary  were  practically  unknown  ;  and  the  public  bounty,  though  some- 
times delicately  conveyed  to  the  necessities  of  proud  poverty  or  modest 
misfortune,  was  never  openly  solicited.'*     An  account  of  the  condition  of 
Maryland  was  published  at  London,  in  the  year  1666,  by  George  Alsop, 
who  resided  in  the  province  both  prior  and  subsequent  to  the  Restoration. 
From  his  representation  it  appears  that  a  great  deal  of  the  agricultural  work 
of  die  colonists  was  performed  by  indented  servants  ;  and  that  the  treatment 
of  these  persons  was  so  humane,  and  the  allotment  of  land  and  stock  which 
they  received  from  their  masters  at  the  end  of  their  quadrennial  servitude  so 
ample,  that  the  author,  who  himself  had  served  in  this  capacity,  declares  he 
was  much  happier  as  an  indented  servant  in  Maryland  than  as  an  apprentice 
in  London.     It  was  common  for  ruined  tradesmen  and  indigent  laborers  in 
England  to  embrace  this  resource  for  retrieving  or  improving  their  worldly 
circumstances ;  though  many  were  deterred  by  the  misrepresentations  circu- 
lated by  shallow  politicians  who  dreaded  the  depopulation  of  the  realm,  or 
by  interested  employers  who  apprehended  an  augmentation  of  the  wages  of 
labor  at  home.  No  emigrants  (says  Alsop)  were  more  successful  in  bettering 
iheir  condition  than  female  servants  ;  they  invariably  obtained  an  immediate 
and  respectable  establishment  in  marriage.     Money  was  very  scarce  in  the 
colony,  and  was  never  employed  in  its  domestic  transactions  ;  tobacco  being 
the  universal  medium  of  exchange,  the  remuneration  of  all  services,  civil, 
military,  and  ecclesiastical,  and  the  measure  of  all  penal  amercements.  This 
author,  when  he  has  occasion  to  mention  the  troubles  that  preceded  the 
Restoration,  alludes  to  them  simply  as  affairs  of  state  and  events  of  merely 
partial  interest  and  importance.     Of  some  of  the  personages  who  were  cul- 
pably implicated  in  them,  it  was  his  opinion  "  that  their  thoughts  were  not 
so  bad  at  first,  as  their  actions  would  have  led  them  into  in  process  of  time."  ' 
A  great  proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of  Maryland,  and  in  particular  all 
the  Catholic  part  of  the  population,  were  sincerely  attached  to  the  royal 
government  ;  *  and  the  gratification  they  derived  from  the  restoration  of  the 
king  enhanced  the  satisfaction  with  which  they  returned  to  the  patriarchal 
sway  of  their  benevolent  proprietary.*  [May,  1661.]    During  the  general 
festivity  that  ensued  in  the  province,  the  house  of  assembly  was  convoked 
liy  the  governor.     One  of  the  first  measures  undertaken  by  this  body  aimed 


Blome's  Present  Slate  of  his  Mnjesty's  Isles  and  Territories  in  America. 
The  Enirliiih  civil  wars  produced  n  considerable  imi 
condition  of  laborers  in  North  Americn,  by  interrupting  the  emigration  of 


'  Oldmixon, 

'  AJHop'g  Maryland. 


'  Chalmcn. 


provement  in  tlie 
com- 
petitors for  employment.     Winthrop's  Journal.  .    ,.   , 
'  Ahop.    The  Advocates'  Library  of  Edinburgh  contains  a  copy  of  this  little  work. 
♦  It  was  one  of  the  charges  preferred  against  the  proprietary  by  Cromwell's  cominis- 
lioncrs,  that  Charles  the  Second  had  been  nroclaimed  by  the  people  of  Maryland,  without 
wy  signification  of  dirpkr.sure  from  Lord  Baltimore.    Hazard. 


32Q 


mj3TiOB,Y  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III. 


at  providing  a  remedy  for  the  scarcity  of  money,  which,.t  was  declared, 
formed  a  serious  obstruction  to  the  advancement  of  trade.  For  this  purpose, 
thev  besought  the  proprietary  to  establish  a  mint  m  the  province  ;  and  en- 
Icted  that  the  money  to  he  coined  should  be  of  as  good  silver  as  English 
spelling,  aud  that  the  proprietary  should  accept  it  m  payment  of  hs  rents. 
This  is  the  second  instance  that  we  have  witnessed,  and  the  last  that  ever 
occurred,  of  a  pretension  to  the  right  of  coinmg  money  in  the  BrUish 
provinces  of  Norih  America.  A  cofnage  accordingly  took  place  in  Mary- 
and  ;  and  the  measure  seems  neither  to  have  offended  he  British  govern- 
ment  nor  to  have  disappointed  the  colonists;  for  the  law  was  confirmed 
aad  declared  perpetual  by  the  assembly  in  the  year  16. G.  ^et,  in  con- 
sequence,  perhaps,  of  die  blame  that  Massachusetts  incurred  for  a  similar 
proceeding,  the  practice  of  coining  soon  after  fell  into  disuse,  and  the  ordi- 
nances thai  sanctioned  it  were  repealed.  In  the  same  session  there  was 
passed  an  act  for  the  imposition  of  port  duties,  which  conferred  on  the 
proprietary  half  a  pound  of  powder  and  three  pounds  of  shot  for  every 
L  of  the  burden  of  vessels  not  belonging  to  the  province. ^  This  ac  ,  as 
we  shall  afterwards  find,  gave  rise  to  some  cpntroversy  at  the  period  of 

the  British  Revolution.  •  ♦  j  i     .1 

The  happiness  and  prosperity  of  the  colonists  were  promoted  by  the 
arrival,  in  (he  following  year  [1662],  of  Charles  Calvert,  eldest  son  0   tl^ 
Brpprie^ary,  whom  his  father  appointed  the  resident  governor  of  Maryland, 
Fpr  the  purpose  of  enabling  him  to  form  acquaintance  with  the  people  over 
vvhom  he  was  destined  to  maintain  the  hereditary  jurisdiction.     Iroin  the 
various  acts  of  gratitude  (as  they  were  termed)  that  emanated  from  the 
aioinbly  during  his  presidency,  Charles  Calvert  appea.rs  to  have  followed, 
with  sucpos?ful  virtue,  the  wise  and  generous  policy  of  his.  father ;  and  h.s 
administration,  first  as  governor,  and  afterwards  as  proprietary,  proved  for 
a  considerable  period  aldce  lionorable  to  himself,  beneficial  to  the  public 
wJ,  and  aoceptabJe  to  the  people.     The  provincial  records,  during  this 
Sd,  are  occupied  exclusively  with  details  of  jurisprudence  aijd.the  pro- 
Less  of  legislation.     Various  laws  were  enacted  by  tlie  assembly  for  the 
Seqrlainment  of  public  and  private  right,  the  promotion  of  commerce,  and 
tho  cncpuragemerof  agricultural  and  nianufacturing  industry.     Acts  were 
passed  for  engrafting  more  perfectly  the  English  statute  law  on  the  juris- 
^udence  of  flic  colony  ;  for  securing  the  stability  of  possessions    ajid  lie 
rilfilmout  of  contracts  ;  and  for  the  encouragement  of  the  culture  of  Ln^hsh 
grain,  and  the  rearing  and  manufacturing  of  hemp  and  flax.     As  the^agita- 
Las  of  the  parent  state  had    ever  been  found  to  diftuse  their  influonco 
hcough  Uie  colonial  territories,  and  the  perturbing  spirit  of  political  rumor 
to  gain  force  and  malignity  proportioned  to  the  distance  from  which  it  was 
vvalted,  an  attempt  was  made  to  protect  the  quiet  of  the  province  by  a  aw 
n^^siig  penaltf  s   on  divulgers' of  .false    news  [|G62-1G06    ;  but  this 
diirable  object  was  much  more  respectably  as  well  "^ffp^'^^^Vpfr  ^i 
by  the  merit  and  popularity  of  the  governor's  admunstrat.on.      I   e  pu. 
tranciuillily   sustained   some   disturbance   from   the   encroaclmic.it    of  the 
d3  o/uie  western  banks  of  the  Delaware,  and  from  the  hostile  incur 
sions  of  a  distant  tribe  of   Indians.     But   the    remonstrances   of  Coher 
obliged  the  Dutch  intruders  to  evacuate  the  whole  country  "round  Cape 
Henlopen,  of  which  he  instantly  took  possession ;«  mAjMsjrudencc^joc^ 


•  iJiir. 

•  A  more 
and  the 


^re^uiar  account  of  the  disputes  an^variou.  tranMcUons  between  the  Eng&h 
Dutch  in  this  qtiartcr  occurs  in  Book  V.,  Chap.  I.,  poit. 


BOOK  in.]     SEVERE  PRESSURE  OF  THE  NAVIGATION  ACTS. 


321 


ll 


ovince  ;  and  en- 


>n8  between  ihii  Engilsh 


onded  by  the  friendly  demonstrations  of  tho  Indian  allies  of  the  province, 
restored  peace  with  the  hostile  tribe  by  a  treaty,  which  was  confirmed  by  act 
of  assembly.  [May,  1666.]  The  fidelity  of  the  Indian  allies  was  rewarded 
by  settling  on  them  and  their  descendants  an  extensive  and  valuable  terri- 
tory, which,  being  assured  to  them  on  various  occasions  by  successive  acts 
of  the  legislature,  continued  in  their  possession  for  near  a  century  after.  All 
the  Indian  tribes  within  the  limits  of  the  province  now  declared  themselves 
subject  to  the  proprietary  government ;  and  in  testimony  of  their  subjection, 
the  inferior  chiefs  or  princes,  on  the  death  of  their  principal  sachem,  refused 
to  acknowledge  the  sway  of  his  successor,  till  this  pretender's  claim  to  tho 
dignity  was  sanctioned  by  Governor  Calvert.  The  removal  of  the  Dutch 
from  Cape  Henlopen  induced  many  of  those  planters  to  unite  themselves  to 
the  colony  of  Maryland,  into  which  they  were  readily  admitted  ;  and,  in 
the  year  16G6,  the  Maryland  assembly  enacted,  in  favor  of  them  and  of 
certain  French  Protestant  refugees,  the  first  law  ever  framed  by  any  pro- 
vincial legislatuie  for  the  naturalization  of  aliens.  Many  similar  laws  were 
enacted  in  every  subsequent  session,  till  the  British  Revolution ;  and,  during 
the  intervening  period,  great  numbers  of  foreigners  transported  themselves 
to  this  province,  and  became  completely  incorporated  with  its  other  inliab- 
itants.* 

The  principal,  if  not  the  only,  inconvenience,  of  which  the  people  of 
Maryland  were  sensible  at  this  time,  was  that  which  they  shared  with  all 
the  other  colonies,  and  which  was  inflicted  by  the  parliamentary  Acts  of 
Navigation.  In  Virginia,  where  the  pressure  of  these  restrictions  was  sooner 
and  more  severely  experienced,  an  attempt  was  made  to  enhance  the  price 
of  the  staple  commodity,  by  a  temporary  restraint  of  the  cultivation  of  to- 
bacco ;  but  as  Maryland  refused  to  embrace  this  measure,  its  efficacy  was 
defeated,  and  the  former  animosity  of  the  Virginians  against  the  inhabitants 
of  the  neighbouring  province  unhappily  revived.  To  this  animosity  we 
must  ascribe  the  various  complaints  against  the  colonists  of  Maryland 
which  Virginia  from  time  to  time  addressed  to  the  king  ;  all  of  which,  on 
examination,  proved  entirely  groundless.**  As  the  inconvenience  arising 
from  the  Navigation  Laws  began  to  be  more  sensibly  experienced  in  Mary- 
land, the  policy  that  had  been  ineffectually  suggested  by  Virginia  was 
more  favorably  regarded  ;  and  at  length  a  prohibitory  act,  suspending  the 
growth  of  tobacco,  was  passed  in  the  present  year  by  the  assembly  ;  but 
the  dissent  of  the  proprietary  and  governor,  who  apprehended  that  it  might 
prove  injurious  to  the  poorer  class  of  planters,  as  well  as  detrimental  to  the 
royal  customs,  prevented  this  regulation  from  being  carried  into  effect.' 
Tl>e  popularity  of  Lord  Baltimore  and  his  son  incurred  no  abatement  fron- 
their  opposition  to  this  project  of  the  assembly.  Tliough  averse  to  impose 
any  direct  restraint  on  the  cultivation  of  tobacco,  they  willingly  promoted 
every  plan  that  was  suggested  by  the  provincial  legislature  for  the  encourage- 
ment of  other  branches  of  industry  ;  and  their  efforts  to  alleviate  t^^p  public 
inconvenience  were  justly  appreciated,  as  well  as  actively  seconded,  by  a 

'  Bacon's  Lateg.    Oldmixon.    Chalmers. 

'  One  of  these  complaints,  which  the  proprietary  was  summoned  to  answer,  was  for  making 
partial  treaties  with  the  Indians,  and  contenting  himself  with  exempting  the  Maryland  terri- 
tory from  their  hostilities,  without  stipulating  the  same  advantage  for  the  province  of  Virginia. 
The  Committoo  of  Plantations,  to  which  the  complaint  was  referred,  on  examining  t)i« 
treaties  of  hoth  partie.s,  reported  to  the  king  that  Maryland  had  included  Virginia  in  alt  her 
treaties,  but  that  Virginia  had  demonstrated  no  such  concern  for  Maryland.    Chairaers. 

*  Bacon's  Laws.    Chalmers. 
VOL.   I.  41 


322 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III, 


lion,  M"^'''"''  T  "^r  '?rS  suoerlntendenceof  its  generous  proprie- 
and  to  J»l'"<'"'=j8!, '"i^  P^f  f^f  ™^,",  d,e  assembfy  impced  a  duly 

T-     "jIllllLf  leS  on  ever/hogshead'of  tobacco  exported  ;  the  oii 
;:f!feoIrt  feTand  »  ^tnt^c/'di^Sfr  Hf ^ Ur^S 

;::^;l?;°;r^^"r:c"ofrfur"t  ;i.e  -«.%  .em.ed  the.  or.. 

Htk;:'  ataS^^^'CTtiie  prS?ha.„.  lived  to  ,o» 
lUe^lCyanf  honorable  fU^^^^^^^ 

SO  much  wisdom  and  virtue,  died,  n  tne  lony  i""»|  J-  rifiTfi  1  It  was  hu 
crowned  with  venerable  age  an    ^^^^^^^^^^^  W^^  ^^J- {^ 

constant  maxim,  ^h.ch  he  studiously  m^^^^^^^^  1  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^^^ 

u  that  by  concord  ^..^'^^^ .  *^°  3  J'^ /Xrious  kin|doms  have  declined 
nation  ;  but  that  V  d'^^^^^"  "^^^g^^^^"/^^^^^^^^^  theltate  of  tk>  province 
and  fallen  into  nothing."  Some  pt>f  [Jfj^"^  P^^^^  ;„  ^he  same  year  by  a 
at  the  period  of  his  death  occur  ma  lette^^^^^^  Archblhop  V 

clergyman  of  the  church  ^^'^"S^^d,  res'd^^^^^  uieje  ^^^  i 

Canterbury.     Maryland,  'J^^X^^PP^Su^nd^^^^^^^^^^  The  Catholics, 

ties,  and  contained  upwards  of  twen  y  ^^ou^a"^  ^^^^^^^  ^^    ^^^^^ 

says  this  writer,  provided  for  the'r  pmsts     ana  v*  ^^,j^ 

their  ministers  ;  but  no  care  was  take     to  ^^t  jb^^^  Pj  ^^^ 

Kpiscooal  church.     There  were  b^t  tin  ee  or  four  m^^^^^^  establishment  for 
of  England  m  Maryland  ,  «"d  from  the  want  |    i^rable  condition, 

them,  the  colony,  he  dec  ^es  had  f^^n    nto  a  m^^^^^^  dep  ^      ^^^, 

-having  become  a  F^'-'^^^lS  evil  he  suggests  an  endowment  of 

rlJAlnZdjt'fp^^^^j^^ 

of  the  spiritual  f  ^f^ /^^^^^^^'^^i',!,"^  \^;^u^^^^      of  distant  hope  tends  to 

irxlhfsiu'of^^^^^^^^^^ 

..nweariedcarepftlj^Bproprietary   and    hev^^^^  ^,^^  i,„.,easc  and  improve- 

the  inhabiunts  in  the  «"J''y'^fj"l^[  should  dt^St  to  record  the  exprcwions  of  popular  gral- 
mcnt  of  their  estates,"  &c.     ""♦°[y„^'^,'^n,„„'X^^  to  wisdom  and  virtue. 

■''thfpcTr:rr7w:s7-^^  ''-  •'"^"""'°" "'  ''''"^' 

tilavee." 

»  Bacon's  Lair-t.  ,pnrpspntation  is  as  incredible  as  the  stntcmcnt 

»  Chalmers.    Yco,  apud  ^^^'^'•"^"•^^'^'^'rnrc  pfrstan*  Association  of  Maryland  of 

ihatw«.  published  about  twelve  XP"? 'J "^J  fi^, 'J^^y  ^ 

'^  .         .•  "^ :-,!-  rtj.  i/\nf*intf  to  nlunucr. 

ihottti  %viiOrii  nj«y  arc  prcjitiitng  Ot  .«..a."o  i^-  i 


BOOK  III]     TRANSPORTATION  OF  FELONS  TO  MARYLAND. 


323 


to  embellish  and  illustrate  the  one  are  able  to  deform  and  obscure  the  other. 
The  Protestant  part  of  the  population  of  Maryland  was  less  distinguished 
by  that  Christian  zeal  which  leads  men  to  impose  sacrifices  on  tliemselves, 
than  by  that  ecclesiastical  zeal  which  prompts  them  to  impose  burdens  on 
others  ;  they  were  probably  less  wealthy,  from  having  been  more  recently 
established  in  the  province,  than  the  Catholics  ;  and  the  erection  of  their 
churches  was  farther  retarded  by  the  state  of  dispersion  in  which  the  inhab- 
itants generally  lived.  The  Protestant  Episcopal  pastors,  like  the  clergy  of 
every  other  order,  depended  on  the  professors  of  their  own  particular 
tenets  for  support  ;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  discern  the  soundness  of  the  argu- 
meni  that  assigns  the  liberality  of  other  sectarians  to  clergymen  of  their  own 
persuasion,  as  a  reason  for  loading  them  with  the  additional  burden  of  sup- 
porting the  ministers  of  the  church  of  England,  — or  the  existing  incompe- 
tenc)^  of  these  ministers  to  control  the  immoralities  of  their  people,  as  a  rea- 
son for  endowing  them  with  a  provision  that  would  render  them  independent 
of  the  discharge  of  their  duty.  This  logic,  however,  was  quite  satisfactory 
to  the  primate  of  England,  who  eagerly  undertook  to  reform  the  r.orals  of 
the  people  of  Maryland,  by  obtaining  a  legal  establishment  and  wealthy 
endowment  to  a  Protestant  Episcopal  church  in  the  province. 

The  deceased  proprietary  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Charles,  Lord  Balti- 
more, who  had  governed  the  province  for  fourteen  years  with  a  high  repu- 
tation for  virtue  and  ability.  With  the  religious  tenets,  he  inherited  the 
tolerant  principles  of  his  father  ;  and  one  of  the  first  acts  of  his  adminis- 
iration  was  to  confirm  the  remarkable  law  of  1649,  which  established  an 
absolute  political  equality  among  all  denominations  of  Christians.  Havii^ 
convoked  an  assembly,  where  he  presided  in  person,  he  performed,  with 
their  assistance,  what  has  often  been  recommended  to  other  legislatures,  but 
rarely  executed  by  any,  —  a  diligent  revision  of  all  the  existing  laws  ;  re- 
pealing those  that  vvere  judged  superfluous  or  inexpedient,  confirming  the 
salutary,  and  explaining  the  obscure.'  In  this  assembly,  an  attempt  was  made 
10  stem  the  progress  of  an  evil  with  which  the  colony  was  afflicted,  by  a 
regulation  more  wisely,  perhaps,  than  competently  opposed  to  the  policy  of 
the  mother  country.  The  morals  of  the  colonists  were  endangered  in  a 
much  greater  degree  by  the  transportation  of  felons  to  Maryland,  than  by 
the  want  of  a  legislative  endowment  to  the  clergy  of  the  Protestant  Episco- 
pal church.  To  the  common  law  of  I'^.ngland  this  punishment  of  trans- 
portation was  quite  unknown  ;  though  in  some  cases  it  permitted'  a  felon 
who  preferred  exile  to  death  to  abjure  the  realm.  It  was  a  statute  of 
Elizabeth  which  first  inflicted  banishment  on  dangerous  rogues ;  and  it  was 
James  the  First,  who,  without  any  regard  to  this  law,  but  in  the  plfenitude  of 
his  royal  prerogative,  introduced  the  practice  of  transporting  felons  to  Vir- 
ginia. He  was  indebted  for  the  suggestion  to  Chief  Justice  Popham,  who, 
being  a  proprietor  of  colonial  territory,  as  well  as  a  judge,  conceived  the 

'  Low*.  No  liumnn  society  is  stationary  in  its  condition  ;  but  the  changes  to  which  ail  arc 
inevitably  subject  are  less  rapid  and  obvious  -n  old  than  in  young  communities.  Tho  pecu- 
liarly progressive  state  of  society  in  America  was  calculated  to  suggest  to  the  Americans  that 
\viae  principle  vvhich  their  revolt  from  Britain  afforded  them  an  opportunity  of  interweaving 
into  their  municipal  constitutions,  and  in  conformity  with  v^iicli  provision  is  made  for  peri- 
odical revisions  and  corrections  of  their  systems  of  law  and  government,  in  order  to  adapt 
them  more  perfectly  to  the  altered  and  actual  condition  of  the  community.  The  Americans, 
in  this  as  in  many  other  respects,  have  taught  by  example  a  grand  and  useful  lesson  to  man- 
kind. They  have  placed  the  science  of  politics  on  the  same  footing  with  other  sciences,  by 
opening  it  to  ifflprovements  derived  from  experience  and  the  discoveries  of  successive  ages 


IIIBTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IH. 

«;«.t  nf  rpnderine  the  administration  of  justice  subservient  to  his  private 
project  of  rendmng  tne  ^^.^^^^  ^^J^  ^,    ^^^^  .^  part.cular  to  antici- 


eolonies  was  ^^-^^^^^^^Z.  ::^^ 

countenance  ^^  ^^e^^'S'f  ^"'^' IJ^'J^^  the  crime  of  Quakerism? 

\^hf ^ffectofiTpr:  :"  SSgTeSTo  the  people  of  Maryland,  that  a 

liwwa   now  framed  by  their  assembly  against  t\>c  importation  of  convicts 

r„roTl^:Pvince3and^fterwar^^^^^^^^ 

f.^::eT7Z'i:^J:^o:Ti  :L^  to  «  measure  ot-  u/Bruish 

regarded  it  aHt  once  disgraceful  to  the  provmce,  and  subversive  of  those 

Snro;\he  superio  j/of^  w^^^^^^^^^  ;;^t^jt:^o::z^sz 

Sl^ShuS  M^r.'::':^^^^^^^  in^ported  into  Maryland 

^Tt'l'Tondurn 'of  the  legislative  session,  the  proprietary  having  an- 

,  k;c TntPntion  of  visiting  England,  the  assembly,  m  acknowledgment 

rrmanySgnTbenefrw^^^^     h'e  had  rendered  to  the  people,  and  as  a 

i:!:ro?ri;fove  and  -^^^^^z:^^ 

Z^A  .  a"d  the  oL^rfence  of  his  own,'together  with  the  remembrance  of 
Wsltlier's  merits,  might  have  been  expected  to  recommend  the  system 
of  proprietarrgovernment  to  the  lasting  approbation  of  the  colon.sts  Th>s 
speSo  magistracy,  however,  was  destined  to  enjoy  but  a  transient  popu- 
£itv  in  ASa.  iuicd  by  congruity  to  no  snmlar  ms  Uution,  and  sur- 
Xded  trno  kindred  order  of  persons  in  the  provmc.al  commun.t.es  ,t 

Zd  wholly  unsheltered  from  envy,  a  «o»'^«'Virr'"th.  J^toS' 
Sander;  and  its  objectionable  features  were  exhibited  n  the  most  off  n- 
?^c  St  when,  in  the  progress  of  succession,  exclusive  dignity  became  the 
nortion  of  ^esp  cable,  or  the  instrument  of  un  ust  and  odious  men^  These 
SeratiSTmus  be  acknowledged,  afford  no  explanation  of  the  sudden 
SecUrvvS  Lord  Baltimore's  popularity  was  doomed  to  undergo;  and 
we  must  seek  e  sewherc  for  the  causes  of  that  revolution  of  public  opm.on 

'ci::ed"en1re  roVcSi",ret^^^^^^^^^^^  a  largerand 

composea  enMr.-iy  ui  V     gratitude.     But  the  to  eration  which  his 

rhretSetSalratl^^^^^^^^^^ 

disced 'had  «    to  the  provinciaUerntory  a_m^.lutude^^ 

-M:,.iaV-SU,.  lf..M.f-Mnnv  po^^^ 

no  communitv  of  w»«  on.l    '"""'"''5',  ";."  ^TI"^^^  ^yere  p.rtlv  composed  of 

The  crew«  otiho&r,i  '^^i'^ZTtSrVklztryoy^^  the  reign  of  Charles  the  8ec- 

convicte,  pardoned  on  rondiiion  'fj'lf'^^'"^^^^  number  of  those  sectane*, 

Ae  olTkc  TMonioTuh,  were  tmn-ported  a.  felon,  to  Amenc    ^  ^^^^  ^^ 

»  13.  14  Charic*  II.,  Cup.  I.  ,.       ,  »  ifi76.  Can.  18. 

-•  HiMory  of  tht  British  Uumtinuni  m  .imzrisa. 


BOOK  lU.l 


CUAaGES  AGAINST  LORD  BALTIMORE. 


326 


boih  French  and  English.  The  liberal  principles  of  the  proprietary  were 
not  able  to  disarm  the  French  Protestants  of  their  enmity  against  a  laith  as- 
sociated in  their  previous  experience  with  perfidy  and  persecution  ;  and  the 
Knglish  Trotestants,  impressed  with  the  opinion  which  their  friends  in  the 
pother  country  deduced  from  the  policy  of  the  king,  regarded  toleration  but 
as  a  cloak  under  which  Catholic  bigotry  disguised  the  most  dangerous  de- 
signs. These  unhappy  impressions  were  confirmed  by  the  alarms  and  in- 
trigues of  which  the  ensuing  period  of  English  history  was  abundantly  pro- 
lific, and  which  invariably  extended  their  influence  to  the  minds  of  the  people 
of  Maryland,  where  a  mixture  of  opinions  unknown  in  any  other  of  the 
provinces  gave  a  peculiar  interest  to  the  conflict  of  the  same  opinions  that 
was  carried  on  in  the  parent  state. 

On  his  arrival  in  England  [1677],  Lord  Baltimore  was  assailed  with 
complaints,  preferred  against  him  to  the  Committee  of  Plantations  by  the 
colony  of  Virginia  and  the  prelates  of  England.  The  accusations  of  Vir- 
ginia, which  related  to  provincial  boundaries  and  Indian  treaties,  were 
easily  repelled  ;  but  the  controversy  with  the  prelates  was  not  so  satisfacto- 
rily adjusted.  Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  to  whom  the  primate  had  im- 
parted his  ecclesiastical  project  for  the  colony,  represented  to  the  com- 
mittee that  true  religion  was  deplorably  neglected  in  Maryland;  that,  while 
Roman  Catholic  priests  were  enriched  there  with  valuable  possessions,  the 
Protestant  ministers  of  the  church  of  England  were  utterly  destitute  of  sup- 
port ;  and  that  heresy  and  immorality  had  consequently  overspread  the 
province.  Lord  Baltimore,  in  justification  of  himself  and  of  the  provincial 
legislature,  exhibited  the  act  of  1649,  together  with  the  recent  confirmation 
of  it,  which  assured  freedom  and  protection  to  every  society  of  Christians, 
but  allowed  special  privileges  to  none.  He  stated  that  four  ministers  of  the 
church  of  England  were  'n  possession  of  plantations  which  afforded  them  a 
decent  subsistence  ;  but  that,  from  the  variety  of  religious  opinions  prevalent 
in  the  assembly,  it  would  be  extremely  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  induce 
this  body  to  consent  to  a  law  that  should  oblige  any  religious  society  to 
maintain  other  ministers  than  its  own.  Satisfactory  as  this  answer  ought  to 
have  been,  the  impartial  policy  which  it  disclosed  obtained  httle  or  rather  no 
approbation.  The  committee  declared  that  thev  thought  fit  there  should  be 
a  public  maintenance  assigned  to  the  church  of  England,  and  that  the  pro- 
prietary ought  to  propose  some  means  of  supporting  a  competent  number  of 
her  clergy.  The  king's  ministers  at  the  same  time  signified  to  him  the  royal 
pleasure  that  immorality  should  be  discouraged,  and  laws  for  the  repression 
of  vice  enacted  and  punctually  executed  in  Maryland.* 

This  last  injunction,  to  which  its  authors  probably  attached  very  little 
meaning  or  importance,  was  the  only  one  that  received  any  attention  from 
the  provincial  government.  A  law  was  framed  by  the  assembly  [1678j, 
enjoining  a  reverential  observance  of  Sunday  ;  ^  and  after  the  return  of  the 
proprietary  [1681j,  new  regulations  were  adopted  for  the  speedier  prose- 
cution of  offences,  and  the  stricter  definition  of  punishments.  As  the  more 
rigorous  enforcement  of  the  Navigation  Act  began  now  to  occasion  an  in- 
creased depreciation  of  the  staple  produce  of  the  colony,  numerous  attempts 

'  Chalmers. 

'  "Yes,  far  beyond  the  high-heaved  western  wave, 
Amid  Columbiu's  wildernesses  vast, 
The  words  which  God  in  thunder  from  the  Mount 
Of  Sinai  spake  are  iieard,  and  are  obeyed."  —  Grabame's  Saibath. 

BB 


326 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  HI. 


were  made  by  the  proprietary  and  assembly,  during  the  two  following  years, 
to  counteract  or  diminish  this  inconvenience,  by  giving  additional  encour- 
acement   and  a  new  direction  to  the  provincial  industry  and  commerce. 
I  aws  were  framed  for  promoting  tillaRC  and  raising  provis.r.ns  for  exporta- 
tion  •  for  restraining  the  export  of  leather  and  hides,  and  otherwise  encour- 
Line  the  labor  of  tanners   and  shoemakers;  and  for  rearing  manulactures 
of  Imen  and  woollen  cloth.     Thus  early  did  the  legislature  endeavour  to 
iutroduce  manufactures  into  the  province;  but  the  attempt  was  premature ; 
and  though  domestic  industry  was  able  to  supply  some  articles  for  domestic 
uses,  it  was   found   impracticable  even  at  a  much  later  period  to  render 
Maryland  a  manufacturing  country.     For  the  encouragement  ot  trade,  van- 
ous  ports  were  established,  where  merchants  were  emomed  to  reside,  and 
commercial  dealings  to  be   carried  on,  and  where  alf  trading  vessels  were 
required  to  unlade  the  commodities  of  Europe,  and  take  on  board  the  pro- 
ductions  of  the  province.     But  from  the  situation  of  the  country,  abouudmg 
with  navigable  rivers,  and  from  the  great  variety  of  ports  that  were  erected 
in  conformity  with  the  wishes  of  the  planters,  every  one  of  whom  desired 
to  have  a  port  on  his  own  plantation,  this  regulation  was  attended  with  very 
little  effect.     It  was  now  that  there  occurred  the  last  instance  of  the  expres- 
sion of  that  reciprocal  regar.l  which  had  reflected  so  much  honor  on  the  pro- 
nrietary  and  the  people.     By  a  vote  of  the  assembly,  in  the  yeai  1682,  this 
body,  ''  to  demonstrate  its  gratitude,  duty,  and  affection  to  the  proprietary,  ' 
desired  his  acceptance  of  a  liberal  subsidy, -a  testimony  of  esteem  to  winch 
he  returned  a  courteous  acknowledgment,  though  he  declined  to  approprmte 
the  contribution,  on  account  of  the  straitened  circumstances  of  the  colony  ' 
But  amidst  all  this  seeming  cordiality,  and  the  mutual  endeavours  of  the 
nroprietary  and  the  assembly  to  promote  the  public  welfare,  there  lurked 
nthe  province  a  secret  heartburning  and  discontent  pregnant  vvith  uture 
quarrel  and  convulsion.     The  fiction  of  the  Popish  Plot  extended  its  bane- 
ful  influence  to  Maryland,  and  was  employed  there  by  some  profligate  po  iti- 
ciansas   the  instru.aent  of  designs  similar  to  those  which  it  engendered  or 
from  which  it  originated  in  England.     The  insurrections  that  had  been  pro- 
yoked  by  the  oppression  of  the  Covenanters  in  Scotland  ;  the  disconten  s  in 
England  ;  the  disputes  with  regard  to  the  proposed  exclusion  of  the  Duke 
of  York  from  the  throne  ;  the  continued  disagreement  between  tlie  king  and 
parliament,  — all,  transmitted  through  the  magnifying  and  uncertain  medmm 
of  rumor  to  a  country  so  remote  from  the  means  of  accurate  mfoirnation 
seemed  to  forebode  a  renewal  of  the  distractions  of  the  preceding  reign.  A 
general  ferment  was  excited  in  men's  minds  ;  and  in  the  strong  expectation 
That  prevailed  of  some  great  change,  parties  and  individuals  prepared  with 
anxiety  to  defend  their  interests,  or  intrigued  with  eagerness  for  the  enlarge- 
ment of  their  advantages.     The  absence  of  the  proprietary  from  the  prov- 
ince, during  his  visit  to  England,  probably  served  to  promote  the  inaelnna- 
tions  of  the  factious,  which,  however,  received  a  seasonable  check  from  his 
return.     Feudal,  who  had  raised  insurrection  against  the  administration  ol 
Cromwell,  and  afterwards  betrayed  and  resisted  the  government  ot  the  pro- 
prietary, now  availed  himself  of  ihe  lenity  he  had  experienced  to  reexcite 
commotions  in  Maryland.     He   seems  to  have  had  no  other  purpose  tha 
to  scramble  for  property  and  power  amidst  the  confusion  which  he  exp  c  d 
to  ensue  ;  and  he  encouraged  his  partisans  with  the  assurance,  that,  during 


in 


>    Ijiina. 


BOOK  III] 


PRETENSIONS  OF  WILLIAM  PENN. 


327 


Ac  approaching  civil  wars  of  England,  they  might  easily  possess  themselves 
of  whatever  plantations  they  pleased  to  appropriate.  IJut  Lord  Haltiinore, 
partly  by  a  steady  application  of  the  laws,  and  partly  by  the  influence  of  the 
tidings  which  were  received  of  the  king's  triumph  over  his  opponents  at  the 
dissolution  of  the  Oxford  Parlianient,  was  able  as  yet  to  preserve,  even 
without  a  struggle,  the  tranquillity  of  the  province.  Feudal  was  tried  for 
his  seditious  practices  in  the  year  1681  ;  and  though  the  provincial  laws  an- 
nexed the  penalty  of  doath  to  the  offence  of  which  he  was  convicted,  he  was 
now  only  fined,  and  banished  from  Maryland  for  ever.  But  unfortunately 
his  influence  was  not  banished  with  his  person  ;  and  one  of  his  associates, 
John  Coodo,  who  was  tried  along  with  him,  but  acquitted,  remained  be- 
hind to  renovate  at  a  fitter  season  those  dark  intrigues  which  were  dissi- 
pated for  the  present  by  the  last  ray  of  good  fortune  that  attended  the  pro- 
prietary's administration.  A  few  others  of  the  less  guilty  associates  of 
Fendal  and  Coodo  were  convicted  of  sedition,  and  punished  bj  fine.' 

The  last  years  of  Lord  Baltimore's  administration  were  embittered  by  the 
retribution  of  that  injustice  in  which  the  establishment  of  his  hereditary  ju- 
,'isdiction  began  ;  and  the  wrong  inflicted  half  a  century  before  on  Virginia 
was  now  avenged  by  the  disruption  of  a  considerable  portion  of  the  territory 
that  had  been  allotted  to  Maryland.  If  the  historian  of  this  transaction  were 
permitted  to  adapt  the  particulars  of  it  to  his  own  conceptions  of  moral 
consistency,  he  would  ascribe  the  requital  of  the  Maryland  usurpation  to 
other  instrumentality  than  that  of  the  venerable  patriarch  of  Pennsylvania. 
Such,  nevertheless,  was  the  mode  of  this  occurrence  ;  and  as  the  founder 
of  American  toleration  committed  the  encroachment  on  Virginia,  so  another 
illustrious  friend  of  truth,  justice,  and  liberty  promoted  the  retributory  par- 
tition of  Maryland.  On  the  arrival  of  William  Penn  in  America,  a  confer- 
ence took  place  between  him  and  Lord  Baltimore  (two  of  the  most  pru- 
dent and  virtuous  persons  that  have  ever  ruled  over  mankind)  with  the  pur- 
pose of  effecting  an  amicable  adjustment  of  the  boundaries  of  ♦^iiir  respec- 
tive territorial  grants.  Penn  was  received  by  Lord  Baltimore  with  dignified 
respect  and  courtesy  ;  and  perhaps  that  eminent  person  entertained  some 
degree  of  corresponding  regard  for  a  legislator  whose  institutions  had  long 
aflbrdcd  a  peaceful  asylum  to  persecuted  Quakers.  The  pretensions  of 
the  parties,  however,  were  so  completely  inconsistent  with  each  other,  that 
it  proved  impossible  to  adjust  them  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to  both.  Penn 
was  authorized  to  appropriate,  among  other  districts,  the  whole  of  the  pen- 
insula lying  between  the  Bays  of  Chesapeake  and  Delaware,  which  formed  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  territory  included  within  the  charter  of  Mary- 
land, and  part  of  which  had  been  colonized  by  Dutch  and  Swedish  set- 
tlers before  the  commonwealth  of  Maryland  existed.  Lord  Baltimore's 
was  certainly  the  juster  and  more  legitrraate  claim  ;  but  Penn  was  encouraged 
to  persist  in  his  counter  pretension  by  the  declaration  of  the  Committee  of 
Plantations,  that  it  had  never  been  intended  to  grant  to  Lord  Baltimore  any 
territory  except  such  as  at  the  time  was  inhabited  by  savages  alone,  and 
that  the  tract  which  he  now  "claimed,  having  been  planted  by  Christians 
anterior  to  his  grant,  was  therefore  excluded  from  its  intendment,  though 
it  might  be  embraced  by  its  literal  construction.  The  controversy  between 
these  two  distingiushed  men  was  conducted  with  a  greater  conformity  to 
the  general  principles  of  human  nature  than  it  is  pleasing  to  record.     While 

'  Chalmers. 


328 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA 


[BOOK  in. 


the  conflicting  claims  were  yet  unsettled,  Penn  atteropted  to  appropriate  the 
dUnuted  district  :  and  as  Lord  Baltimore  insisted  that  the  mhabitants  should 
Pther  acknowledee  the  jurisdiction  of  Maryland  or  abandon  their  dwellings, 
uroclamations  were  issued  by  each  of  the  contending  parUes,  asserting  his 
Swn  exclusive  tide,  and  condemnation  of  the  proceedings  of  his  opponent. 
But  the  pretensions  of  Penn,  whether  sanctioned  by  the  principles  of  equity 
or  not,  were  supported  by  an  influence  of  much  greater  practical  efficacy  m 
reeulating  extent  of  dominion  and  territorial  limits.  Aware  of  his  superior 
interest  at  the  English  court,  he  complained  of  his  antagonist  to  the  king  and 
the  Duke  of  York,  and  prevailed  in  obtaming  a  decree  of  the  privy  council, 
adjudging  that  the  litigated  region  should  be  divided  into  two  equal  parts, 
one  of  which  was  appropriated  to  himself  and  the  other  to  Lord  Baltimore. 
This  adjudication  wa^  carried  into  effect  [168,-.- 1685]  ;  and  the  territory 
which  now  composes  the  State  of  Delaware  was  thus  dismembered  from 
the  provincial  limits  of  Maryland.  ^  t.    j  ,      j  u- 

Meanwhile,  the  late  proceedings  against  B  endal  and  his  associates  minis- 
tered occasion  of  fresh  complaints  in  England  agamst  Lord  Bahimore  or 
partiality  to  Roman  Catholics.     It  was  in  vain  for  him  to  represent  that  the 
laws  of  his  province  gave  equal  encouragement  to  persons  of  every  Chris- 
Uan  denomination,  without  dispensing  peculiar  favor  to  any  ;  thatm  order  to 
conform  his  administration  to  the  principles  of  the  constitution,  he  had 
always  endeavoured  to  distribute  the  offices  of  government  as  equal  y  as 
possible  among  Protestants  and  Catholics  ;  and  that,  to  allay  the  jealousy 
W  which  the  Protestants  were  disqmeted,  he  had  latterly  suff*ered  them  to 
engross  nearly  the  whole  command  of  the  militia,  and  to  assume  the  custody 
of  the  arms  and  miUtary  stores  of  die  province.     I  rom  the  record  of  I  en- 
dal's  trial,  he  showed  that  the  proceedings  against  this  mdividual  had  been 
perfecdyfair,  — nay,  so  indulgent,  that  the  culprit,  impudently  protesting 
aeainst  being  tried  by  Catholics,  obtained  a  jury  composed  entirely  of  Prot- 
estants.     Notwithstanding  the  satisfactoriness  of  this  explanation,  the  min- 
isters of  the  kin^,  less  desirous  of  doing  justice  to  others  than  of  shifting  the 
dangerous  imputation  of  Popery  from  themselves,  commanded  that  all  the 
offices  of  government  should  in  future  be  committed  exclusively  to  the  hands 
of  Protestants,  and  thus   meanly  sanctioned  the  unjust  suspicions  under 
which  the  proprietary  government  wrs  already  laboring.     It  was  less  easy 
for  Lord  Baltimore  to  defend  himself  against  another  charge  which  was  now 
preferred  against  him,  and  which,  having  some  foundation  m  truth,  involved 
him  in  considerable  perplexity.     He  was  accused  of  obstructing  the  custom- 
house  officers  in  the  collection  of  the  duties  imposed  by  the  Navigation 
Acts  :  and  it  did  certainly  appear,  that,  biased  perhaps  by  the  desire  of 
alleviating  as  far  as  possible  the  pressure  of  the  commercial  restrictions,  he 
had  construed  them  in  some  points  in  a  manner  too  favorable  to  the  freedom 
and  wishes  of  the  colonists.     While  he  cr.deavoured  unsuccessfully  to  main- 
tain the  legitimacy  of  his  conduct,  he  charged  the  collectors  of  the  customs 
with  wilfully  disturbing  the  commerce  and  peace  of  the  colony  by  wanton 
interference  and  groundless  complaint.     It  seems  probable  that  this  recrimi- 
nation was  well  founded,  and  that  the  reven.re  officers,  provoked  to  find  that 
the  unpopularity  of  their  duties  prev&iied  over  the^r^pect  they  conceived 

'  '  nhalmorg     cTwk^V  Ufe  of  Penn.     Mr,  (rinrksonV  ncrount  of  this  dispute  is  vory  de- 

hie  than  err«iiiei.u».      inn  conimvcrsj  urt^rrrii   .-...  ^.....i...^..^    .i..  --■  - 
*rUier  illuitrated  in  tlio  hiBtory  of  Fonnsylvania,  putt,  Boo*  VII.,  Chap.  I. 


BOOK  III]  PROFESSIONS  OP  REGARD  BY  JAMES  II. 


SSB 


due  to  their  station,  had  labored  to  convert  their  own  private  disagreements: 
with  individuals  into  the  occasion  of  national  dispute  ;  for  when,  shortly  after, 
a  new  surveyor-general  of  the  customs  in  Maryland  was  appointed,  he  had 
ihe  honesty  to  report  that  the  colonists  had  been  greatly  misrepresented  with 
regard  to  their  opposition  to  the  Trade  Laws.  [1685.]  The  proprietary, 
however,  incurred  a  severe  rebuke  from  the  king  for  his  erroneous  construc- 
tion of  the  law.  Charles  expressed  indignant  surprise  thai  his  service  should 
be  obstructed  and  his  officers  discouraged  by  Lord  Baltimore,  whom  he 
upbraided  with  the  many  royal  favors  conferred  on  his  family,  and  even 
threatened  with  the  visitation  of  a  writ  of  qtw  warranto.^  It  seems  never  to 
have  occurred  to  the  English  government,  nor  did  Lord  Baltimore  presume 
to  urge,  that  the  king,  in  pretending  right  to  exact  imposts  in  Maryland, 
violated  the  most  express  provisions  of  the  royal  charter,  and  claimed  to 
himself  what  truly  belonged  to  the  proprietary. 

On  the  accession  of  James  the  Second  to  the  throne  of  his  brother 
[1685],  he  transmitted  to  the  colonies  a  proclamation  of  this  event,  which 
was  published  in  Maryland  with  partial,  but  lively  and  unaffected,  demon- 
strations of  joy.  The  Committee  of  Plantations  had  taken  so  much  pains, 
during  the  preceding  reign,  to  obtain  accurate  information  of  the  affairs  of  the 
colonies  and  the  temper  of  their  inhabitants,  that  k  .vas  perfectly  well  known 
how  deeply  they  were  affected  by  reports  from  England,  and  how  much 
provincial  disturbance  the  prospect  of  confusion  in  the  mother  country  was 
apt  to  engender.  When  the  invasions  of  Monmouth  and  Argyle  were  de- 
feated [June] ,  the  king  conveyed  accounts  of  these  occurrences  to  the  pro- 
prietary of  Maryland  ;  assigning,  as  the  object  of  this  communication,  the 
prevention  of  any  false  rumors  which  might  be  propagated  among  his  people 
in  that  distant  province  of  the  empire,  by  the  malicious  insinuations  of  ill- 
disposed  meii.  He  informed  Lord  Baltimore,  at  the  same  time,  in  strains 
of  exultation,  that  the  parliament  had  cheerfully  granted  to  the  crown  an  aid, 
to  be  levied  by  a  new  tax  on  the  importation  of  sugars  and  tobacco, — 
which,  however,  he  remarked,  inferred  no  new  burden  on  the  inhabitants 
of  Maryland,  who  possessed  a  high  place  in  his  interest  and  regard,  since 
the  imposition  was  not  laid  on  the  planters,  but  on  the  retailers  and  con- 
sumers.'^  But  the  impost  could  not  be  disarmed  of  its  injurious  efficiency 
by  such  royal  logic  and  barren  good-will ;  and  both  in  Virginia  and  in 
Maryland  it  operated  to  straiten  the  circumstances  and  cool  the  loyalty  of 
the  people.  As  the  other  impediments  of  commerce  were  aggravated  in 
Maryland  by  the  continued  prevalence  of  a  scarcity  of  money,  an  attempt 
was  now  made  to  remedy  this  evil  by  a  law  "  for  the  advancement  of  coins." 
[1686.]  French  crowns,  pieces  of  eight,  and  rix  dollars  were  appointed  to 
be  received  in  all  payments  at  six  shillings  each  ;  all  other  coins,  at  an  ad 
vance  of  threepence  in  the  shilling  ;  and  the  sixpences  and  shillings  of  New 
England,  according  to  their  denominations,  as  sterling.*"*  This  law  first 
gave  rise  in  Maryland  to  the  peculiarity  of  provincial  currency,  in  contra 
distinction  to  sterling  money. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  king  undertook  to  subvert  the  political  lonstiut- 
tion  of  England,  he  determined  to  overthrow  the  proprietary  governments 
of  the  colonies.  The  existence  of  such  independent  jurisdictions,  he  de- 
clared, embarrassed  him,  in  conducting  both  his  domestic  and  colonial  gov- 
ernment ;  and  it  was  requisite  no  less  to  his  interest  than  his  dignity,  to 


'  CImtiiiuni. 
VOL.    I. 


Stale  Papers,  iti. 

42 


Ibid. 


^    iMtOS. 


BB 


330 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  III. 


reduce  them  to  more  immediate  subjection  to  the  crown.  Alarmed  by  the 
reduce  tp^m  lo  m  purpose,  the  proprietary  of  Maryland  agam 

ZSTo  En"ghnd'^a^^^^^^^^     ^epLented  to'  tlfe  inflexible  despot  that  the 

ity  to  lusrer^gn  ttl^  S:  ll^  nor  his  fatl.r  ha/ committed  a 
siSe  act  wWch  colld  infer  the  forfeiture  of  a  patent  which  they  had  dearly 
nurchased  in  adding,  at  their  own  risk  and  expense,  a  large  and  flounsb.ng 
Srov  nee  t'oThe  BriSh  empire.  These  remonstrances  were  disregarded  by 
province  to  ine  oi  '  /  ^  received  orders  to  issue  a  writ  of  qw 

itraSWats   LorS^^^^^^^^  [1687.]  .  The  writ  was  issued 

TccoTdtgly;  but  from  the  dilatory  pace  of  the  requisite  legal  procedure, 
and    he  important  events  that  soon  after  diverted  the  monarch's  attention  o 
nearer  concerns,  no  judgment  upon  it  was  ever  i^ronounced.'     Thus,  Nvith 
Stess  and  inparialtvranny,  which  even  the  predilections  of  the  b.got 
wire  unable  to  control,  James,  contemning  a  ike  the  wishes  oltlie  Puritans 
of  Mas  achusetts  and  of  the  Catholics  of  Maryland,  involved  both  m  the 
Lf^Xtglhing  system  of  oppression  ^^^^^^^^^.J''^^^^^ 
singular  friendship,  which,  in  this  monarch  and  William  1  enn,  seemeU  to 
unUe  the  two  extV^mes  of  human  natnre,  might  have  suspended  for  a  while 
r  destri^tion  of  the  institutions  of  P-nsy-„.,-th.s   co^^^^^^^^^^^ 
xvould   have   infallibly  followed  m  due  time;  and  the  royal  regards  mat 
?enn  si  ared  with  Judge  Jeffries  and  Colonel  Kirke  would  have  secured 
him  no  S her  advantage%han  that  of  being,  perhaps   the  last  of  the  Amen- 
an  oroD  ietaries  that  was  sacrificed.     Fortunately  for  the  mtcrests  of  man- 
kbd'  bigotry   inV^^^        by  the  exercise  of  tyranny,  at  length  obtained  as- 
cendency over  the  king's  mind  ;  and,  depriving  the  bigot  ot  the  adherents 
o    the  yrant,  involved'even  Jeffries  in  disgrace,  and  cons  ramed  even  the 
prelates^of  England  to  seek  protection  m  ^^e  pnnc.ples  of^  lib^ 

The  birth  of  a  son  to  James  the  Second  [1688J,  wlicn  was  regaraea 
with  mingled  skepticism  and  disappointment  by  his  En.i.sn  subje.cs,  an 
TontrSd  to  ha  ten  the  British  Revolution,  was  no  sooner  commun.  ated 
Wthe  proprietary  (who  was  still  in  England)  to  his  ofticers  in  Maryland, 
than  it  produced  a  general  expression  of  satisfaction  throughout  the  prov- 
nce     Tthc  assembly,  which  was  convoked  on  this  occasion  a  law  ..s 
oassod  appointing  an  annual  commemoration  of  the  happy  event.^    If  this 
Proceeding  seeni  to  indicate  the  prevalence  of  a  feeling  that  may  be  sup- 
Tosed  peSilhr  to  the  Catholics,  other  parts  of  the  conduct  of  the  same  as- 
sembly'be^rayed  with  more  authentic  semblance  the  existence  of  those  jeal- 
ou?ie    with  which  the  Protestants  were  infecte.l,  ^yhIch  the  mean  injusti  e 
:r  lierte  king's  ministers  had  sanctioned,  and  which  tl-  unfort«^^^^ 
sence  of  Lord  Baltimore  now  contributed  to  promote.      Ihe  burgcsse    t 
first  dennirred  to  take  the  oath  of  fidelity  to  the  P7-7J^-d  af  e  ur  > 
oxhibited  to  the  deputy-governors  a  remonstrance  against  certain  pretended 
gri^v  nces,  w  '^^  disclosed  nothing  else  than  the  lU-humor  and  a  nrn. 

of  the  mrties  complaining  ;  for  the  articles  were  all  so  vague  and  so  fr.vo- 
bu  am  if  tr'ie?  ported  only  such  petty  and  easily  remediable  violations 
of  hiw  nd  us^  e  tha/  it  is  impossible  tS  peruse  them  -f^^V^^^^ 
the  promoters  of  complaint  either  industriously  sought  a  ^^«";«  "^  |  ^  ; 
nr  bid  already  found  ine  which  they  were  backwaij^  to  avo^^^_Jjje_rc^ 


»  Chalmiri. 


■  Law». 


BOOK  III]      FORMATION  OF  A  PROTESTANT  ASSOCIATION. 


331 


monstrance,  however,  received  a  courteous  and  obliging  answer  from  the 
deputy-governors  ;  and,  as  its  authors  were  not  yet  transported  by  passion 
beyond  the  control  of  reason  and  common  sense,  they  returned  thanks  for 
this  issue,*  and  the  flame  of  jealousy  and  discontent,  from  the  want  of  any 
thing  which  it  could  presently  lay  hold  of,  subsided  as  abruptly  as  it  had 
arisen.  But  the  embers  remained,  and  waited  only  a  more  suitable  juncture 
to  show  what  a  conflagration  they  were  capable  of  producing.  The  spirit 
of  party  in  the  province,  excited  and  preserved  by  religious  differences,  in 
an  age  in  which  to  differ  was  to  dislike  and  suspect,  had  been  hitherto 
moderated  by  the  liberal  spirit  of  the  laws  and  the  prudent  administration 
of  the  proprietary.  But  no  sooner  were  the  tidings  of  the  revolution  in 
England  conveyed  to  the  province,  than  those  latent  heats,  aroused  by 
fresh  aliment,  burst  forth  in  a  blaze  of  insurrectionary  violence  ;  and  the 
agitators  who  had  long  been  sowing  discontent  in  the  minds  of  their  fellow- 
citizens,  now  prepared  to  reap  a  plentiful  harvest  in  the  season  of  public 
disorder. 

When  the  deputy-governors  of  Maryland  were  first  informed  of  the  inva- 
sion of  England  by  the  Prince  of  Orange  [January,  1689],  they  judged  it 
expedient  to  take  measures  for  preserving  the  tranquillity  of  the  province, 
where  as  yet  none  could  foresee,  and  none  had  been  informed,  of  the  extra- 
ordinary issue  to  which  that  memorable  enterprise  was  to  be  conducted. 
They  collected  the  public  arms  that  were  dispersed  in  the  different  counties, 
and  imprisoned  several  persons  who  were  accused  of  attempts  to  excite  dis- 
turbance. But  their  purposes  were  completely  frustrated  by  the  rumor  of  a 
vopish  plot^  which  suddenly  and  rapidly  disseminated  the  alarming  intelli- 
gence, that  the  deputy-governors  and  the  Catholics  had  formed  a  league  with 
the  Indians  for  the  massacre  of  all  the  Protestants  in  the  province.  Con- 
fusion, rage,  and  terror  instantly  laid  hold  of  the  minds  of  almost  all  the 
Protestant  colonists  ;  and  every  exertion  that  was  made  to  demonstrate  the 
folly  and  absurdity  of  the  report  proved  ineffectual.  Like  the  kindred  fic- 
tion in  England,  the  tale  was  corroborated  by  various  unhappily  contingent 
circumstances,  that  tended  wonderfully  to  support  the  general  delusion. 
Though  Lord  Baltimore  received  orders  to  proclaim  William  and  Mary, 
u!  ich  he  readily  promised  and  prepared  to  obey,  yet  some  cross  accident 
o;  treacherous  machination  intercepted  the  relative  commands  which  he 
punctually  transmitted  to  his  deputies  ;  and  they  still  awaited  official  orders 
respecting  this  important  transaction,  long  after  the  corresponding  procla- 
mation was  published  in  Virginia.  It  happened  unfortunately,  too,  that  the 
time  had  now  arrived  when  it  was  usual  to  repeat  the  annual  confirmation  of 
the  existing  treaty  of  peace  with  the  Indians.  These  occurrences,  distorted 
by  the  arts  of  the  factious  aind  the  credulity  of  the  timid,  increased  the  pre- 
vailing panic,  and  accelerated  the  explosion  it  had  threatened  to  produce. 
A  Protestant  Jlssociation  was  formed  [April,  1689]  by  John  Coode,  who 
had  already  illustrated  his  genius  for  sedition  as  the  accomplice  of  Fendal ; 
and  soon  gaining  strength  from  the  accession  of  numerous  votaries,  took 
arms  under  this  worthless  leader  for  the  defence  of  the  Protestant  faith  and 
the  vindication  of  the  royal  title  of  William  and  Mary.  A  declaration  or 
manifesto  was  published  by  the  associators,  replete  with  charges  against  tlu! 
proprietary,  that  reflect  the  utmost  dishonor  on  their  own  cause.  The  re 
proaches  of  tyranny  and  wickedness,  of  murder,  tortiu-e,  and  pillage,'^  with 

'  "If  thu  Papists,"  sayi  lluiiu-,  "  havo  Bometinics  muintuined  that  no  faith  was  to  ko  k  fi 


332 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


•L800K  lU. 


Which  Lord  BaUhnore  is  loa^^^^'-^Lt^^^^^^^^ 
f  .^Tf  t:'::Zl^'^cZ  o"r?roTouTcon.plaints  exhibited  to  the 
itation  of  the  P"J»1'^  S"^;J"  -^^^^-^^^y  of  the  associators  to  establish  by 

deputy-governors,  bu   by  ll»e  uUer  inam    y  ^^^^  ^^^  ^^^j^^^. 

evidence  any  one  of  their  charge  ,  even  when  i^^  V    ^.^^ 

ty  of  the  provincial  government  we^^^  m  ^.e     ov^  n  nan^^^  ^^      ^^^  ^^^^^^^  _ 
impudence  and  absurdity,  the  affronts  °^"^^"y  ^^  ^^  the   province  by 

house  officers  were  now  /«;;f  ^^  as  '"J^^^^^^^^^^  ^^  J  ^^^^  J 

Lord  Baltimore,  --  who   if  ^^^^^^^^ J^/^f  ^J^i  grievance  inflicted  on  his 
been  induced  to  do  so  V/J'"   ent  snte      A  charge  of  this  description, 

work  ol  ^'»''«'  ™"°,;"         J  ,,  1,0  ,,as  able  nolwiUistandrng  lo  excite  and 
cd  m  ihe  popular  feelings,  «mtn  lie  >"*  .       j  ^^^^  Ualtimore 

direct  will,  such  energy  °"<'/"ff"J-  ,/„7J,^fs  „f  ihe  associators ;  but 
endeavoured  at  first '«  °Pf/^^yiX tcvS"rumors  against  themsdv.s 
a,  the  CaUiohcs  were  afraid  '»  ^^  ^//'p^*, ,a^  showed  no  easerness 
by  taking  artm,  and  as  *?  w^""^*^  f  '  ^^  ,„  j^H^er  up, the  ptovia- 
to  support  a  faUing  authority,  *7  ""»  °";7P°„„n,„ent,  by  capitulation, 
m  t'^'^P^rizedT^e  ttnsrcCtsS  to  express  his-approba- 
„'„':\l?uS;''Sat,thori.edthe.eade«„f,h^^^^^^^^^^^ 
name  the  power  they  had  "'="l™=„^^'"""'';i,,i^^^^^  with  this  com- 

•"•=  l™'£rrd^tro"fUToS«aLTconti,,ued  forttoee  yeais 

S;rhr£yG'?^o;es.aSr:'r:*  to  escape  entirely  the  visi. 

S   aXwhlh  loaded  this  nobleman  with  a  heavy  -P^-J,;^^™  ™;f. 

rwrrvan  a^of  councU  of  the  political  administration  of  the  province, 
o  Xc^i  SirFdmund  Andros  was  it  the  same  time  appointed  governor  bj- 
U  e  king  ^  [1692  1     The  unmerited  advancement  of  this  man  was  not    s» 

;!SS;^iu..aaversarie.  see.  aUoto  have  thought  that  no  truth  ought  to  he  to.  of 
idolaterH !  " 

:  r.l!f!l?:':!;     ..  l  .„„«  not  how  U  happened,  but  «o  it  wa«,  t'-t  jn  King  Willinn,'.;.^^ 

r^sSTiasivr  z?^ir;':.r;;:r^^^  u ;  Jexp.s«.y  ae.isaatcd. 


BOOK  HI]    REVIEW  OF  THE  PROPRIETARY  ADMIIHSTRATION.         333 

discreditable  to  the  Br'ilish  court  than  the  unjust  deposition  of  the  proprietaiy. 
Lord  Baltimore,  !:s.ving  exercised  his  power  with  a  liberal  respect  for  the 
freedom  of  other  men's  consciences,  now  parted  with  it  from  a  noble  re- 
gard to  the  sanctity  of  his  own.  Andros,  who  had  previously  gained  eleva- 
tion by  his  active  subserviency  to  a  Cathohc  despot,  now  purchased  its 
continuance  by  rendering  himself  instrumental  to  Protestant  intolerance. 

In  tliis  manner  fell  the  proprietary  government  of  Mar^^land,  after  a  dura- 
tion of  fifty-six  years,  during  which  it  was  conducted  with  unexampled 
mildness,  and  with  a  regard  to  the  liberty  and  welfare  of  the  people,  de- 
serving a  very  different  requital  from  that  which  we  have  had  the  pain  of 
reviewing.  The  slight  notice  which  the  policy  of  Lord  Baltimore  has 
received  from  the  philosophic  encomiasts  of  liberal  institutions  attests  tho 
capricious  distribution  of  fame,  and  has  probably  been  occasioned  by  dislike 
of  his  religious  tenets,  which,  it  was  feared,  would  share  the  commendation 
bestowed  on  their  votary.  It  was  apprehended,  perhaps,  that  the  charge 
of  intolerance,  so  strongly  preferred  by  Protestants  and  philosophers  against 
Catholic  potentates  and  the  Romish  Church,  would  be  weakened  by  the 
praise  of  a  toleration  which  Catholics  estabhshed  and  Protestants  overthrew. 
]8ut,  in  truth,  every  deduction  that  is  made  by  the  most  uncharitable  of  their 
adversaries  from  the  liberality  of  Catholics  in  general,  and  every  imputation 
that  is  more  or  less  justly  throwTi  on  the  ordinary  influence  of  their  tenets 
in  contracting  the  mind,  ought  to  magnify  the  merit  of  Lord  Baltimore's  in- 
stitutions, and  enhance  the  praise  by  illustrating  the  rarity  of  his  virtue.  One 
of  tho  most  respectable  features  of  the  proprietary  administration  was  tiro 
constant  regard  that  was  shown  to  justice,  and  to  the  exercise  and  cuhivation 
of  benevolence,  in  all  transactions  and  intercourse  with  the  Indians.  But 
though  this  colony  was  more  successful  than  the  New  England  States  (who 
conducted  themselves  no  less  unexceptionably  towards  the  Indians)  m 
avoiding  war  with  its  savage  neighbours,  yet  we  have  seen  that  it  was  not 
always  able  to  avert  this  extremity.  In  Maryland  as  well  as  in  New  Eng- 
land, doubtless,  the  pacific  endeavours  of  the  colonists  were  counteracted, 
not  only  by  the  natural  ferocity  of  the  Indians,  but  by  the  hostilities  of 
other  Europeans,  by  which  that  ferocity  was,  from  time  to  tbne,  enkindled 
and  developed.  \  et  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania,  who  were  exposed  to 
the  same  disadvantage,  escaped  its  evil  consequences,  and  were  never  at- 
tacked by  the  Indians.  Relying  implicitly  and  exclusively  on  the  protection 
of  Heaven,  they  renounced  every  act  or  indication  of  self-defence  that  could 
awaken  the  contentiousness  of  human  nature,  or  excite  apprehensive  jeal- 
ousy, by  ostentation  of  the  power  to  injure.  But  tlie  Puritan  and  Catholic 
colonists  of  New  England  and  Maryland,  while  they  professed  and  exercised 
good-will  to  the  Indians,  adopted  the  hostile  precaution  of  demonstrating 
their  readiness  and  ability  to  repel  violence.  They  displayed  arms  and 
erected  forts,  and  thus  provoked  the  suspicion  they  expressed,  and  Invited 
the  injury  they  anticipated. 

Before  toleration  was  defended  by  Locke,  it  was  practically  establisheti 
by  Lord  Baltimore  ;  and  in  the  attempts  which  both  of  these  eminent  per- 
sons made  to  construct  the  frame  of  a  wise  and  liberal  government  in  Amer- 
ica, it  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  Protestant  philosopher  was  greatly 
excelled  by  the  Catholic  nobleman.'     The  constitutions  of  William  Penn 

'  At  a  social  entertainment,  where  Sir  Imao  Nevrton,  John  Lod(e,.BBd  William  Penitiiiftfy- 
penAil  to  nicf't  tos^etber^  the  convcrsEiion  turned  on  the  Gotnpojfstivs  «*ft*U«»i**  of  th%5'*o?{!?¥i 
ments  of  Carolina  and  Pennsylvania.    Locke  ingenuously  yielded  the  palm  to  Penn  (Clerk 


334 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  111. 


have  been  the  theme  of  general  panegyric  ;  but  of  those  who  have  com- 
mended th^m,  how  few  have  been  found  to  celebrate  or  even  acknowledge 
Srprior  establishment  of  similar  institutions  by  Lord  Baltimore  !  i  As- 
similated  in  their  maxims  of  government,  these  two  proprietaries  were  assim- 
UaTed  in  their  political  fortunes  ;  both  having  witnessed  an  eclipse  of  their 
opularity  in  America,  and  both  being  dispossessed  of  their  governments  by 
kine  William.  Penn,  indeed,  was  restored  a  few  years  after  :  but  Lord 
Ba uLore's  deprivation  continued  during  his  life.  On  his  death,  m  1716, 
Ws  successor,  being  a  Protestant,  was  restored  to  the  enjoyment  of  propn- 
etary  powers.  These  powers,  however,  had  in  the  interim  sustained  some 
abatement  from  an  act  o(  the  English  parliament,^  Nvhich  applied  not  only 
to  this  but  to  all  the  other  feudatory  principalities  in  North  America,  and 
rendered  the  royal  sanction  necessary  to  confirm  the  nomination  of  the  pro- 

^'iranLETafter  his  appointment  to  the  office  of  governor.  Sir  Edmund 
Andros  repaired  to  Maryland,  where  he  convoked  an  assembly,  m  which  the 
tkle  of  William  and  Mary  was  recognized  by  a  legislative  enactment,  and 
in  which  ar.  attempt  was  made  to  divest  the  proprietary  of  the  port-duties 
that  were  settled  on  his  family  in  the  year  1661.     The  assembly  now  made 
a  tender  of  the  produce  of  this  tax  to  the  kmg,  alleging,  that,  although  the 
provision  was  g'unted  in  general  terms  to  the  proprietary,  the  real  mtention 
o{  the  legislature  iiad  been  to  confer  it  merely  as  a  trust  for  the  uses  of 
the  public.     The  king,  however,  declined  to  accept  the  offer,  or  sanction 
the  assembly's  construction  of  the  grant ;    Sir  John  Somers,  to  whom  the 
legitimacy  of  the  proposition  was  referred,  havmg  pronounced  as  his  opinion 
thit  the  duty  truly  belonged  to  Lord  Baltimore,  and  was  intended  for  his  ONvn 
use,  and  that  it  would  be  of  dangerous  consequence  to  admit  parol  proo 
of  ieeislative  intention,  contradictory  of  the  plain  meaning  of  the  words  of 
enacted  law.     The  ingratitude  which  was  thus  manifested  towards  the  pro- 
nrietarv  met  with  a  just  retribution  from  the  administration  of  Andros,  who, 
[hough  he  subsequently  approved  himself  a  good  governor  m  \  irg.nia,  exer- 
cised  much  severity  and  rapacity  in  Maryland.     Not  the  least  offensive  par 
of  his  conduct  was,  that  he  protected  Comie^gamst  the  complaints  he  had 

.on  g  life  o/T^li^^OT^^idX^iTd  doubtloBS  h^^^Ti^lJcd  it  to  Lord  Baltimore.    But  I'ciln's  repu- 
■on  8  Life  (j/  rmn),  miu  "  OimUprH  have  felt  in  promot  ng  it,  and  the  willingness  of 

hahimore:  and  to  this,  |>orl.ap,  f,»yi«„;^,",rl   the  coLiunitics  of  which  they  were  the 
scondants  of  these 
chiefs  at  the  perioi 
minor ;   yet  his  ei 
Winterbotliam.     The 

embraced  the  cause  of  Bntain  ;  yet  uie  legisiuiuru  u 

most  liberal  manner  for  the  loss  of  their  proper  y.      Brissot  s  ^  «««•  .       . 

'From  one  English  poet  the  two  propricturirs  have  received  an  equal  tribute  of  praise  .- 
»  Laws  formed  to  harmonize  contrarious  creeds, 

And  heal  the  wounds  through  which  a  nation  bleeds ; 

Laws  mild,  impartial,  tolerant,  nml  fixed, 

A  bond  of  union  for  a  people  mixed  : 

Such  as  good  Calvert  framed  for  Baltimore,  ^ 


-TV    f  Jl  nJo'nffX'  c3.^enrTd  fro^   t  he    ^fnmunities  of  which  they  were  the 
«,endanu  «f /Je^J^-^,   ^^^^  r"  olm^^  The  proprietary  of  Maryland  was  .hen  a 

.    iP:a«^-»n.wnrP  confiscated,  and    no  indemnification  could  ever  be  obtained, 
wSSam       m    drendant"?Venn.nfteru  long  series  of  quarrels  with  the  people, 
Sacedtrc  cause  of  Britain  ;  yet  the  legi.laturoof  Pennsylvania  indemnified  them  m  the 
...       ■  i*    .1  _  I »i*  *i.Aii 


nx  also  paid  the  duties  ihcrc,  under  the  penalty  ot^a 
Union  in  1707  reuduitsd  Uui  reiuiction  void,  m  so  .ar 


forfeii 

58  n! 


;;d  t-  Scotland, 


1  cargo. 


The 


DOOK  HI.] 


OPPRESSION  OF  THE  CATHOLICS. 


336 


tribute  of  praise  :- 


provoked,  and  enabled  this  profligate  hypocrite  a  little  longer  to  protract  the 
period  of  his  nnpunity.  But  Coode's  fortunes  soon  became  more  appropri- 
ate to  his  deserts.  Finding  himself  neglected  by  Colonel  Nicholson,  the 
lieutenant  and  successor  of  Andros,  he  began  to  practise  against  the  royal 
government  the  same  treacherous  intrigues  that  he  had  employed  with  suc- 
cess against  the  proprietary  administration.  Inferior  in  talent  to  Bacon,  the 
disturber  of  Virgmia,  and  far  inferior  in  sincerity  to  Leisler,  the  contempora- 
ry agitator  of  New  York,  Coode  was  chiefly  indebted  for  his  success  to  the 
implicit  reliance  which  he  placed  on  the  influence  of  panic  and  the  extent  of 
popular  credulity.  He  had  an  unbounded  confidence  in  the  power  of  copi- 
ous and  persevering  calumny,  and  endeavoured  to  impress  it  as  a  maxim  on 
his  disciples  in  sedition,  that,  "  if  plenty  of  mud  be  thrown,  some  of  it  must 
infallibly  stick."  In  1695,  this  president  of  the  Protestant  Association  of 
Maryland  was  indicted  for  treason  and  blasphemy  ;  and,  justly  apprehendino- 
tliat  he  would  be  treated  with  less  lenity  under  the  Protestant,  than  he  for- 
merly experienced  under  the  Catholic  administration,  he  declined  to  stand 
a  trial,  and  fled  from  the  province  which  he  had  contributed  so  signally  to 
dishonor.^ 

The  suspension  of  the  proprietary  government  was  accompanied  with  a 
notable  departure  from  the  principles  on  which  its  administration  was  pre- 
viously conducted.  The  political  equality  of  religious  sects  was  disallowed, 
and  the  toleration  that  had  been  extended  to  every  form  of  Christian  worship 
was  abolished.  The  Church  of  England  was  declared  to  be  the  established 
ecclesiastical  constitution  of  the  state  ;  and  an  act  passed  in  the  year  1692 
having  divided  the  several  counties  into  parishes,  a  legal  maintenance  was 

assigned  to  a  minister  of  this  communion  in  every  one  of  these  parishes, 

consisting  of  a  glebe,  and  an  annual  tribute  of  forty  pounds  of  tobacco  from 
every  Christian  male,  and  every  male  or  female  negro  above  sixteen  years 
of  age.  The  appointment  of  the  ministers  was  vested  in  the  governor,  and 
the  management  of  parochial  afi'airs  in  vestries  elected  by  the  Protestant  in- 
habitants. For  the  instruction  of  the  people,  free  schools  and  public  libra- 
ries were  established  by  law  in  all  the  parish«js  ;  and  an  ample  collection  of 
books  was  presented  to  the  libraries,  as  a  commencement  of  their  literary 
stock,  by  tlie  Bishop  of  London.  This  design  was  originally  suggested  by 
Dr.  Thomas  Bray,  an  English  clergyman,  who  djstinguished  himself  by  the 
zeal  and  activity  with  which  he  labored  to  extend  the  doctrine  and  authority 
of  the  church  of  England,  both  in  this,  and  the  other  North  American  colo- 
nies. But  notwithstanding  all  these  encouragements  to  the  cultivation  of 
knowledge,  and  the  rapid  increase  of  her  wealth  and  population,  it  was  not 
till  after  her  separation  from  the  parent  state,  that  any  considerable  academy 
or  college  was  formed  in  Maryland.  All  Protestant  Dissenters  were  admit- 
ted to  partake  the  full  benefit  of  the  act  of  toleration  passed  in  the  com- 
mencpment  of  William  and  Mary's  reign  by  tlie  English  parliament.  But 
this  grace  was  strictly  withheld  from  the  Roman  Catholics  ;  and  the  Protes- 
tants, who  thus  enacted  toleration  to  themselves,  witli  the  most  impudent 
injustice  and  unchristian  cruelty  denied  it  to  the  men  by  whose  toleration 
theyhad  been  permitted  to  gain  an  establishment  in  the  province.     Sanc- 

'  Oldmixon.  Chalmers.  Among  other  usprcssions  that  Coode's  indictment  )aid  to  his 
charge,  as  constituting  the  offence  of  blasphemy,  he  was  accused  of  having  said  »  that  there 
WM  no  religion  but  what  wn«  in  Tully's  Offices."  To  make  these  words  the  more  intelligible, 
the  indictment  illustrated  them  by  this  innuendo,  "that  they  were  spoken  of  one  Tullv,  a  Ro- 
man orator  meaning."  ^ 


dS6 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  m. 


tionpd  bv  the  authority,  and  instructed  by  die  example  of  the  British  gov 
eZent  the  leSture  of  Maryland  proceeded,  bv  the  most  tyrannical  per- 
rcSonhe  CathoUcs,  to  confirm  and  disgrace  tfic  Protestant  ascendency 
Not  only  were  these  unfortunate  victims  of  a  consc.ent.ous  belief,  wh.c 
fhe  acSons  of  their  opponents  contributed  addiUonaUy  to  forufy,  excluded 
tmdl  participation  In  political  privileges,  but  they  were  debarred  from  the 
ex^cbe  of  th^r  peculiai  form  of  worship,  and  from  the  advantages  of  edu- 
cation      By  an  act  of  the  provincial  assembly,  passed  in  the  yeari704,and 
renewed  in  the  year  1714,  it  was  ordained  that  any  Catholic  priest,  attempt- 
SHo  convert  a^Protestant,  should  be  .punished  with  fine  and  injpnsonment ; 
Sid  that  the  celebration  of  mass,  or  the  education  of  youth  by  a  Pap.st, 
Sould  be  punished  by  transmission  of  tlie  offending   priest  or  teacher  to 
Sandfthat  he  might  there  undergo  the  penalues  winch  the  Lnghsh  stat- 
utes  attached  to  such  conduct.     Transported  by  their  eagerness  to  deprive 
SrCathoHcs  of  liberty,  the  Protestants  of  Maryland  seem  not  to  have  per- 
ceived  that  tWs  last  measure  tended  to  subvert  tlieir  own  pretens.on  to 
bdependent  legislation.     They  maintahied  that  the  statutes  of  the  Lnghsh 
nSment  did  not  extend,  by  the  mere  operation  of  their  own  mtrms.c  au- 
ZhvX  Maryland  ;  and  in  conformity  with  this  notion,  we  find  an  act  of 
Ssemblv   in  S  year  1706,  giving  to  certain  Enghsh  acts  of  parliament  he 
focTof  aw  within  the  provLe.'    But  it  was  manifestlv  inconsistent  with 
such  pretended  independence  to  declare  any  of  the  coU.sts  amenable  to 
Se  necXr  iurisprudence  of  England,  for  actions  committed  m  the  province 
wd^notWshabl  by  the  provincial  laws.     Tliough  laws  thus  unjust  and 
J^nressivo  were  framed,  it  was  found  impossible  to  carry  them  into  co... 
l^te  execuUon      Shortly  after  the  act  of  1704  was  passed,  the  assembly 
fudged  it  expedient  to  suspend  its  enforcement  so  far  as  to  admu  of  Catholie 
Ssts  performing  their  functions  in  private  houses  ;  and  the  act  of  1714 
S^s  suspended  in\  similar  manner,  in  consequence  of  an  express  mandate 

""  ^\Tr'l'Sh^Hc\'ofXy^^^^  under  the  pretence  of  vices  which 
none  exemplified  more  forcibly  than  their  persecutors,  deprived  of  those 
TvileSrwhich,  for  niOL-e  than  half  a  century,  they  had  exercised  with 
KmMed  iustice  and  moderation.    In  addition  to  the  ot  er  odious  features 
7tho  tr7a?m^en  they  experienced,  there  was  a  shameful  violatK>n  o   national 
faith  in    uSng  Protestant  persecution  to  follow  them  mto  the  asylum  from 
rseverity'  which  they  had^een  encouraged  to  seek    and  with  labomus 
lirtue  had  established.     Sensible  of  this  injustice,  or  rather,  perhaps,  vviHing 
toTdut  theciic^  whom  they  had  determined  not  to  tderate  at  haine, 
To  expatriate  to  Maryland,  the  British  government  continued  from  time  to 
Le  t^o  set  bomids  to  the  exercise  of  that  provincial  bigotry  whic^  its  own 
example  had  prompted  and  its  own  authority  still  maintained.    Irom  th 
S  more  unji^t  and  perfidious  treatment  which  the  Cathohcs  of  Maryland 
beheS  their  brethren  In  Ireland  undergo  from  Great  Bntain  they  might    - 
rive  at  least  the  consolation  of  perceiving  that  they  themselves  wore  not 
delivered  up  to  the  utmost  extremity  of  Protestant  tyranny  and  intolerance. 
Before  the  overthrow  of  the  Catholic  church  m  Maryland,  its  clerE-'    d 
signalized  diemselves  by  some  attempts  to  convert  the  Indians  to  tlieU^^^^^^ 
tian  faith  ;  but  their  endeavours  have  been  represented  as  bemg  neither  j- 
i'lus  nor  successful.     Eager  to  provml^on  the_^age8jojece.ve^ 

--Ts^Meii'Vrilsl^yofE^i^^iiliir-A^^  of  the  Assc^ly  r,f  Maryland  Jr»n  im  io  1715- 


BOOK  HI]       CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  MARYLAND. 


S37 


nialities,  before  they  were  impressed  with  the  substance  of  Christian  faith, 
they  are  said  to  have  administered  the  rite  of  baptism  to  persons  who  under- 
stood  It  so  httle,  that  they  considered  their  acceptance  of  it  as  a  favor  they 
conferred  on  the  missionaries  in  return  for  the  presents  they  received  from 
them,  and  used  to  threaten  to  renounce  their  baptism  unless  these  presents 
were  repeated.'  But  if  the  Catholics  of  Maryland  were  chargeable  with  a 
superstiuous  forwardness  to  administer  this  rite,  some  of  their  Protestant 
fellow-colonists  betrayed  sentiments  far  more  inexcusable,  li  tlieir  deter- 
mination to  withhold  it.  An  act  of  assembly,  passed  in  the  year  1716, 
recounts  that  many  people  refused  to  permit  their  slaves  to  be  baptized,  in 
consequence  of  an  apprehension  that  baptism  would  entitle  them  to  their 
freedom  ;  and  accordingly,  to  overcome  their  reluctance,  ordains  that  no 
negro  receivmg  the  holy  sacrament  of  baptism  should  derive  therefrom  any 
right  or  claim  to  be  made  free.^  It  was  the  peculiar  unhappiness  of  the  lot 
of  the  Maryland  Protestants,  that  they  were  surrounded  at  the  same  time  by 
Catholics,  whom  they  were  incited  to  persecute,  and  by  slaves,  whom  they 
were  enabled  to  oppress  ;  and  it  was  not  till  some  time  after  the  Revolution 
of  1688,  that  they  began  to  show  more  genuine  fruits  of  the  tenets  they 
professed,  than  the  persecution  of  those  who  'differed  from  them  in  religious 
opinion.' 

At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  population  of  Maryland 
amounted  to  ihirty  thousand  persons ;  and  whether  from  superiority  of  soil, 
or  industry,  or  from  the  absence  of  laws  restrictive  of  cultivation,  this 
province  is  said  to  have  exported  at  least  as  much  tobacco  as  the  older  and 
more  populous  province  of  Virginia.  At  a  later  period,  a  law  was  passed, 
prohibiting  the  cultivation  on  any  estate  of  a  greater  quantity  than  six  thou- 
sand plants  of  tobacco  for  every  taxable  individual  upon  the  estate.  Mary- 
land was  the  first  of  the  provinces  in  which  the  right  of  private  property 
was  from  the  beginning  recognized  in  its  fullest  extent ;  and  community  of 
possessions  had  never  even  a  temporary  establishment.  This  peculiarity,  it 
is  probable,  contributed  to  promote  the  peculiar  industry  by  which  the  people 
of  Maryland  have  been  distinguished.  In  the  year  1699,  Annapolis  was 
substituted  for  St.  Mary's,  as  the  capital  of  the  province  ;  and  all  roads 
leadmg  thither  were  ordered  to  be  marked  by  notches  cut  on  the  trees  grow 
ing  on  either  hand  :  but  the  same  causes  that  prevented  the  growth  of  towns 
in  Virginia  also  repressed  their  rise  in  Maryland.  There  were  few  mer- 
chants or  shopkeepers  who  were  not  also  planters  ;  and  it  was  the  custom 
for  every  man  to  maintain  on  his  nlantation  a  store  for  supplying  the  usual 
accommodations  of  shops  to  his  family,  servants,  and  slaves.*  Living  dis- 
persed over  the  province,  and  remote  from  each  other,  the  effects  of  their 
comparative  solitude  are  said  to  have  been  generally  visible  in  the  physi- 
ognomy, manners,  and  apparel  of  the  planters  ;  their  aspect  expressing  less 
cheerful  frankness,  their  demeanour  less  vivacity,  their  dress  less  attention 
to  neatness,  and  their  whole  exterior  less  urbanity^  than  were  found  in  those 
coldiues  where  cities  engendered  and  diffused  the  graceful  quality  to  which 
they  have  given  a  name.  But  even  those  who  have  reproached  them  with 
this  defect  have  not  failed  to  recognize  a  more  respectable  characteristic  of 
their  situation,  in  that  hospitality  by  which  they  were  universally  distinguish 

'  Neal'g  .Vein  England.  "  ~~~  "~' 

!  nM  *^'**  Maryland  AnsenMy^from  1692  to  1715.  »  OidmixoD. 

•Uldmixon.    HuUtry  of  tha  British  DonUniona  in  Jlmmta. 

43 


'  Oldmixon. 
VOL. 


c(; 


838 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOH  Ul. 


«H  1  At  a  later  period,  the  to>vns  of  Maryland  seemed  to  acquire  a  sudden 
•  Jnl^  of  increase  ■  and  Baltimore,  in  particular,  has  grown  with  a  ra- 
Kt^trlnedTve^^^  the  United  States!  In  none  of  the  provmces  have 
SfeC  of  a  wise  or  illiberal  system  of  government  bee^  more  pla.ny  ap. 
nnrPnt  than  in  Maryland.    For  nearly  a  century  after  the  Bntish  Revolution, 

STrLrn  in  reS-  '    '  "ved  a  source  of  animosity,  and  was  made 

^Z^^(^-oi,^^\ionn^  all  dut  period,  not  one  considerable 
tne  apoiogy  lui  ,  nrovince.      \V  tliin  a  few  years  after  the 

^rr/f  t^S  «^d  universS  IZZ.,  in  the  train  of  imerican  inde- 
nend^nce,  ?he  varieties  of  doctrinal  opinion  among  the  people  served  but 
Kustrate  religious  charity  ;  numerous  colleges  and  academies  were  found- 
Id  aid  'he  ame  peopb  among  whom  persecution  had  lingered  longest 
S«  distinguished^  for  a  remarkable  de-"^  of  courteous  kindness,  liberal 

'''^^^'s^^::^^^,^^  govenunent,  the  ^^tureef 
.hp  nrovince  consisted  of  three  branches  ;  after  its  revival,  ol  four:  the 
S^o?  etrrv  theTvTrnor,  the  council,  and  the  burgesses.  The  proprietary, 
rsFdTs  a  Vrge  domain  'cultivated  by  himself,  enjoyed  a  qmtren  of  two 
Sui  steriing  yearly  for  every  hundred  acres  of  appropriated  land.  Tins 
ts  in'^reased'at^n  'after  period  to  four  shilmgs  in  s-e  d«     and  an 

Tn  tC  ecompe^se  of  popular  gratitude,  and  persist  m  their  original  moder- 
aSon  a^idlTbSy.  tL  salaries  of  the  governor  and  deputy^ovenior 
auon  ana   "o^™*"^'  ,      ^      ^^  exported  tobacco,  decreed  to  them 

r^Sv^y  Sr  appo  lenl'^o  officc,Ld  proportioned  .o  .to  pop.. 
tari^v  Tto  coinoil  oonsislod  of  twelve  persons,  appointed  by  the  propr,. 
el^v'  and,  during  the  abeyance  of  his  political  nghts  by  the  royal  go,e„. 
or^'^;ad.  of  whim  received,  during  the  session  of  the  assembbr,  an  allo«. 
or  ,  eacli  01  ""»"'  .  !  »  ^     f  ,obacco  daily  from  the  province. 

tII  tuTe^5■tXS  or'^burgesses  consisted  of  four  member,  fro. 
S  o?*e  IntLs,  and  two  from  the  capital  •,  the  daily  '^^-_^'^[^^ 

ii^rtLTr^visreoi^rtxrt^^^^^^^^^ 

eSly  assumed  the  privilege  o  renovating  their  °»"  l>°iy.  "u  ,4"SS 

i£i:iorfr^.rc»?-^^^^ 

oreviouslv  resided  three  years  m  the  colony. ^_. 

inhabiUnta  of  Maryland."    Ibid. 

•  Warden'a  AuoutU  of  the  United  States. 

»  History  of  Iks  BrUish  Dominitms  in  .America. 

*  Jltti  vj  Jissems!y,jrum  tv"  "^ .     . 


BOOK  III]      CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  MARYLAND. 


339 


The  situation  of  slaves  and  of  indented  servants  appears  to  have  been 
very  much  the  same  in  Maryland  as  in  Virginia.  Any  white  woman, 
whether  a  servant  or  free,  becoming  pregnant  from  the  embrace  of  a  negro, 
whether  a  slave  or  free,  was  punished  with  a  servitude  of  seven  years  ;  and 
the  children  of  "  tliose  unnatural  and  inordinate  connexions  "  (as  they  were 
(pmied  by  law)  were  doomed  to  servitude  till  they  should  attam  the  age  of 
thirty-one.  A  white  man  begetting  a  child  by  a  negress  was  subjected  to 
the  same  penalty  as  a  white  woman  committing  the  corresponding  offence.' 
Thus  pride  produced  in  Maryland  regulations,  less  extensive,  indeed,  in 
their  range,  but  not  less  rigid  in  their  operation,  than  those  which  piety  had 
established  in  New  England.  An  indented  servant,  at  the  expiration  of  his 
dependence,  was  entitled  to  demand  an  ample  allowance  of  various  useful 
commodities  from  his  master,  some  of  which  he  was  prohibited,  under  a 
penalty,  from  selling  for  twelve  months  after  his  emancipation."  A  tax  was 
imposed  on  the  importation  of  servants  from  Ireland,  "  to  prevent  the  im- 
porting too  great  a  number  of  Irish  Papists  into  this  province."  ^ 

To  obstruct  the  evasion  of  provincial  debts  or  other  obligations,  by  flight 
to  England,  or  to  the  other  A  merican  States,  all  persons  preparing  to  leave 
the  colony  were  required  to  give  public  intimation  of  their  departure,  and 
obtain  a  formal  passport  from  the  municipal  authorities.*  An  act  was 
passed  in  the  year  169S,  bestowing  a  large  tract  of  land  in  Dorchester 
county  on  two  Indian  kings,  who,  with  their  subjects,  were  to  hold  it  as  a 
fief  from  the  proprietary,  and  to  pay  for  it  a  yearly  rent  of  one  bear-skin. 
In  common  with  the  other  colonies,  Maryland  was  much  infested  by 
wolves;  and  so  late  as  the  year  1715,  a  previous  act  was  renewed, 
offering  "  the  sum  of  three  hundred  pounds  of  tobacco  "  as  a  reward  for 
every  wolf's  head  that  should  be  brought  by  any  colonist  or  Indian  to  a 
justice  of  the  peace."  An  act  proposing  a  similar  recompense  had  been 
passed  in  Virgmia,  but  was  repealed  in  the  year  1666. 


Acts  of  the  Atatmbly,frvm  1692  to  1715. 
*  Ibid.  *  Ibid. 


Ibid. 
Ibid. 


BOOK    IV 


w 


NORTH  AND  SOUTH  CAROLINA. 
CHAPTER    I. 

earlr  AtUmpUof  the  Spmiardi  and  the  French  to  colonize  thia  Territory. -Finrt  Ch«rter  of 
CMolina  panted  by  (?harle.  the  Second  to  Lord  Clarendon  and  o  her..  -Forn.at.on  of  Al. 
bemaHeXttlemont  in  North  Carolina.  -  Settlement  of  A.hloy  R.vcr  .n  South  Carolma.  - 
Second  Charter  of  the  whole  United  ProTince.  -  Proceeding,  at  Alben.arle.  - 1  he  Propn- 
S.  enact  ho  Fundamental  Con.titutions  of  Carolina.  -  Expedu.on  of  Ln..granl»  to  South 
Carolina^  John  Locke  created  a  Landgrave.  -  Hoatiitica  w.th  the  8pn„.ard8  .n  H,^,d, 
-  «id  with  the  Indians.  -  UiBg.iitH  brtween  the  Propnetanea  and  the  ColoniBtj.  -  Alk.n. 
of  North  Carolina.  -  Culi.appcr'a  Insurrection.  -  He  .a  tried  in  Lnglaad  -  and  acquilied. 
_  Di/c  "rd  among  U.e  CoUists.  -  Solhora  tyrannical  AdminnUaUon.  -  He  la  dop(«K!d. 

We  have  beheld  New  England  colonized  by  Puritans  exiled  by  royal  aiid 
episcopal  tyranny  ;  Virginia  replenished  by  cavalier  and  episcopal  fugitives 
from  republican  triumph  and  Puritan  ascendency  ;  and  Maryland  loundedby 
Catholics  retiring  from  Protestant  intolerance.  By  a  smgular  couicidence, 
the  settlement  whose  history  we  are  now  to  investigate  ongmally  seemed  to 
have  been  destined  to  complete  this  series  of  reciprocal  persecution  ;  and  if 
the  first  colonists  who  were  planted  in  it  had  been  able  to  maintain  tlieir 
establishment,  Carolina  would  have  been  peopled  by  Huguenots  flying  from 

Catholic  bigotry.'  .         ,  .  .... 

This  territory  has  been  contested  by  a  variety  of  pretensions  and  distin- 
guished  at  successive  periods  by  a  variety  of  names.  The  claim  of  Eng- 
land to  the  first  discovery  of  it  was  disputed  by  the  Spaniards,  who  main- 
tained  that  Cabot  never  advanced  so  ftr  to  the  south,  and  that  it  had  been 
yet  unvisited  by  any  European,  when  Ponce  de  Leon,  the  Spanish  governor 
of  Porto  Rico,  arrived  on  its  shores  [1512],  in  the  course  of  a  voyage  he 
wa«  making  in  quest  of  a  land  which  was  reported  to  contain  a  brook  or  foun- 
tain endowed  with  the  miraculous  power  of  restoring  the  bloom  and  vigor  of 
youth  to  age  and  decrepitude."  Believing  that  he  had  here  attained  the  fa- 
vored  region,  he  hastened  to  take  possession,  in  his  sovereign's  name,  of  so 
rare  and  valuable  an  acquisition.  He  bestowed  on  it  the  name  of  l^lorida, 
either  on  account  of  the  vernal  beauty  that  adorned  Us  surface,  or  because  he 
(iiscovered  it  on  the  Sunday  before  Easter,  which  the  Spaniards  call  Pascm 
de  Flores ;  but,  though  he  chilled  his  aged  frame  by  bathing  in  every  stream 
that  he  could  find,  he  had  the  mortification  of  returning  an  older  instead  ol  a 
younger  man  to  Porto  Rico.  A  few  years  afterwards,  another  Spanish  001- 
rer,  who  was  sent  to  inspect  more  minutely  the  territory  supposed  to  have 
been  thus  newly  discovered,  performed  an  exploit  too  congenial  with  the 

'  At  a  .ubsequcnt  period  ."the  descendants  of  ona  of  the  moat  illuatrious  people  of  antinuity 
were  induced  to  seek  a  refu'w  in  America  from  Turkish  opprc.«.on.  In  the  latter  part  o^the 
Shteenth  century, Sir  WilP.am  Duncan, an  eminent  Eiisl.ah  I.hy«c.an,conce.ved  Ine  project 
of  founding  a  Grecian  colony  in  North  America,  and  actualfy  tran.ported,  for  this  purposo, 
«everal  hundred  Greeks  to  Kast  Florida.     Gait's  UUers  from  the  I'fvant. 

»  An  account  of  a  fountain  in  Ethiopia  endowed  with  similar  efficacy  (mamfe.tly  l.ttlccrcd. 
ited  by  the  relator)  occurs  in  Book  III.  of  the  History  of  Herodotu*. 


CHAP.  I]  COLIONrS  ATIEMPTS  AT  COLONIZATION. 


341 


^nirettly  litil«  crcd- 


contemporary  achievements  of  his  countrymen,  in  kidnapping  a  number  of 
the  natives,  whom  ho  carried  away  into  bondage.  Some  researches  for 
gold  and  silver,  undertaken  shortly  after  by  succeeding  adventurers  of  the 
game  nation,  having  terminated  unsuccessfully,  the  Spaniards  seemed  to  have 
renounced  the  intention  of  any  immediate  settlement  m  this  region,  and  left  it 
U)  repose  under  the  shadow  of  the  name  they  had  bestowed,  and  to  remem- 
ber its  titular  owners  by  their  cupidity  and  injustice. 

The  whole  of  its  coast  was  subsequently  [1523-1525]  explored  with 
considerable  accuracy  by  Verazzan,  an  Italian  navigator,  employed  in  the 
service  of  the  French,  and  whom  Francis  the  First  •  had  commissioned  to 
attempt  the  discovery  of  new  territories  in  America  for  the  benefit  of  his 
crown.  But  the  colonial  projects  of  the  French  were  suspended  during  the 
remainder  of  this  reign,  by  the  wars  and  intrigues  which  were  conducted 
with  such  eager  and  obstinate  rivalry  between  Francis  and  the  Emperor 
Charles  the  Fifth."  During  succeeding  reigns,  they  were  impeded  by  still 
more  fatal  obstructions  ;  and  all  the  benefit  that  France  might  have  derived 
from  the  territory  explored  by  Verazzan  and  neglected  by  the  Spaniards  was 
postponed  to  the  indulgence  of  royal  and  papal  bigotry  m  a  war  of  extermi- 
nation against  the  Huguenots.  The  advantages,  however,  thus  disregarded 
by  the  I  rench  court,  were  not  overlooked  by  the  objects  of  its  persecution  ; 
and  in  process  of  time,  the  project  of  appropriating  a  part  of  that  territory 
tl  a  retreat  for  French  Protestants  was  embraced  by  one  of  tlieir  leaders, 
the  renowned  Admiral  Coligni.  [1562.]  Two  vessels  which  he  equipped 
for  thi^_ purpose  were  accordingly  despatched  with  a  band  of  Protestant  emi- 
grants to  America,  who  landed  at  the  mouth  of  Albemarle  River,  and  in 
honor  of  their  sovereign  (Charles  the  Ninth),  gave  the  country  the  name  of 
Carolina,  —  a  name  which  the  Enghsh  first  obliterated  and  finally  restored. 
Though  the  French  colonists  had  only  to  announce  themselves  as  strangers 
to  the  faith  and  the  race  of  the  Spaniards,  in  order  to  obtain  a  friendly  re- 
ception from  the  Indians,  thijy  suffered  so  many  privations  ia  their  new  set- 
tlement, from  the  inability  of  the  admiral  to  furnish  them  with  adequate 
supplies,  that,  after  a  short  residence  in  America,  they  were  compelled  to 
return  to  France. 

A  treacherous  pacification  having  been  negotiated,  meanwhile,  between 
the  French  court  and  the  Protestants,  Coligni  employed  the  interval  of  re- 
pose, and  the  unwonted  favor  which  the  king  affected  to  entertain  for  him, 
in  providing  a  refuge  for  his  party  from  that  tempest,  which,  though  unhappi- 
ly for  himself  he  did  not  clearly  foresee,  yet  his  sagacity  and  experience 
enabled  him  partially  to  anticipate.  Three  ships,  furnished  by  the  king, 
and  freighted  with  another  detachment  of  Huguenots,  were  again  despatched 
to  Carolina  [1564],  and  followed  soon  after  by  a  more  numerous  fleet  with 
additional  settlers  and  a  copious  supply  of  arms  and  provisions.     The  as- 


'  The  kings  of  Spain  and  Portugal  remonstrated  against  the  projects  of  Francis  as  a  direct 

npugnation  of  ecclesiastical  authoritv.    To  this  remonstrance  the  French  monarch  is  said 

to  have  pleasantly  replied,  "I  should  be  «lad  to  see  the  clause  in  Adam's  will,  which  makes 

itment  their  exclusive  inheritance.       RnvnnI 


Raynal. 


impugnation  of  ecc 

tohavo  pleasantly      ^ ,     ^^ 

that  contment  their  exclusive  inheritance.       .»nj..ai. 

'  ^  ^jIp'  demonstration  was  made  by  Francis,  in  the  year  1540,  of  an  intention  to  colo- 
nize a  different  quarter  of  America,  by  the  letters  patent  which  ho  then  granted  to  Jacques 
Qiiartier  for  the  establishment  of  a  colony  in  Canada.  But  the  French  made  no  permanent 
settlement  even  there  till  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Fourth.  Escarbot's  History  ofj^eto  France. 
ChamplHJn's  Voyage.  In  the  commission  to  Quartier,  the  territory  in  described  as  "  possessed 
by  savnges  living  without  the  knowledge  of  God  or  the  use  of  reason."  Yet  Pope  Paul  the 
Third  had  previously  by  a  solemn  decree  pronounced  the  American  Indians  to  be  rational 
creBtureo,  possessing  tho  nature  and  entitled  i 


1  to  the  rights  of  men. 


CC 


342 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


1  ;„i,  thn  Icinff  of  France  thus  vouchsafed  to  the  Huguenots  reminds 
^Thel^lar  ^^^^^^^^^  Charles  the  First  prornoted,  in  the  follow- 

ne  ccnturyTthe  depiture  of  the  Puritans  from  England.     Ihe  French 
monS  was  a  httle  more  liberal  than  the  English,   m  the  aui  which  he 
TaS     but  he  was  infinitely  more  perfidious  and  cruel  m  the  design  which 
heTcretly  entertained.     Befriended  by  tlie  Indians   and  vigorously  apply- 
in/Semselves  to  the  cultivation  of  their  territory,  the  colonists  had  begun 
o^en^oyti^  prospect  of  a  permanent  and  happy  establ^hment  m  Carolma, 
when  they  were  suddenly  attacked  by  a  force  despatched  against  then,  by 
The  kin-  of  Spain.     The  commander  of  the  Spamsh  troops,  having  first  in- 
duced them  uf  surrender  as  Frenchmen,  put  them  all  to  the  sword  as  here- 
tics     announcing,  by  a  placard  erected  at  the  place  of  execution    that  lb,s 
butcherna"^nj  cie^i  on  them  not  as  subjects  of  France,  but  asfollomrsoj 
iXr       Nearly  a  thousand  French  Protestants  were  the  victims  of  this 
ma  sac  re  ;  and  only  one  soldier  escaped  to  carry  tidings  to  France,  .h.ch 
c  Sy  does  not  oblige  us  to  beheve  communicated   any  surprise  to  the 
proSors  of  the  league  of  Bayonne  and  the  massacre  of  fet.  Bartholomew, 
ffiugh    he  colony  had  been'pianted  with  the  approbation  of  the  French 
court  and  peace  subsisted  at  the  time  between  iVance  and  Spain   the  as- 
S  and  extirpation  of  the  colonists  produced  no  demonstration  of  resent- 
ment  f?om  Ue^>ench  government,  and  would  have  been  totally  unavenged 
Sis  world   if  De  Gorgues,  a  French  nobleman   incensed  at  such  hemofc 
insolence  and  barbarity,  had  not  determined  to  vindicate  the  claims  of  justice 
Lnd  the  honor  of  his  country.     Having  fitted  out  three  ships  a.  his  own  ex- 
pense ri567],  he  set  sail  for  Carolina,  where  the  Spamards,  m  careless  se- 
curUy,  possessed  the  fort  and  settlement  which  they  had  acquired  by   he 
mu  cfer  of  his  countrymen.     He  easily  obtained   the  cooperation  of   he 
Sbourine  Indians,  and  with  their  assistance  overpowered  and  pu  to  the 
sword  all  the  Spaniards  who  resisted   his  enterprise,  and  hanged  all  whom 
rmade  prisoners  on  the  nearest  trees  ;  erecting,  in  his  turn,  a  placard 
whiSi  announced  that  this  execution  was  inflicted  on  them  not  asSpo.mards 
iT as  murderers  and  robbers.     Having  thus  accomplished   his  purposed 
venerance,  he  returned  to  France  ;  first  razing  the  fort  to  the  ground  and  de- 
Itroving  e  ery  trace  of  the  settlement,  which  neither  frenchmen  nor  Sp  n- 
Sds  were  destined  ever  again  to  occupy.^     Rehg.ous  dissensions  excted 
a  much  greater  degree  of  mutual  hatred  and  of  public  confusion  in  I  ranee 
toi^Englnnd,  and  were  proportionally  unfavorable  to  I reiich  colomza- 
tn      Canada,  which  was  the  first  permanent  occupation  of  the  1'  rench  u, 
America  was  'not  colonized  till  six  years  after  Henry  the  lourlh  had  issued 

%C"SuU'yea^^  destruction  of  the  French  colony  founded 

by  Colli  th^re  L  planted,  within  the  sanie  territoriaUunUs,  m_th^^ 

i  quarter, 

however,  retained  ti.e.r  -..retonHions  to  'J^  °  "'yj  •^^.^f^'^^^c^^^^^^^^  found  ho  hud  inrur-cd 
tenon,  having  .om-J  « '^,  ^C:.  .^^^^  'S  havi r^g  bo^^  P«"nission  of  the  KngM. 

the  scrioiiH  di.ple.isure  of  the  y^"' IV/.'^'ivrrS  Voltaire  is  n  istaken  in  BUuposuis  tlwt 
government.  V.dta.re'«  A/fe  of  Ia,uu  llu:  ''"*'^|f "  '„^;™„  of  the  country  wfi.'re  she  had 
&,e  daughter  of  th.s  adventurer,  who  aftervvard«  »>«^»'^e  "<  "  »» "  «  ^°"  inhere  were  none 
been  \.L  in  a  prison,  received  her  «aHy  ejJ.-canon  m  C^^^^^  hi,„Helf  and  li.. 

fiunily.  Mimnrts  tt  Lettres  de  MairUrmn.     Vu  de  .M,  Mamtenoi. 


Oy  V/Uiit:,iii,  iiitiu  "-"  I" 1 — — - — -— j     r- 


CHAP.  I]    GRANT  OF  CAROLINA  TO  CLARENDON  AND  OTHERS.         343 

Roanoke,  the  first  settlement  established  by  Raleigh,  of  whose  enterprises 
we  have  remarked  the  progress  and  the  fate  in  the  early  history  of  Vir- 
ginia. There  was  an  analogy  between  the  fortunes  of  their  colonial  enter- 
prises, as  well  as  between  the  personal  destinies  of  the  two  illustrious  adven- 
turers ;  and,  transient  as  it  proved,  it  was  still  the  most  lasting  trace  of  his 
exertions  witnessed  by  Raleigh,  that  the  name  of  the  country  was  changed 
by  the  English  from  Carolina  to  Virginia,  —  a  name  of  which  we  have  al- 
ready traced  the  final  application  and  peculiar  history.'  Even  the  subse- 
quent and  more  durable  colonial  appropriations  of  the  English  did  not  extend 
to  this  territory,  till  the  year  1622,  when  a  few  planters  and  their  families, 
flying  from  the  hostilities  of  the  Indians  in  Virginia  and  New  England, 
sought  refuge  within  its  limits,  and  are  said  to  have  acted  the  part  of  Chris- 
tian missionaries  in  their  new  settlement  with  some  promising  appearance 
of  success.  They  suffered  extreme  hardship  from  scarcity  of  provisions, 
and  were  preserved  from  penshing  by  tlie  generous  contributions  of  the 
people  of  Massachusetts,  whose  assistance  they  implored.  An  attempt  was 
made  to  assume  a  jurisdiction  over  them  by  Sir  Robert  Heath,  attorney- 
general  to  Charles  the  First,  who  obtained  from  his  master  a  patent  of  the 
whole  of  this  region  by  the  name  of  Caroiana.  But  as  he  neglected  to  ex- 
ecute the  powers  conferred  on  him,  the  patent  was  afterwards  declared  to  be 
vacated  by  his  failure  to  perform  the  conditions  on  which  it  was  granted.'"* 
Much  collision  and  contestation  between  claimants  and  occupiers  of  colonial 
territory  would  have  been  prevented,  if  the  principle  of  this  adjudication 
had  been  more  generally  extended  and  more  steadily  enforced. 

The  country  which  so  many  unsuccessful  attempts  had  been  made  to  col- 
onize was  finally  indebted  for  its  cultivation  to  a  project  formed  by  certain 
courtiers  of  Cb^irles  the  Second  for  their  own  aggrandizement,  but  which 
they  were  pleased  to  ascribe  to  a  generous  desire  of  propagating  the  bless- 
ings of  religion  and  civility  in  a  barbarous  land.  An  application,  couched 
in  these  terms  [1663],  having  been  presented  to  the  king  by  eight  of  the 
most  eminent  persons  whose  fidelity  he  had  experienced  in  his  exile,  or 
whose  treachery  had  contributed  to  his  restoration,  easily  procured  for  them 
a  grant  of  that  extensive  region,  situated  on  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  between  the 
thirty-sixth  degree  of  north  latitude  and  the  river  Saint  Matheo.  This  ter- 
ritory was  accordingly  declared  an  English  province,  by  the  name  of  Car- 
olina, and  conferred  on  the  Lord  Chancellor  Clarendon,  Monk,  Duke  of 
Albemarle,  Lord  Craven,  Lord  Berkeley,  Lord  Ashley  (afterwards  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury),  Sir  George  Carteret,  Sir  John  Colleton,  and  Sir  William 
Berkeley,  the  brother  of  Lord  Berkeley,  and  already  introduced  to  our 
acquaintance  as  governor  of  Virginia  ,  icho  (as  the  charter  set  forth) ,  being 

'  The  denominntion,  which,  in  honor  of  himself,  he  conferred  on  a  projected  town  (soo 
ante,  Book  I.,  Chap.  L),  was  revived  and  bestowed  upon  an  actiinl  city,  more  than  two  liun- 
drcd  j'ears  after;  when,  by  an  ordinance  of  tlie  legislature  of  Nortli  Carolina,  the  name  of 
Raleigh  was  given  to  the  seat  of  government  of  this  province. 

*  Coxc'a  Description  of  Carolfaia.  Iliitciiinson.  Oldmixon.  Chahnors.  Heath  liad  pre- 
viously sold  his  patent  to  the  Earl  of  Arundel  and  Surrey,  who  made  expensive  preparations 
for  founding  a  colonv,  but  was  diverted  from  his  design  by  a  domestic  calamity.  Dnniol 
Coxe,  a  physician  in  London,  who,  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  became  an  exten- 
sive purchaser  of  proprietary  rights  in  North  America,  contrived,  among  other  acquisitions,  to 
obtain  an  assignation  to  Sir  Ilchert  Heath's  patent;  and  nuiintained,  with  the  approbation  itf 
King  William's  ministers,  that  this  patent  was  still  a  valid  and  subsisting  title,  in  so  far  ns  it 
embraced  territory  occupied  by  the  Spaniards,  and  not  included  in  any  posterior  English  pa- 
tent. His  son  (author  of  the  besrriptwn)  rcsiimi'd  his  father's  claims,  and  made  various  un- 
successful attempts  to  colonize  tho  territory  which  ho  persisted  in  denominating  Carolatiu 
Coxo. 


344 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


excited  toith  a  laudable  and  pious  zeal  for  the  propagation  of  the  gospel, 
have  begged  a  certain  country  in  the  parts  of  America  not  yet  cultivated 
and  planted,  and  only  inhabited  by  some  barbarous  people  who  have  no 
knowledge  of  God.     The  territory  was  bestowed  on  these  personages,  and 
their  heirs  and  assigns,  as  absolute  lords  proprietaries  for  ever,  saving  the 
sovereign  allegiance  due  to  die  crown  ;  and  they  were  invested  with  as 
ample  privileges  and  jurisdiction  within  their  American  palatinate,  as  the 
Bishop  of  Durham  enjoyed  within  his  diocese.     This  charter,  composed 
by  the  parties  themselves  who  received  it,  seems  to  have  been  copied  from 
the  prior  charter  of  Maryland,  —  the  most  liberal  in  the  communication  of 
privileges  and  authority  that  had  ever  been  granted  by  an  English  monarch. 
A  meeting  of  all  the  proprietaries  who  were  in  England  was  held  soon 
after,  for  the  purpose  of  concerting  the  best  means  of  carrymg  the  purpo- 
ses of  their  charter  into  effect  ;  when  a  joint  stock  was  formed  by  general 
contribution  for  transporting  emigrants  and  defraying  other  preliminary  ex- 
penses.    At  the  desire  of  the  New  England  settlers,  who  already  inhabited 
the  province,  and  had  stationed  themselves  in  the  vicinity  of  Cape  Fear,  the 
proprietaries  published,  at  the  same  time,  a  document  entitled  Proposals 
to  all  that  will  plant  in  Carolina.     They  proclaimed  that  all  persons  in- 
habiting the  vicinity  of  Charles  River  to  the  southward  of  Cape  Fear,  and 
consenting  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  king,  and  to  recognize  the 
-proprietary  government,  should  be  entitled  to  continue  the  possfession  they 
ha/rssumed  and  to  fortify  their  settlements  ;  that  the  planters  should  pre- 
s«^ar  .0  the  proprietaries  a  list  of  thirteen  persons,  in  ordqr  that  they  might 
select  from  them  a  governor  and  council  of  six,  to  exercise  authority  for 
ibr."e  years  ;  that  an  assembly,  composed  of  the  governor,  council,  and  del- 
egates of  the  freemen,  should  be  convoked  as  soon  as  the  circumstances  of 
fhe  colony  would  admit,  with  power  to  make  laws,  of  which  the  validity 
W3'-  to  depend  on  their  congruity  with  the  jurisprudence  of  England  and 
Uie  approbation  of  the  proprietaries  ;  that  all  the  colonists  should  enjoy  the 
most  perfect  religious  freedom  ;  that  every  freeman  arriving  m  the  province 
during  the  next  five  years  should  obtain  a  hundred  acres  of  land  for  himself 
and  fifty  for  a  servant,  —  paying  only  a  halfpenny  of  rent  for  every  acre ; 
and  that  the  same  exemption  from  customs,  which  was  conferred  on  the  pro- 
prietaries by  the  royal  charter,  should  be  extended  to  all  classes  of  the  in- 
habitants.^    Such  was  the  original  compact  between  the  rulers  and  the  m- 
habitaviis  of  Carolina  ;  and  assuredly  it  must  strike  every  reflecting  nmul 
with  sui.  rise,  to  behold  a  regular  system  of  civil  and  religious  freedom  thus 
established  as  the  basis  of  the  provincial  institutions  by  the  same  statesmen, 
who,  in  the  parent  country,  had  framed  the  intolerant  act  of  uniformity, 
and  were  executing  its  provisions  with  the  most  relentless  rigor.     While 
they  silenced  such  teachers  as  John  Owen,  and  filled  the  prisons  of  England 
with  such  victims  as  Baxter,  Bunyan,  and  Alleine,  they  tendered  freedom 
and  encouragement  to  every  variety  of  opinion  in  Carolina  ;  thus  forcibly 
impeaching  the  wisdom  and  good  laith  of  their  domestic  administration  by 
the  avowal  which  their  colonial  policy  manifestly  implies,  that  diversities  of 
opinion  and  worship  may  peaceably  coexist  in  the  same  society,  and  that 
implicit  toleration  is  the  surest  political  means  of  making  a  commonwoaltli 
flourish  and  endearing  a  country  to  its  inhabitants.     It  is  hum, hating  to  ob- 
serve a  man  like  Lord  Clarendon  adopt,  in  co"'^of'n«t)^fiLJ'!iJ'l'l^'^^ 

_  ^  oiHniixon.     Chalinera. 


CHAP.  I] 


SETTLEMENT  AT  ALBEMARLE. 


345 


est  as  a  proprietor  of  colonial  territory,  the  principles  which  his  eminent 
faculties  and  enlarged  experience  were  insufficient  to  induce  him,  as  an 
English  statesman,  to  embrace. 

Besides  the  emigrants  from  New  England  who  were  seated  at  Cape  Fear, 
there  was  another  small  body  of  inhabitants  already  established  in  a  different 
quarter  of  the  proprietary  domains.  In  the  history  of  Virginia,  we  have 
seen,  that,  as  early  as  the  year  1609,  Captain  Smith  judged  it  expedient, 
for  political  reasons,  to  remove  a  portion  of  the  Virginian  colonists  to  a  dis- 
tance from  the  main  body  at  Jamestown.  With  this  view  he  despatched 
a  small  party  to  form  a  plantation  at  Nansemond,  on  the  southern  frontier 
of  Virginia,  where,  notwithstanding  the  formidable  obstructions  that  they  en- 
countered from  the  hostility  of  the  natives,  they  succeeded  in  maintaining 
and  extending  their  settlement.  As  the  Indians. receded  from  the  vicinity 
of  these  intruders,  the  planters  naturally  followed  their  tracks, — extending 
tiieir  plantations  into  the  bosom  of  the  wilderness  ;  and  as  their  numbers 
increased  and  the  most  eligible  situations  were  occupied,  they  traversed  the 
forests  in  quest  of  others,  till  they  reached  the  streams  which,  instead  of 
discharging  their  waters  into  the  Chesapeake,  pursued  a  southeastern  course 
to  the  ocean.  Their  numbers  are  said  to  have  been  augmented,  and  their 
progress  impelled,  by  the  intolerant  laws  that  were  enacted  in  Virginia 
against  sectarians  of  every  denomination.  At  the  epoch  of  the  Carolina 
charter  of  1663,  a  small  plantation,  formed  in  this  manner,  had  existed  for 
some  years  within  its  specified  territorial  boundaries  on  the  northeastern 
shores  of  a  river  formerly  called  the  Chowan,  but  which  now  received 
the  name  of  Albemarle,  in  compliment  to  the  title  by  which  General 
Monk's  services  were  rewarded. 

Notwithstanding  the  assertion  of  an  intelligent  historian  of  North  Caro- 
lina, there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  planters  of  Albemarle  were  com- 
posed entirely  or  even  generally  of  exiles  for  conscience's  sake  ;  yet  that  a 
number  of  conscientious  men  had  mingled  with  them  may  be  inferred  from 
the  fact  that  they  purchased  their  lands  at  an  equitable  price  from  the  abo- 
riginal inhabitants.  Remote  from  the  seat  of  the  Virginian  government, 
they  paid  little  regard  to  its  authority,  and  for  some  time  had  lived  without 
any  ascertainable  rule  ;  when  at  length  the  governor  of  Virginia  assumed, 
in  a  new  capacity,  a  stricter  and  more  legitimate  superintendence  of  their 
aflairs.  In  September,  1663,  Sir  William  Berkeley  was  empowered  by  the 
other  proprietaries  to  nominate  a  president  and  a  council  of  six  persons, 
with  authority  to  govern  tliis  little  community  according  to  the  prescriptions 
of  the  royal  charter  ;  to  confirm  existing  possessions  ;  to  grant  lands  to  new 
planters ;  and,  with  the  consent  of  the  delegates  of  the  freemnn,  to  frame 
laws  which  were  to  be  transmitted  for  the  consideration  of  the  proprietaries. 
Berkeley  was  desired  to  visit  the  colony,  and  to  employ  skilful  persons  to 
explore  its  b&ys,  rivers,  and  shores  ;  a  duty  which  he  performed  in  the  fol- 
lowing year.  Having  confirmed  existing  possessions,  and  made  sundry  new 
grants  of  land,  in  conformity  with  his  instructions,  he  appointed  Drummond, 
a  man  of  prudence  and  ability,  the  first  governor  of  his  fellow-colonists,  and 
then  returned  to  Virginia,  leaving  the  people  to  follow  their  various  pursuits 
in  peace.  [1664.]  The  colonists  for  some  time  continued  perfectly  satisfied 
with  an  arrangement  that  seemed  rather  to  secure  than  impair  the  advantages 
of  their  former  condition  ;  but  as  the  day  approached  when  the  payment 
of  quitrents  was  to  commence,  they  began  to  manifest  impatience  of  the 


VOL.    I. 


44 


346 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


TodTaTe  ftiorv- ^^^^^^^  the  proprietaries,  desiring  that  the  people 

of  AlLmar  e  n,ight  hold  their  possessions  on  the  same  terms  that  were  en- 
wfdrthe  inhabitants  of  Virginia.     The  proprietaries,  who  ^e  exceed- 
i^^l^^litous  to  pron.^^^^^^^^^ 
every  measure  that  '^'Shtdi  courage  the  re^^^^  to  confer  grants  of 

I^nd'tXtSuf^^^^^^^^  a^%Tnrthemselyes.     NotwitLnding 

he  aposS  ica   vieS^^^^^^^^^    the^roprietaries  had  professed,  they  ma  e  not 

the  slkhtest  attempt  to  provide  for  the  spiritual  mstruct.on  of  the  colonists 

0  tKnve?  on  of  the^  Indians  ;  and  the  little  commonwealth  for  a  series 
of  years  was  conducted  without  even  a  semblance  of  rehgious  worship. i 

Thpnronriemries,  after  this  endeavour  to  rear  and  organize  the  settlement 
of  AlLSdTeed  their  chief  regard  to  the  finer  region  that  extends 

01  Aioemarie,  uuc  Havine:  caused  a  survey  to  be  made  of 
tl  l.T^yT':^el'^:^^^  theyTespatched   from  Virginia,  for  the 

t;^^jsci;tain^^^  s^^i 

br:Z:'7i^:t:t:7:f^^^^  fi^r,  along  the  banks  of  the  nver 
cTarles  in  the  district  which  was  now  denominated  the  county  of  Claren- 
don Seveal  of  the  planters  of  Barbadoes,  dissatisfied  with  their  exisin.g 
don.  several  ui  I  f  ,  _^,^p  .Ug  chiefs  of  a  less  numerous  community, 
condition,  and  ^^^"•'"S.^'^^,^^^.^; '^',f  «  ^  region,  and  now  submitted  a 
had  for  some  time  Vp^f^y^  ^rprietarls  f  1664]  ;  and  though  their  first 

ie  poi^rs  of  a  diltinct  and  independent  corporation,  were  deemed  inadmis- 
^ble^he^r  a  phcation,  on  the  whole,  received  so  --»^  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
determined  them  to  undertake  the  migration.  In  iurlherance  ol  a  project 
sraereeable  to  their  wishes,  the  proprietaries  bestowed  on  John  \eamans, 
a  reSectabL  planter  of  Barbadoes,  and  the  son  of  a  man  who  had  lost  h,s 
if:"r«Lervice  during  the  civil  war^^^^^^^^^ 

in-chief  of  Clarendon  county,  stretching  from  Cape  1^  ear  c  tiie  river  ftamt 
Mati^eo  and  obtained  for  him,  at  the  same  time  the  title  oi  a  baronet, 
Ta?  Iv  hi're  "onmense  of  the  loyalty  of  his  family,  and  partly  in  order  to  give 
St  to  h?s  official  authority,  and  some  appearance  of  splendor  to  the  pro- 
weigni  lo  "  ^  "'"^  -J       '.^gg  -,     rj^i    ga„,e  powers  were  now  conferred, 

vmcial  establishment,  t*'''"-' 3^,^„-|„,;/  '  those  which  had  conleiUcd  the 
and  the  same  constuut.on  -^«^)P«^^^  '^^  *^^,;,,,,    directed  to  "  make 

':^:^i^^V^^  of  New  KnglL,"  wheL  the  i^oprietaries 
every  ^'""3  «^^>  ^vnected  very  copious  emigrations  to  Carolina.  I  his 
:rec  :1  tre^'c re^^^^^^^^^^^^^  fheir'discernmjnt  than  to  their  inte.n, 
wa  obviously  derived  from  the  intolerance  which  yet  preyailed  to  some 
Txtent  in  Ne  V  England,  and  the  effects  of  which  were  thus  distinctly  reco  - 
nfze  and  deliberately  anticipated  b^  men  who  themselves  unreservedly 
pursued  the  same  illiberal  principle  fn  the  parent  state.  A  resolution  wa 
pursuea  trii.  same  ^',        ,        ^oprietaries  that  the  commission  of 

Sman.1     d    o   prev'^t  I  applnSlont  of  another  governor  fcr  a  .w 
L  t  rent thich  was^roiected  in  a  district  to  the  so^hw-d  of  Cap   1 
main,  and  which  acquired  soon  after  the  na,Tie_of  CarJe'ret^_JL^hM^^ 

— ■ 1  Ohalroers.    WiUianiiipn. 


CHAP.  I] 


SECOND  CHARTER  OF  SOUTH  CAROLINA. 


347 


which  the  proprietaries  were  thus  pursuing,  in  the  establishment  of  a  variety 
of  separate  and  independent  communities  in  Carolina,  each  of  which  had  its 
own  distinct  assembly,  customs,  and  laws,  supplied  them  in  the  sequel  with 
abundance  of  trouble  and  embarrassment,  and  contributed  to  the  prolonged 
feebleness  and  disunion  by  which  the  English  settlements  in  this  province 
were  unhappily  distinguished.  Meanwhile,  however,  their  proceedings  ob- 
tained the  approbation  of  the  king,  who  presented  them  with  twelve  piece? 
of  ordnance,  which  were  conveyed  to  Charles  River  along  with  a  collection 
of  military  stores.^ 

Having  now  obtained  a  minute  acquaintance  with  the  whole  coast  of  Car- 
olina, and  discovered,  at  both  extremities  of  their  territory,  large  tracts  of 
land  of  which  the  acquisition  seemed  to  them  highly  desirable,  the  proprie- 
taries easily  procured  from  their  sovereign  a  gift  of  these  additional  domains. 
A  second  charter,  tvhich  was  consequently  issued  in  their  favor  [June, 
1665],  recited  and  confirmed  the  former  grant,  and  gave  renewed  assurance 
and  commendation  of  "  the  pious  and  noble  purpose  "  under  which  these 
insatiable  courtiers  judged  it  decent  to  cloak  their  ambition  or  rapacity.  It 
granted  to  the  same  patentees  "  that  province  situated  within  the  king's  do- 
minions in  America,  extending  northeastward  to  Carahtuke  Inlet,  and  thence 
in  a  straight  line  to  Wyonoke,  which  lies  under  the  thirty-sixth  degree  and 
thirtieth  minute  of  north  latitude,  southwestward  to  the  twenty-ninth  de- 
gree ;  and  from  the  ocean  to  the  South  Seas."  The  patentees  or  proprie- 
taries were  endowed  with  all  the  rights,  jurisdictions,  and  royalties  which  the 
Bishop  of  Durham  ever  possessed,  and  were  to  hold  the  territory  as  a  feudal 
dependence  of  the  manor  of  East  Greenwich,  paying  a  rent  of  twenty  marks, 
and  one  fourth  of  all  the  gold  and  silver  that  might  be  found  within  it.  All 
persons,  except  those  who  should  be  specially  forbidden,  were  allowed  to 
transport  themselves  to  Carolina  ;  and  the  colonists  and  their  posterity 
were  declared  to  be  denizens  of  England,  and  entitled  to  be  considered 
as  the  same  people,  and  to  enjoy  the  same  privileges,  as  those  dv^relling 
within  the  realm.  They  were  empowered  to  trade  in  all  commodities  which 
were  not  prohibited  by  the  statutes  of  England  ;  and  to  convey  the  produc- 
tions of  the  province  into  England,  Scotland,  or  Ireland,  on  payment  of  the 
same  duties  as  other  subjects.  And  they  were  exempted,  for  seven  years, 
from  the  payment  of  customs,  on  the  importation,  into  anv  of  the  dominions 
of  die  crown,  of  wines  and  other  enumerated  articles  of  colonial  produce. 
The  proprietaries  were  authorized  to  mnke  laws  fov  the  province-  with  the 
consent  of  the  freemen  or  their  delegates,  under  *ne  general  condition  that 
their  legislation  should  be  reasonable,  and  asbiuiilated  with  as  much  confor- 
mity as  possible  to  the  jurisprudence  of  England.  They  were  permitted  to 
erect  ports  for  the  convenience  of  connnerce,  and  to  appropriate  all  im- 
posts decreed  by  the  assembly.  The)  <  re  authorized  to  create  an  order 
of  nobility,  by  conferrins  titles  of  honor,  differing,  however,  in  style,  from 
the  titles  bestowec  bv  vi  British  nonarch.  Carolina  was  declared  inde- 
pendent of  every  cihtr  province,  aid  subject  immediately  to  the  crown  ; 
and  the  inhabitants  .vr^.  -;  exempted  from  all  liability  to  judicial  suit  or  process 
in  any  other  part  of  his  Majesty's  dominions,  except  the  realm  of  England. 
The  proprietaries  were  empowered  to  grant  indulgences  to  such  colonists 
as  might  be  prevented  by  conscientious  scrujiles  from  conforming  to  the 
churcli  of  England  ;  to  the  end  that  all  jicrsons  might  have  liberty  to  follow 

*  Ilcvvil.     Cliulincrs. 


348 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.' 


[BOOK  IV. 


their  own  iudgraents  and  consciences  in  religious  concerns,  provided  they 
disturbed  not  the  civil  order  and  peace  of  the  province.* 

Such  is  the  tenor  of  the  last  of  the  Carolina  charters,  which  conferred  on 
the  erantees  a  territory  of  vast  extent,  and  rights  which  it  is  not  easy  to  dis- 
?rLTna"e  from  royalt/.  By  a  strange  anomaly,  the  king,  in  divesting  himself, 
as  k  were  of  a  pL  of  his^dominions,  in  behalf  of  a  junto  of  his  ministers, 
ostentotioi^sly  recommended  to  them  a  system  of  ecclesiastical  policy  d.a- 
meSly  opposite  to  the  intolerance,  which,  at  this  verj.  time,  and  by  the 
Counsels  of  this  very  iunto,  characterised  his  own  domestic  administration.' 
As  cLendon  till  h^eld  the' office  of  Lord  Chancellor,  this  charter,  as  well 
as  the  former,  in  favor  of  himself  and  his  colleagues,  was  sealed  by  h.s  own 
hands  and  when  we  consider  how  liberally  it  endowed  the  propnetanes 
with  privileges,  at  the  expense  of  the  prerogative  of  the  crown,  i  seems  he 
Cs  siirpriJng  that  he  should  not  have  suggested  a  similar  objection  to  the 
charte  s^w^^^^^  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  obtained  while  the  great  seal 
was  n  his  keeping.  The  arbitrary  commission  for  Massachusetts,  which 
we  have  seen  him  defend,  shows  that  he  entertaifled  no  general  design  of 
abridging  the  royal  prerogative  in  the  British  colonies. 

Animated  by  this  fresh  acquisition,  the  proprietaries  exerted  themselves, 
for  several  yeaVs,  to  pr.)mote  the  resort  of  inhabitants  to  their  domains  from 
Scotland,  Ireland,  the  West  Indies,  and  the  northern  colonies  of  America; 
but    notwithstanding  all  their  endeavours,  the  province    partly  from  the 
unherhiness  of  its  climate,  but  chiefly  from  the  state  of  dispersion  in  which 
"he  planters  chose  to  live,  advanced  but  slowly  in  population  and  strength 
In  the  autumn  of  the  present  year,  the  emigrants  from  Barbadoes  conducted 
by  Sir  John  Yeamans,  arrived  at  their  place  of  destination   on  the  southern 
bank  of  the  river  of  Capo  Fear,  where  they  corroborate.'  their  formal  title 
frJm  ^he  proprietaries  by  an  equitable  purchase  o    the  territory  fi^m  the 
neThbouring  Indians.     While  they  were  employed  in  the  first  rude  toi  s  re- 
qusite  to  tl^ir  establishment  in  the  wilderness  which  they  had  undertaken 
?L  'ubdue   their  leader  ruled  them  with  the  mildness  of  a  parent,  and  cuhi- 
^ated  the  good-will  of  the  aborigines  so   successfully,  that  for  some  years 
they  were  enabled  to  prosecute  their  labors  without  danger  or  distrac  ion. 
Afthe  planters  opened  the  forest  to  obtain  space  for  the  operations  of  til- 
itethev  necessarily  prepared  timber   for  the  uses  of  the  cooper  and 
Se  ,  4ich^^^^^^^^  to  the  insular  colony  whence  they  had  em,. 

grated  ;  a  commencement  of  commerce,  which,  however  feeble,  served  to 
cherish  their  hopes  and  encourage  their  industry.  ,,   •      •  • 

The  inhabitants  of  Albemarle  continued,  meanwhile  to  pursue  their  origi- 
nal employments  in  peace,  and  from  the  cultivation  of  tobacco  and  liid.an 
cornXaCd  the  materials  of  an  inconsiderable  traffic  with  the  merchant- 
vc  elf  o  New  England.  About  two  pars  after  the  acquisition  of  their 
lexond  charter  [Ocf.,  1667],  the  proprfetar.es  nmou.ieA  Sa-uel  h. eve., 
a  man  whose  parts  and  virtue  were  judged  equal  to  the  trust,  to  succeed 
Dr"  mmond  as  governor  of  Albemarle  ;  and  at  the  sn.no^  time  heslowod 
oftir  settle,n|t  a  constitution,  ^vhichjnuljtjeenja.thfull)^^^^ 

-rf^'^nnlMory  of  Cardina.    Willi»!«-»n.  ...,,,-,i,i,.„i  ;„  1766.  whpn  G«>or,?c  the 

.  A  remarkable  oount«rpart  of  ''"^ X:;:*'**^";';,,^,'^/^^,  ^  l.m  Cath..l'  .ub- 

Ch  dirt  l^l^t  similar  iroatmant  J  •»•«  Socin.an  d,...dent,  of  Poland. 
>  Phulmerg,     Williamson. 


CHAP.  I] 


CONSTITUTION  OF  ALBEMARLE. 


349 


would  doubtless  have  promoted  the  content  stnd  prosperity  of  the  people. 
Stevens  was  directed  to  conduct  his  administration  in  conformity  with  the 
advice  of  a  council  of  twelve,  of  which  he  himself  was  to  appoint  one  half, 
and  the  other  six  were  to  be  elected  by  the  assembly.  This  was  an  ap- 
proach to  a  prmciple  disallowed  entirely  in  Virginia  and  Maryland,  but 
exemplified  still  more  perfectly  in  the  New  England  States,  and'  by  which 
the  democratical  branch  of  the  government  was  admitted  to  a  share  in  com- 
posing  and  controlling  that  body  which  in  the.  colonial  constitutions  formed 
equally  the  senatorial  or  aristocratical  branch  of  the  legislature,  the  privy 
council  of  the  supreme  magistrate,  and  the  judicial  court  of  appeals.  The 
assembly  was  to  be  composed  of  the  governor,  the  council,  and  a  number 
of  delegates,  annually  chosen  by  the  freeholders.  The  legislature,  in  which 
democratic  interests  were  admitted  thus  strongly  to  preponderate,  was  in- 
vested not  only  with  the  power  of  making  laws,  but  with  a  considerable  share 
of  the  executive  authority  ;  with  the  right  of  convoking  and  adjourning  itself 
of  appointing  municipal  officers,  and  of  nominating  and  inducting  ministers  to 
ecclesiastical  benefices.  Various  regulations  provided  for  the  security  <rf 
property  ;  in  particular,  it  was  proclaimed  that  no  taxes  should  be  imposed 
without  the  consent  of  the  assembly  ;  and  the  lands  possessed  by  the  colo- 
nists were  anew  confirmed  to  them,  and  declared  to  be  now  holden  by  the 
free  tenure  of  soccage.  Perfect  freedom  in  respect  of  religion  was  offered 
to  a  people  who  were  very  willing  to  accept  freedom  without  concerning 
iheraseives  at  all  about  religion  ;  and  an  entire  equality  of  political  rights 
was  assured  to  all  classes  of  persons  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 
king  and  of  fidelity  to  the  proprietaries.  As  we  have  but  too  much  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  proprietaries  did  not  sincerely  intend  to  preserve  the 
constitution  which  they  now  affected  to  establish,  it  is  due  to  the  character 
of  Lord  Clarendon  to  remark  that  he  had  no  share  whatever  in  this  trans- 
action ;  his  impeachment  and  exile  from  England  having  previously  se- 
questrated him  from  all  farther  concern  with  the  government  of  Carolina. 

The  system,  hovyever,  which  was  tendered  to  their  acceptance,  was  re- 
ceived by  the  inhabitants  of  Albemarle  with  perfect  satisfaction  ;  gratituda, 
perhaps,  it  would  have  been  unreasonable  to  expect  from  them  towHrds 
proprietaries  who  had  in  no  \yay  contributed  to  their  occupation  of  the  prov- 
ince, but  had  followed  them  into  a  desert  with  the  obvious  intent  of  reaping 
where  they  had  not  sowti,  and  congregating  a  scattered  flock  for  the  purpose 
of  enriching  themselves  with  its  tributary  fleeces.  It  was  not  till  two  years 
after  [16G9],  that  an  assembly  constituted  on  the  new  model  was  conv«aed 
to  enact  laws  for  men,  who,  being  yet  few  in  number,  seem  to  have  been 
governed  till  then  chiefly  by  the  usages  they  had  brought  with  them  from 
their  former  settlement.  Their  first  efforts  in  legislation  were  characteristic 
of  persons  accustomed  to  live  remote  from  the  discipline  of  strict  law  and 
an  active  government,  and  to  shift  their  local  position  whenever  it  ceased  to 
be  peifecdy  agreeable  to  them,  instead  of  seeking  to  alter  and  improve  its 
circumstances.  From  the  number  of  persons  of  broken  fortunes  who  resorted 
to  the  American  colonies,  and  from  the  conviction  that  was  early  and  most 
justk  entertained  by  all  the  colonists,  that  their  industry  was  fettered  an?? 
their  advantages  impaired  by  the  legislature  of  England,  for  the  benefit  of 
her  own  domestic  population,  a  defensive,  or  perhaps  retributory,  spirit  tmis 
too  readily  admitted  by  the  provincial  legislatures  ;  and,  if  not' a  universal, 
It  was  at  least  a  general,  principle  of  their  policy  to  obstruct  the  reco*<ecy 


350 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


cient  encouragement  had  not  yet  been  attorae  .^  ^^^ 

neighbours  for  debts  contracted  adroaa  inhabitants  of  Carolina; 

every  planter  eiiuedvuu  exercise  no  farther  act  of 

r„;s  LTh  r  of'':xcw::;  12:  :ccup.n.s  by  ^o^^^.  ^ 

roTlab  V  cullivated.    The  remedy,  likewise,  wh.ch  was  applied  b;  U,e  pro- 
S  assemWy  seems  to  be  defeclive  in  policy,  no  less  than  m  jusuce. 

"  IstrrS;  be  expected  to  derive  »-  --"[^rcXs  i- 
siirance  that  iw  Eains  were  not  to  be  earned  off  by  iormer  crecmors  m  a 
S„t  cltry,  tL  nature  of  this  e..conragemen.,  - -'  »V'4 '-^-^ 
duration  tended  to  attract  neither  a  respectable  nor  a  stationary  race  ol 
ilaSts  and  accordingly  this  colony  was  long  considered  as  the  peculiar 
IsvlumTf  fuKUive  debtors  and  criminals.  But  a  more  suitable  and  reason- 
aS^encourS^^  population  was  afforded  by  an  act  concerning  mar- 
riatwS  provided,  that,  as  people  might  desire  to  marry,  while  as  yet 

^'weTni  ministers  of  religion  in  the  colony, -m  order  ll.a  none 
St  be  restrained  from  a  step  so  necessary  for  the  preservation  of  man- 
kifd  any  man  and  woman  presenting  themselves  to  the  governor  and  coun- 
c  along  with  a  few  of  their  neighbours,  and  declaring  the.r  mutual  purpose 
to  uni°e  in  matrimony,  should  be  legally  deemed  husband  and  wjfe. 

mcircumtLe^s  indicated  b/this  law  forcibly  suggest  the  wide  dis- 
tinction Sen  the  sentiments  and  habit,  of  the  northern  and  he  south- 

first  twenty  years  of  its  history;  and  it  was  not  ill  a  tor  a  consideraDie 
body  of  dTssenters  from  the  church  of  England  had  emigrated  thither  that 
we  hear  o  rehgious  worship  or  inquiry,  or  indeed  of  any  thing  akin  to  re- 
Lion  n  he  province.  oLr  regulations,  besides  those  which  we  have 
leadV  noUoTwere  adopted  by  this  assembly.  New  setders  were  ex- 
tt^  from  taxes  for  a  yL  ;  aid  every  proprietor  of  l-d  -  res  ra-ned 
from  transferrine  it  for  two  years  after  its  acquisition.  1  he  tirst  oi  uiest 
Iws  was  intended  to  invite^  settlers  ;  the  second  appears  to  have  been  a 
Sic  dev^^^^^^      retain  them.     A  duty  of^Uunypound^ofjc^^ 

Plutarch  infor.A,  u.!  that,  ij  not  long  nftor  the  fir«t  ^^J^AnUon  of  the  ^'^J.^yj^^,,,  „„, 
muy  of  refuge  for  all  fueitivei.,  which  they  ca  le.l  the  ^""'P'' -°'  T.*;^,^,'  ,|,e  debtor  to  hi* 

^ifrSS S^rs^  nor  vHC  jixtxrtxtrsTrs  !»**•      ••  *  " 


i-':#? 


CHAP.  I.] 


THE  FUNDAMENTAL  CONSTITUTIONS. 


361 


imposed  on  every  lawsuit,^  in  order  to  provide  funds  requisite  for  the  ex- 
penses of  the  governor  and  council  during  the  session  of  assemblies.  These 
laws,  which  proclaim  the  weakness  and  illustrate  the  early  policy  of  this 
commonwealth,  were  ratified  in  the  following  year  by  the  proprietaries. 
As  the  colc.iists  received  little  increase  from  abroad,  their  numbers  ad- 
vanced but  slowly  ;  nor  was  it  till  some  time  after  this  period,  that  they  ex- 
tended their  plantations  to  the  southern  bank  of  the  river  Albemarle." 

But  although  the  proprietaries  were  willing  to  tender  every  concession  and 
encourage  every  hope  that  seemed  likely  to  retain  or  augment  the  population 
of  Carolina,  it  was  not  lor  the  purpose  of  founding  and  superintending  insti- 
tutions so  homely  and  popular  that  they  had  solicited  the  extraordinary 
privileges  which  their  charters  conferred.  Their  ambition  aimed  at  pro- 
ducing in  Carohna  a  social  scene  adapted  to  the  exhibition  of  all  that  gran- 
deur, and  the  maintenance  of  all  those  distinctions,  that  have  ever  been 
known  to  coexist  with  the  theory  of  liberty  ;  and  tiie  plumage  which  they 
had  stripped  from  the  royal  prerogative,  it  was  their  intention  to  employ  for 
the  illustration  of  their  own  dignity,  and  the  decoration  of  their  provincial 
organs  and  institutions.  With  this  view,  about  a  year  before  they  ratified 
the  enactments  of  the  assembly  of  Albemarle  [March  1,  1669],  they  had 
subscribed  that  memorable  instrument  which  bears  the  name  of  The  Fun- 
damental Constitutions  of  Carolina,  the  preamble  of  which  assigns  as  the 
reason  for  its  adoption,  "  that  the  government  of  this  province  may  be  made 
most  agreeable  to  the  monarchy  under  which  we  live  ;  and  that  we  may 
avoid  erecting  a  numerous  democracy."  The  task  of  composing  this  polit- 
ical frame  was  devolved  upon  Shaftesbury,  by  the  unanimous  consent  of 
his  colleagues,  all  of  whom  were  deeply  impressed  with  the  vigor  and  re- 
sources of  his  capacity,  and  some  of  whom  had  experienced,  in  the  intrigues 
that  preceded  the  Restoration,  with  what  consummate  dexterity  he  could 
accomplish  his  own  purpose,  and  appropriate  to  this  end  the  subordinate 
agency  even  of  persons  who  were  strongly  interested  to  obstruct  it.  The 
instrument,  indeed,  was  at  first  believed  to  have  been  actually  the  produc- 
tion of  Shaftesbury ,3  but  is  now  recognized  as  the  composition  of  the  illus- 
trious John  Locke,  whom  he  had  the  sagacity  to  appreciate  and  the  honor 
to  patronize,  and  who  was  united  to  him  by  a  friendship  more  creditable  than 
beneficial  to  the  statesman,  and  no  way  advantageous  either  to  the  character 
or  the  fortunes  of  the  philosopher.'' 

The  Constitutions  of  Carolina  exhibit  a  mixture  as  discordant  as  the 
characters  of  these  men ;  though  in  what  proportions  they  represent  the  pe- 
culiar  sentiments  of  either,  it  '3"^tjeasyjo  guess,  or  possible  to  determine. 

'  It  is  remarkable  that  the  Carolinians,  who  thuToTiBtriicted  bv  a  tax  the  Ipsnl  adjimtment 

if  dl§DUtC8.  have   alwnvH   hc.pn    mnrn   iiHi1ioto<1  >n  >)iioli:>...  >i.»„  ll..  :„i._i.:. .r  .<>  .   °^       ^  .■ 

otiier 


orth  American  StnU-s.    In  Connecticut,  accordinir"to  tlio  representation  of  DrYMorso^ 

•h/       ^        •  •     • 

F  ,     „  -^       - 

II  been  Biithorilativnly  pr(<fM!ribod, 


there  is  more  litigation  than  in  any  other  oiiarJer  of  North  America ;  but  a  duel  was  never 
itnown  to  occur  in  Connecticut.    Warden.    In  most  of  the  provinces,  legal  coutrovcMy  waa 


of  disputes,  have  always  been  more  addicted  to  duelling  than  the  inhnhilnnis  of  any  of  llm 

"'■""  North  American  S'"*""      •"  r* •: t.^    .    .,  ^  ..  j  .. 

3n 

promoted  by  the  uncertainty  of  the  law  ;  for  although  it  had  been 

and  was  universally  recognized  as  a  gen(!ral  principle,  that  there  should  be  a  suh'stunlia;  coni 
formity  of  the  colonial  jurisprudence  to  the  common  and  statute  law  of  England,  yi>t  the  m- 
certainnientofthe  precise  extent  of  thia  conformity  in  every  case  was  committed  to  the  ditcre< 
lion  of  the  judges.     Smith's  JVeio  For&. 

'  Chahiters.     Williamson. 

»  It  is  so  represented  in  the  fir«t  edition  of  OJdmixon's  work,  which  was  published  in  1708. 
But  It  was  aflerwards  inserted  in  the  collection,  published  in  171!),  by  Dcs  Maisoaux,  of  (h« 
snonymouB  compositions  <H'  Locke,  from  a  copy  corrected  by  the  philosopher's  own  hand,  and 
which  iie  had  r  .'csented  to  a  friend  expressiv  as  one  of  his  own  works. 

♦  See  Note  AVI.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


352 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


tBOOE  IV, 


It  has  been  said  (whether  conjecturally  or  authoritatively) ,  that  Shaftesbury 
ILitten  ahke  with  reverence  for  antiquity  and  admiration  of  Locke   desired 
^revive  in  hfs  person  the  aUiance  that  once  subsisted  between  philosophy 
[  WUlLtion  -to  restore  the  practice  of  that  age  when  society's  accepted 
Jheir  S  c  pal  consSJtions  n  Je  wiUingly  from  the  discip  es  of  I'ythagoras 
tha    f^m  the  cabinets  of  kings.     It  is  certain  however,  hat  Shaftesbury 
abng  wUh  a  very  high  value  for  the  genius  and  talents  of  Locke   reposed 
Suconfidence  in  his  own  ability  to  employ  the  full  vigor  of  Locke's 
3ers tandTng,  and  yet  inject  into  it  regulating  views  that  would  enable  h.m 
Securely   to  anlicipate   and  define  the   genera     results  of  its    application. 
What  Ltructions  were  communicated  to  Locke  by  his  patron  cannot  now 
be  known;  but  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  plnlosopher  was  indulged  u„h 
so  much  liberty,  that  he  afterwards  represented  the  Fundamental  CanslUu. 
tLTas  his  own  performance,  and  himself  as  a  competitor  with  W.lha* 
Penn  for  the  praise  of  enlightened  legislation;  and  hence,  this  instnimem 
Ih'ever  may'be  thought  of  its  intrinsic  -rits,  must  eve^  b.  r^^^^-^^^ 
interest,  as  the  link  that  connects  the  genius  of  Locke  with  the  history  of 

^"ByThe  Fundamental  Constitutions,  it  was  appointed  that  the  eldest  of 
the  eigSt  proprietaries  should  be  palatine  of  the  P^^'";;  .^"""^  "sj.e; 
nnH  that  this  dienitv,  on  every  vacancy,  should  devolve  to  the  eldest  of  the 

the  offies^f  admiral,  chamberlain,'  chancellor    constable  -  chief  justice, 
hkh  s^^ward,  and  treasurer,  were  appropriated  exclusively  to  the  other 
seven  pmprietarie.  ;  and  the  duties  of  those  functionaries,  as  weU  as  of 
Z  palS,  might  be  executed  by  deputies  residing  withm  the  province. 
CorrCndhig  to  these  offices,  there  were  to  be  (besides  the  ordinary  courts 
of  ever^  county)  eight  supreme  courts,  to  each  of  which  was  annexed  a 
liege  of  twelve  asfistants'.     The  palatine  was  to  preside  m  the  palatine's 
court,  wherein  he  and  three  others  of  the  proprietaries  formed  a  quorum 
of  func^onaries  ;   and  this  court  represented  the  king,  ratified  or  negaUved 
2e  enactments  of  the  legislature,  and,  in  general,  waj  vested  with  the  ad- 
mfnSon  of  all  the  powers  conferred  by  the  royal  charter,  except  m  so 
Sas  Sd  by  coUatefal  provisions  of  the  Fundamental  Constitutions.   By 
a  compUcated  frame  of  Junties,  seigniories,  baromes,  precmcts  and  cole- 
ni^rthe  whole  land  of  the  province  was  divided  into  five  equal  porUons 
one  of  which  was  assigned  to  the  proprietaries,  another  to  the  nobles  and 
Z  LI  ning  three  were  left  to  the  people.     Two  classes  of  liered.tary 
nobikrwiilf  possessions  proportioned  to  their  respective  dignities,  and  for 
c^er  ifnalienab^  and  inditisi&e,  were  to  be  created  by  ^e  prop^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
under  the  tides  of  landgraves  and  caciques;  and  these,  together  with  the 
Sepu  ies  of  the  proprietaries,  and  representatives  chosen  by  the  freemen, 
coSuted  the  parliament  of  the  province,  which  was  appointed  to  be 
biennially  convolced,  and,  when  assembled,  to  form  -/  dehberat.v    bo 
and  occupy  the  same  chamber.     No  matter  or  measure  could  be  proposed 
ordSJd  in  the  parliament  that  had  not  ^een  previously  cons.dei-ed  an 

of  another  body  of  fuiictionancs  rccallB  the  institutionB  ol  oia  ttorac. 

admiral  bore  the  title  of  proeonsuls.  rnlative  coUen  of  MsbUnts  were 

•  Thi-  wa.  a  military  office,  aud  the  membera  of  lU  rcUtiTe  coMefo  « 

termed  lieutenant-gencrali. 


}^^m 


CHAP.  I.] 


THE  FUNDAMENTAL  CONSTITUTIONS. 


363 


of  awistsnU  were 


approved  by  the  grand  council  of  the  province,  —a  body  resembling  the 
lords  of  the  articlet  in  the  ancient  constitution  of  Scotland,  and  composed 
almost  exclusively  of  the  proprietaries'  officers  and  the  nobility.  No  man 
was  eligible  to  anv  office,  unless  lie  possessed  a  certain  definite  extent  of 
land,  larger  or  smaller  in  proportion  to  the  dignity  or  meanness  of  the  office. 
Trial  by  iury  was  established  in  each  of  the  courts  throughout  the  whole  of 
the  lengthened  ramification  of  jurisdiction  ;  but  the  office  of  hired  or  pro- 
fessional pleaders  was  disallowed,  as  a  base  and  sordid  occupation  ;  and  no 
man  was  admitted  to  plead  the  cause  of  another  without  previously  deposing 
on  oath  that  he  neither  had  received  nor  would  accept  the  slightest  remu- 
neration for  his  service.  To  avoid  the  confusion  arising  from  a  multiplicity 
of  laws,  all  acts  of  the  provincial  parliament  were  appointed  to  endure  only 
cue  hundred  years,  after  which  they  were  to  cease  and  expire  of  them- 
selves, without  the  formality  of  an  express  repeal ;  and  to  avoid  the  per- 
plexity created  hy  a  multiplicity  of  commentators,  all  written  comments 
whatever  on  the  b  undamental  Constitutions,  or  on  any  part  of  the  common 
or  statute  law  of  Carolina,  were  strictly  prohibited.  Every  freeholder  was 
required  to  pay  a  yearly  rent  of  a  penny  for  each  acre  of  his  land  to  the 
proprietaries  ;  and  all  the  inhabitants  above  seventeen  and  under  sixty  years 
of  age  were  obliged  to  bear  arms,  and  serve  as  soldiers,  whenever  they 
should  receive  a  summons  to  this  duty  from  the  grand  council.  Every  free- 
man of  Carolina  was  declared  to  possess  absolute  power  and  authority  over 
his  negro  slaves,  of  what  opinion  or  religion  soever.^  The  apology  that 
most  readily  suggests  itself  for  such  a  regulation  is  excluded  by  the  fact, 
that  at  this  time  [1669],  and  long  after,  there  were  no  negroes  in  the  prov- 
ince, except  a  very  small  number  whom  Sir  John  Yeamans  and  his  followers 
brought  with  them  from  Barbadoes.^ 

A  series  of  regulations  that  not  only  import  the  most  ample  toleration  in 
religion,  but  manifestly  infer  the  political  equahty  of  all  religious  sects  and 
systems  whatever,  was  ushered  by  this  remarkable  provision  :  — "  Since 
the  natives  of  the  place  who  will  be  concerned  in  our  plantation  are  utterly 
strangers  to  Christianity,  whose  idolatry,  ignorance,  or  mistake,  gives  us  no 
right  to  expel  or  use  them  ill  ;  and  those  who  remove  from  other  parts  to 
plant  there  will  unavoidably  be  of  different  opmions  concerning  matters 
of  religion,  the  liberty  whereof  they  will  expect  to  have  allowed  them,  and 
it  will  not  be  reasonable  for  us  on  this  accoiuit  to  keep  them  out  ;  that 
civil  peace  may  be  maintained  amidst  the  diversity  of  opinions,  and  our 
agreement  and  compact  with  all  men. may  be  duly  and  faithfully  observed  ; 
the  violation  whereof,  upon  what  pretence  soever,  cannot  be  without  great 
offence  to  Almighty  God,  and  great  scandal  to  the  true  religion  which  we 
profess  ;  and  also  that  Jews,  heathens,  and  other  dissenters  from  the  purity 
of  Cliristian  religion,  may  not  be  scared  and  kept  at  a  distance  from  it, 
but,  by  having  an  opportunity  of  acquainting  themselves  with   the  truth  and 

'  It  is  humiliating  to  reflect  that  thia  regulation  was  composed  by  the  hand  that  wrote  the 
Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding.  At  a  later  period  of  his  life,  when  the  English  Revolu- 
ton  and  the  controversies  it  engendered  had  enlightened  Locke's  ideas  of  the  rights  ot  men, 
we  hnd  him  thus  pronouncing  his  own  condemnation,  while  he  exposes  and  confutes  lit* 
•enrile  jophistry  of  Sir  Robert  Filroer.  "  Slavery  is  so  vile  and  miserable  an  estate  of  man, 
and  go  directly  opposite  to  the  generous  temper  and  courage  of  our  nation,  that  it  is  hardly 
to  be  conceived  that  an  Englishman,  much  less  a  gentleman,  should  plead  for  it."  "  The  per- 
feet  condition  of  slavery  "  h»  afterwards  defines  to  bo  "  (A«  state  of  war  continued  between 
iUnemeonquetor  andmctBtive." 

*  H»wil. 

VOL.  I.  45 


no 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


1.0    ^^ 

■  2-2 

m 

1.6 

KA  im 

^  m 

•^       140 

I.I          ?.'- 

1.25   jU 

-— 6"     — 

». 

▼  ^fc.**' 


V 


'<r 


7 


Photographic 

Sciences 
Corporation 


33  WEST  MAIN  STRSCT 

WHSTER.N.Y.  MS80 

(716)  872-4503 


354 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  rv. 


reasonableness  of  its  doctrines,  ahd  the  peaceableness  and  inoffensiveness 
of  its  professors,  may  by  good  usage  and  persuasion,  and  all  those  convincing 
methods  of  gentleness  and  meekness  suitable  to  the  rules  and  design  of  the 
gospel,  be  won  over  to  embrace  and  unfeignedly  receive  the  truth  ;  there- 
fore any  seven  or  more  persons  agreeing  in  any  religion  shall  constiMte 
a  church  or  profession,  to  which  they  shall  give  some  name  to  distinguish 
it  from  others."  In  the  terms  of  communion  of  eveiy  such  church  or  pro- 
fession,  it  was  required  that  the  three  following  articles  should  expressly 
appear  :  that  there  is  a  God  ;  that  public  worship  is  due  from  all  men  to 
this  Supreme  Being  ;  and  that  it  is  incumbent  on  everjr  citizen,  at  the 
command  of  the  civil  magistrate,  to  deliver  judicial  testimony  with  some 
ceremonial  or  form  of  words,  indicating  a  recognition  of  divine  justice  and 
human  responsibility.  Only  the  acknowledged  members  of  some  church  or 
profession  of  this  description  were  to  be  capable  of  becoming  freemen  of 
Carolina,  or  of  possessing  any  estate  or  habitation  within  the  province  ;  and 
all  persons  were  forbidden  to  revile,  disturb,  or  in  any  way  persecute  the 
members  of  any  of  the  religious  associations  thus  recognized  by  law.  What 
was  enjoined  to  freemen  was  permitted  to  slaves,  by  an  article  which  de- 
clared, that,  "  since  charity  obliges,  us  to  wish  well  to  the  souls  of  all  men, 
and  religion  ought  to  alter  nothing  in  any  man's  civil  estate  or  right,  it 
shall  be  lawful  for  slaves,  as  well  as  others,  to  enter  themselves,  and  be  of 
what  church  or  profession  any  of  them  shall  think  best,  and  thereof  be  as 
fully  members  as  any  freeman."  But  the  hope  of  political  equality  that 
dissenters  from  the  church  of  England  might  derive  from  these  provisions 
Avas  completely  defeated,  and  even  the  security  of  a  naked  tolerance  of 
fheir  tenets  and  practices  was  menaced,  by  an  article,  which,  though  intro- 
duced into  tl>e  Fundamental  Constitutions,  was  neither  composed  nor  ap- 
proved by  Locke,*  and  by  which  it  was  provided,  that,  whenever  the  country 
should  be  sufficiently  peopled  and  planted,  the  provincial  parliament  should 
enact  regulations  for  the  building  of  churches  and  the  public  maintenance 
of  divines,  to  be  employed  in  the  exercise  of  religion,  according  to  the 
canons  of  the  church  of  England  ;  "  which,  being  the  only  true  and  ortho- 
doxy and  the  national  religion  of  all  the  king's  dominions,  is  so  also  of  Car- 
olina ;  and  therefore  it  alone  shall  be  allowed  to  receive  public  maintenance 
by  grant  of  parliament."  Finally,  it  was  declared  that  these  Fundamental 
Constitutions,  consisting  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  articles,  and  forming  a 
vast  labyrinth  of  perplexing  regulations  (intended  rather  than  calculated  to 
secure  an  apt  intertexture  of  all  the  parts  in  the  general  frame),  should  be 
the  sacred  and  unalterable  form  and  rule  of  government  of  Carolina  for  ever. 
Thus,  by  the  labor  and  genius  of  European  philosophers  and  politicians,  the 
most  cumbrous,  operose,  and  illiberal  system  of  government  ever  engender- 
ed by  theory  or  practice  was  composed  for  a  country,  which,  under  the 
guidance  of  sounder  sense  and  manlier  spirit  in  her  own  native  population, 
has  since  been  renowned  over  all  the  earth  for  the  simplicity,  efficacy,  and 
generosity  of  her  municipal  institutions  and  policy. 

The  faults  and  absurdities  of  the  foregoing  system  are  at  once  so  nii- 
merous  and  so  palpably  manifest,  that  to  particularize  them  would  be  tedi- 
ous and  superfluous  toil.     It  may  be  reinark^ed,jn^  general,  thatjhe^how 

»  "TWb  article  was  not  drawn  «p  W'Mr7i:^kc;butTngcrted  by  some  of  the  chief  oHhe 


uroprietoni,  against  his  judgment ;  as  Hi 
lie  presented  a  copy  '^  jio^e  Constitufitv 


Locke  himself  informed  one  of  his  ffinnda  to  whom 
ns."    Locke's  Work$  (folio  edit.),  Vol.  III.,  p.  676. 


CHAP.  I] 


THE  FUNDAMENTAL  CONSTITUTIONS. 


356 


of  it,  in  collecting  inafpri»l«  <v.,  ♦u  • 

disregarded  or  mfsconce  S  the  acTu«rT-'''°"'  ^^^"^  *«  h«^«  entirely 
for  who.  the  legislative  /xpertnTwa  inte^ntd"  "l  '^''^  ''  *^u^  ^-P^' 
their  function  from  any  other  source  than  nnn"u'  ,L^!^6'^erg,  who  derive 
customed,  in  the  exercise  of  it  to  rn^I^  u  ^^^?*'"'  "«  ««  ^'""1^  ac- 
others  as  they  would  have  mhers  treat  £\h^^^^^^^  '°  ^^« 

ahty  of  these  institutions  would  scarcplv  ^1 -V     ^-^  P'^'^^"^' 8"^  '"'ber- 
been  their  principal  author.  Twas  a  retoZ  n  "°^^^       ^  ^""'^^  ^«^  "°t 
proprietaries,  that  good  faith  warvioIateTanS  "J^r^  exclusively  due  to  the 
For  a  number  of  inhabitants  had  alreadv  setHpH  ^''''u^  "^hts  disregarded. 
d<t.ons  which  their  rulers  were  no  Sr  ^n  1^*0^^'°"'"'^^''  °"  *^°"- 
and  forms  of  government  having  been  lrh,!n     ^  Iv  u^^^^ate  or  qualify  ; 
acquired  an  interest  in  them    wWcT  xv^S T-^^''^'^^  '^'  PeopJe  had 
have  been  sacrificed  to  those  innov«fTnL         ^•'  ''°"'^"*'  o"ght  not  to 
might  perhaps  have  been  led  to  dSX^e'£^'\?'•     ^5^  Proprietaries 
fons,  ,f  not  the  equity  of  their  Durnoic  ^^^^'^1??'  °^  *^eir  expecta- 
motives  which  retaiLdVemresrCl'S'"^  !?'^    ''^^  ^^"^•^^••ed  the 
operation  of  similar  sentiments  ^  the  Ssofl  "T^''"^  '^'  P^^^^^^e 
t  IS  reported  of  some  ancient  "egffiat^  s    tSL  ^K  >nhab.tants  of  Carolina. 
Wes  m  order  to  secure  the  receoti^n  nl  .hi  *^^^  sacrificed  their  own 

But  while  the  proprietaries  of  Si^a  conff'^?''^  of. their  constitutions. 
resign  the  comfSrts  and  luxur  es  7^^!  i  "?  P'^"^^'^  °"  themselves  to 
pated  their  non-residence^^b^providil  tr  tLr^-  ''■'"  ^^jl'^fately  antici- 
unctions,  they  expected  that  aKar"lolon!nf--T°"!.  ^'"'^'^''g^  ^^  »heir 
aborious  tobacco-planters  should  at  once  r^L  ""^tf"''^"'  woodsmen  and 
l-abits  of  life,  enchain  their  KbertJes  abrir^  th"'-'  '^^''  "^"^--^  «"d  their 
morphose  themselves  into  a  newTdW  of  bl?,"''^  ^  and  nearly  meta- 

lating  dignity  on  persons  whom  even  thp  I"  ^  '  ^"^  *^  '^^^  ^^  «ecumu- 
not  induce  to  live  in  theVountrv  Jt  •.  ?T'"'  °^  T '^  dignity  could 
greater  folly  or  injustice  in  pro  J'tin?  a  irS  '°  ''^  "\"^^^^  '^'''  ^^» 
weening  concern  wts  admitted^  ^therulersanflsS'"  ^^T^«»eh  over- 
posed  m  the  people,  for  their  resnectivp  fnfl  7  ^"eh  gross  indifference  sup- 
expected  to  sacrL;  their  liberranr^^^^^^  '  T''^^'^  ^^e  multitude  we?e 
advantages  of  certain  conspicuouT  station  Ih-'I^'.k"  "•?"'  *"  ^"^^"^«  ^^e 
reserved  judged  unworthv  of  Sir  n        '  7  '""^  *^°'^  ^""^  ^^om  they  were 

•he  head'of'the  antrCal  iV^'  nTnlT^^^  ^'^^^>"^'   -' 

l"s  pen  to  propagate  the  siisn.VJnnl  ,  Z  ^  S  and  ;  and  Locke  assisted  with 

of  the  desijns'^^f  the  CathofcsS^^^  ^'^T  ^l""^'"''^  '^  ^"^ertaln 

!  we  compare  the  constituSons  of  aLytnd  rd"r  ^^  r  "''  ^'''^'''''  "^'^ 
■tate  to  prefer  the  labors  of  the  Tn  nlZ  i  •  i  ^"""o  '"a,  we  cannot  hes- 
tant  philosopher  and  politicLn  and  to  n.^Ti  *°  i^°^"  ^^  ^''e  Protes- 
of  mankind  were  far^mo  e  wi^e  v  and  otTlf^'  '^''  '^'  ^'''  '"^erests 
'jaunted  capacity  of  Lord  SiLrP  .LT''y  P'?"'°*"^  ^^  *he  P'ain, 
elevated  and  comp^rehensi  e  m  nTa^d'of  Sh.f^  I'  ""1''^-  ^^^°"  «^  ^'^^^'^ 
and  experienced  genius.  '  Shaftesbury's  vigorous,  sagacious, 

-neScir^^^^^^^^  satisfied  with  the  Fundo 

t'?y  ;  and,  as  a  prelim  nary  steDTpli^?''''^  '^^^  '"'^  ♦^«'«et  without 
•heir  ability  to  promo  e  the  tmltn  ?  •  "^  themselves  to  the  utmost  of 
province.  TheK^of  AlbernT  '  '°-  ^^.f'ld"!""^!  inhabitants  to  the 
[Jan.,  1670],  andtelu^'lr^:^'^^^^^^  '"  ''?  °^-  «^  P«'«^- 
^^  iwe.ve  aivusaiiu  pounas  expended  on  the 


356 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


equipment  of  a  fleet,  which  set  sail  in  the  beginning  of  the  following  year 
with  a  considerable  troop  of  emigrants.  This  expedition,  which  was  des- 
tined to  found  a  colony  at  Port  Royal,  was  conducted  by  Colonel  William 
Sayle,  an  officer  of  considerable  experience  in  military  service  and  com- 
mand, who  received  the  appointment  of  governor  of  that  part  of  the  coast 
'lying  southwestward  of  Cape  Carteret.  As  these  emigrants  consisted  chiefly 
of  Dissenters,  it  is  probable  that  religious  freedom  was  the  object  they  had 
principally  in  view  ;  and  that  they  were  not  acquainted  ^yith  the  special  ar- 
ticle of  the  Constitutions  by  which  the  security  of  this  important  blessing 
was  endangered.  Indeed,  at  a  subsequent  period,  the  colonists  indignantly 
complained  that  the  Fundamental  Constitutions  had  been  interpolated,  and 
some  of  their  original  provisions  disingenuously  warped  to  the  prejudice  of 
civil  and  religious  liberty. '  Sayle  was  accompanied  by  Joseph  West,  a 
man  who  for  upwards  of  twenty  years  bore  the  chief  sway  in  Carolina,  and 
was  now  intrusted  with  the  management  of  the  commercial  affairs  of  the 
proprietaries,  on  whom  the  colonists  continued  for  some  time  to  depend 
exclusively  for  their  foreign  supplies. 

When  the  new  settlers  arrived  at  their  place  of  destination,  they  pre- 
pared  with  more  good  faith  than  good  sense  to  erect  the  structure  of  the 
political  system  to  which  they  were  required  to  conform  ;  but,  to  their  great 
surprise,  the  first  glance  at  their  actual  situation  convinced  them  that  this 
design  was  impracticable  ;  and  that  the  offices  which  were  appointed  to  be 
established  were  no  less  unsuitable  to  the  numbers  than  to  the  occupations 
of  the  people.  A  wide  scene  of  rough  toil  lay  before  them,  and  it  was  ob- 
vious that  for  many  years  a  pressing  demand  for  laborers  must  be  expe- 
rienced ;  a  state  of  things  totally  incompatible  with  the  avocations  of  official 
dignitaries  and  the  pompous  idleness  of  an  order  of  nobility.  Neither 
landgraves  nor  caciques  had  yet  been  appointed  by  the  proprietaries  ;  and 
to  have  peopled  even  the  subordinate  institutions  would  have  b6en  to  em- 
ploy all  the  inhabitants  of  the  cojony  in  performing  a  dramatic  pageant,  in- 
stead of  providing  the  means  of  subsistence.  Yet,  although  the  colonists 
found  themselves  constrained  at  once  to  declare  tliat  it  was  impoanblt  to 
execute  the  grand  model,  they  steadily  persisted  in  their  adherence  to  it,  and 
expressed  their  determination  to  come  as  nigh  to  it  as  possible.  Writs  were 
therefore  issued,  requiring  the  freeholders  to  elect  five  persons,  who,  witli 
five  others  chosen  by  the  proprietaries,  were  to  form  the  grand  council  as- 
sociated with  the  governor  in  the  administration  of  the  executive  power. 
A  parliament,  composed  of  these  functionaries,  and  of  twenty  delegates, 
chosen  by  the  same  electors,  was  invested  with  legislative  authority.  So 
great  were  the  difficulties  attending  the  commencement  of  their  new  scene 
of  life,  that,  only  a  few  months  after  their  arrival  in  Carolina  [1670],  the 
colonists  were  relieved  from  the  extremity  of  distress  by  a  supply  of  provis- 
ions seasonably  transmitted  to  them  by  the  proprietaries.  Along  with  this 
supply,  there  were  forwarded  to  the  governor  twenty-three  articles  of  in- 
struction, called  temporary  agrarian  laws,  relative  to  the  distribution  of  land, 
together  with  the  plan  of  a  magnificent  town,  which  he  was  desired  to  build 
with  all  convenient  speed,  and  to  denominate  Charles-Town,  in  honor  of 
the  king.  To  encointige  the  resort  of  settlers  to  Port  Royal,  one  hundred 
and  fifty  acres  of  land  were  allotted  to  every  emigrant,  at  a  small  quitrent, 
and  clothes  and  provisions  were  distributed  from  the  stores  oS  the  propric- 


CHAP,  I] 


OLD  CHARLESTOWN  FOUNDED. 


367 


'SZTT^nZl'^^'Cr^'"'''"  "i™f™=-     The  friend], 
.0  .he  native  caei,  l^X  L^P  rformed  ^r'"''?''  "^•'"'""J  T^^"' 

e»«bfol..     The  Duke  of  Albemnr  1,  °  •   T^^^  '^  ""'''sned  •» 

wa,  succeeded  inX  d%„ky  „fTati„eri2S''r"  *°  ™"T  °/""=  >"='"• 
»ards  John  Locke  was  created  a  SLL-  ""^  '  ""'  *""')'  =f«r- 

.nd  the  same  dignity  was  besrowedrfnT  '"/^"ISP™^''  "'  W»  ^""ccs  ; 
Carteret,  a  relative  o"  one  of  the  n?l,^  •^°''".  ^S°T°''  »"''  ™  J»™»' 
some  elation  in  the  .^  nd  of  1  A„S„  •;"'■  ^"J^^  "  ""J'  »"""' 
fanciful  distinction  of  an  order  of  3^  r'""  '"  '""r!'  """'  "''"»  «*= 
continued  to  enjoy  even  a  nominal  "Sent  t'TT""  ,'°'°  '"''  ""^"T' 
members  ;  and  that  when  he  w«  „„Jn  j  r '  °''u"  ^"^^^  ""*  »"«  of  its 
ford,  and  a  fugitiVe  fmm  End  „d  Ki,  J"™-  *"  Jl""''.  '«^''  "f  »"- 
and  regarded  Is  a  chS  of  the  nennle  T„  P  T^'^'i^  ^^  "  ""^  "^  '"'"«. 
.0  behSld  this  eminent  philoso„Cld,rl°;"''\,^"'  "  ''  '''»=6'''^='''lo 
distinction  to  himself  {^^£11  whZ^  h  Tf'''  "l"  '""Pt  a  titular 
and  introduce  the  deg;adlng%SS'rf"  ^olrrXlTlr 

Feamans  in  the  government  of  the  plantation  around  Cape  Fearri6711 
judged  U  expedient  to  extend  his  cLmand  to  the  new  settlement     Th; 

wplUnow'  "T^^^  ^l^  '^'  •"'^"°'-  «f  ^he  country  big  now  perfeltlv 
LrT"'  '^7"S^^h«  ^^^"''ate  surveys  which  Uiey  had  undLCe   t£ 
planters  from  Clarendon  on  the  north,  and  from  Port  Royal  on  the  so'uth 

Sere  wo  t -/T"^  '"^ i''""''  ^"  '^'  — -"^  banks^f  Ashley  River  • 
wh  chTecame't^^^^^^^  T  ^^^^^  [he  foundation  of  OZrf  a/rzSn,' 

wnicn  Decame,  lor  some  time,  the  capital  of  the  southern  settlements     TiJ 

ESnT'  "'^^Th"^' -!^*^  the  pSicy  that  charac  erized  thrp;evS 

s  rved     nf  h^'""'!^'-'^  '■'^^'"''y  ''^«'*'  ""^''^  '^'^y  appointed  to  beob 
dmfntte  Ih  ^  '  '"f '""*  '"'':T'^  of  inhabitants,  the  government  could  be 
heT  aw     en^.!?;    "T''{  ''f.'^'  Fundamental  Constitutions.     One  of 
quitv  and'  IT^  P':"'^?^«".d  humane,  enjoined  the  colonists  to  practise 

equuy  and  courtesy  m  their  intercourse  with  the  Indians  ;  to  afford  then, 


'  Oldmison 
liafflson 


HUiaty  of  ihe'BrUish  Dominions  in  America.    Hewit.    Ci.aJmeni. 


Wif 


^66 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


prompt  and  ample  redress  of  any  wrongs  they  might  happen  to  sustain  ;  and 
on  no  pretence  whatever  to  enslave  or  send  any  of  them  out  of  the  country. 
Unfortunately,  the  object  of  this  regula'ion  was  very  soon  defeated  by  the 
intrigues  of  the  Spaniards  ;  and  the  other  temporary  laws  received  little 
attention  or  respect  from  the  colonists,  who  were  by  no  means  disposed 
to  acquiesce  in  such  arbitrary  and  irregular  government ;  and  who  very  justly 
thought,  that,  if  the  establishment  of  permanent  laws  was  obstructed  by  the 
circumstances  of  their  present  Condition,  the  temporary  arrangements  by 
which  such  laws  were  to  be  supplied  ought  to  originate  with  Uiemselves,  to 
whom  alone  the  exact  nature  of  the  controlling  circumstances  was  practi- 
cally known.' 

The  proprietaries  were  more  successful  in  their  efforts  to  attract  addi- 
tional emigrants  to  the  settlement  on  Ashley  River  than  in  their  experi- 
ments in  the  science  of  legislation.     To  the  Puritans,  persecuted  in  Eng- 
land by  the  existing  laws,  and  ridiculed  and  insulted  by  the  Cavaliers,  they 
offered  a  secure  asylum  and  ample  grants  of  land  in  Carolina,  on  condition 
of  their  transporting  themselves  and  their  families  to  this  province.     Even 
the  most  bigoted  churchmen  in  the  king's  council  are  said  to  have  cooperated 
with  much  eagerness  to  promote  this  scheme  ;  considering  severe  labor  a 
wholesome  remedy  for  ei^husiasm,  and  enthusiasm  a  fit  stimulus  and  auxil- 
iary to  novel  and  hazardous  undertakings  ;  and  judging  it  expedient  to  di- 
minish, by  every  means,  the  farther  extension  of  Puritan  sentiments  and 
practices  in  Massachusetts.    And  although  it  was  to  this  favorite  scene  that 
the  major  and  the  most  zealous  portion  of  the  Puritan  emigrants  still  resort- 
ed, yet  a  considerable  number  were  tempted,  by  the  flattering  offers  of  the 
proprietaries,  to  try  their  fortunes  in  Carolina.    Unfortunately  for  the  repose 
and  prosperity  of  the  province,  the  invitations  and  encouragements  to  emi- 
grate thither  were  tendered  indiscriminately  to  men  of  the  most  distordant 
characters  and  principles.     Rakes  and  gamblers,  who  had  wasted  their  sub- 
stance in  riot  and  debauchery,  and  Cavaliers  who  had  been  ruined  by  the 
civil  wars,  were  sent  to  associate  with  moody,  discontented  Puritans,  and  to 
enter  on  a  scene  of  life  in  which  only  severe  labor  and  the  strictest  temper- 
ance and  frugality  could  save  them  from  perishing  with  hunger.    To  the  im- 
poverished officers  and  other  unfortunate  adherents  of  the  royalist  party, 
for  whom  no  recompense  was  provided  in  England,  the  proprietaries  and 
the  other  ministers  of  the  king  offered  estates  in  Carolina  [1671],  which 
many  of  them  were  fain  to  embrace  as  a  refuge  from  beggary.     A  society, 
composed  of  these  Cavaliers,  who  ascribed  their  ruin  to  die  Puritans,  and 
of  Puritan  emigrants,  who  imputed  their  exile  to  the  Cavaliers,  could  not 
reasonably  be  expected  to  exist  long  in  harmony  or  tranquillity  ;  and  the 
feuds  and  distractions,  that  afterwards  sprung  up  from  the  seeds  of  division 
thus  unseasonably  imported  into  the  infant  commonwealth,  inflicted  a  merited 
retribution  on  the  proprietaries  for  the  reckless  ambition  they  indulged,  and 
the  absurdity  of  the  policy  they  pursued.     The  dangers  and  hardships,  in- 
deed, whh  which  the  emigrants  found  themselves  encompassed  on  their  arri- 
val in  the  province,  contributed  for  a  time  to  repress  the  growth  of  civil  and 
religious  dissension  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  same  circumstances  tended 
to  develope  the  mischievous  consequences  of  sending  men,  whose  habits 
were  already  inveterately  depraved,  to  a  scene  where  only  vigorous  virtue 
could  maintain  a  secure  and  prosperous   establishment.     Accordingly,  it 

'  Hcwit.    Chalmers. 


[BOOK  IV.  I  CHAP.  I]  HOSTILE  INTRIGUES  OF  THE  SPANIARDS. 


»  to  sustain  ;  and 
It  of  the  country, 
defeated  by  the 
fs  received  little 
•  means  disposed 
i  who  very  justly 
)bstructed  by  the 
arrangements  by 
til  themselves,  to 
nces  was  practi- 

to  attract  addi- 
in  their  experi- 
■secuted  in  Eng- 
3  Cavaliers,  they 
ina,  on  condition 
province.  Even 
have  cooperated 
;  severe  labor  a 
raulus  and  aiixij- 
expedient  to  di- 
I  sentiments  and 
vorite  scene  that 
rants  still  resort- 
ing offers  of  the 
ly  for  the  repose 
igements  to  emi- 
most  discordant 
vasted  their  sub- 
in  ruined  by  the 
Puritans,  and  to 
strictest  temper- 
;er.  To  the  im- 
!  royalist  party, 
iroprietaries  and 
1  [1671],  which 
ry.  A  society, 
lie  Puritans,  and 
iliers,  could  not 
[uillity  ;  and  the 
leeds  of  division 
flicted  a  merited 
3y  indulged,  and 
d  hardships,  in- 
ed  on  their  arri- 
)vvth  of  civil  and 
instances  tended 
n,  whose  habits 
'  vigorous  virtue 
Accordingly,  it 


person  ,h„„W  be  per„e7iTbaEr^X"''  ""         ""''  '""  "" 

appellation  of  Florida  was  now  r-i^^^^^^^^^  •  }^F'''''y 'o  which  the 
ness.  The  host  le  opeTat  oL  of  the"^'^  -'T  "'  rF'^  comprehensive- 
pretensions  would  harZC  warranted^  rrfn'  ""^''f'^  -^'^  °^'S'"°' 
of  a  treaty  bv  which  thnJnr^tl  '       S^^  pursued  m  manifest  violation 

ahvavs  possess   in  (1,11  rLh,  If      '      •        ""  ^'"S  "'  '^reat  Brilain  should 
Amerioa,  which  he  in^L  s„b 'ecTthe/held  an'J  It^^^  or  any  part  of 

evISVid'r.hesI"'-"?  '•  '"''  "-""insb-.TL'^coZ 
same  Sv  Te  ll,?  If  f  ,.■""?'  '"'"'  '^""^'"'^  ""''  """>>"'=<'•     By  the 

p»^p!^°^Krrei.erK^ 

mw0Mm 

nKnn«    r         -7  '^"*  emissaries  among  the  settlers  at  Ashley  River 
To  dL'r7t  let  rSs  td  ny  '^te  V'^^  h"""^^^^'  '"^^^^  ^^ 

sla  ion  nf  !         )^'    u^  '"^'Ses,  that  these  deluded  Indians,  at  th^  "n! 

vS  experiS^lk"  *"r'^"^-  ^"'  '"J"^^"'^^  ^^^>^  had 'themselves 
hem   a^nd  vvhof    ri    5    "™'  ^°  ^''*""P«*^  «  ^^^«  ^^'^o  had  never  injured 

eTi  annonnnn'H' ^  '^'  ^^F«««  instructionf  o 

tneir  rulers,  announced  a  desire  to  cultivate  friendly  relations  with  them 


S60 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


and  endurance  which  human  nature  with  all  its  wants  and  weaknesses  is 
still  capable  of  exemplifying.     Except  a  very  few  negroes,  imported  bv 
Yeamans  and  his  followers  from  Barbadoes,  there  were  no  other  laborers 
but  Europeans  in  the  colony  ;  the  brute  creation  could  not  replace  or  even 
partake  human  labor,  till  the  ground  was  disencumbered  of  wood  ;  and  the 
unassisted  arm  of  man  alone  had  to  encounter  the  hardship  of  clearing  a  for 
est,  whose  stubborn  strength  and  thickness  seemed  to  bid  defiance  to  his 
most  strenuous  efforts.     The  toil  of  felling  the  large  and  lofty  trees  by 
which  they  were  surrounded,  was  performed  by  the  colonists  under  the  dis- 
solving  heat  of  a  climate  to  which  their  bodies  were  unaccustomed,  and 
amidst  the  dread  of  barbarous  enemies,  whose  stealthy  approaches  and  ab- 
rupt assaults  they  could  not  otherwise  repel,  than  by  keeping  a  part  of  their 
own  number  under  arms,  to  protect   the  remainder  who  were  struggling 
with  the  forest,  or  cultivating   the   spaces   that  had  been  cleared.     The 
provisions  obtained  by  dint  of  such  hardships  were  frequently  devoured  or 
destroyed  by  their  enemies  ;  and  the  recompense  of  a  whole  year's  toil  was 
defeated  in  one  night  by  the  dexterous  celerity  of  Indian  depredation.    The 
burden  of  these  distresses  was  augmented  by  the  feebleness,  helplessness 
and  ill-humor  of  a  great  part  of  the  recently  arrived  emigrants,  and  by 
the  mistakes  and  disappomtments  arising  from  ignorance  of  the  peculiar 
culture  and  produce  appropriate  to  the  soil  of  Carolina,  to  which  European 
grain  and  tillage  proved  unsuitable.   So  much  discontent  and  insubdrdination 
was  produced  by  this  scene  of  varied  annoyance  and  calamity,  that  it  was 
with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  the  governor  could  prevent  the  people  from 
abandoning  the  settlement.     An  insurrection  was  even  excited  by  Culpep- 
per, one  of  the  provincial  officers  ;  but  it  was  easily  suppressed  by  the  gov- 
ernor ;  and  the  guilty  were  either  mildly  punished  or  humanely  forgiven 
in  consideration  of  the  misery  to  which  their  violence  was  imputed.    While 
Yeamans  was  exerting  himself  to  compose  these  disorders,  the  Spanish  gar- 
rison at  Augustine,  learning  their  occurrence  from  some  fugitive  servants 
of  the  colonists,  judged  this  a  proper  opportunity  to  strike  a  decisive  blow  • 
and  accordingly  despatched  an  invading  party,  who, advanced  as  far  as  the 
island  of  St.  Helena,  with  the  purpose  of  dislodging  or  destroying  the  in- 
habitants of  Ashley  River.     But  either  the  courage  of  the  invaders  was 
disproportioned  to  their  animosity,  or  they  had  overrated  the  divisions  among 
the  English  colonists  ;  for,  being  joined  by  only  one  traitor  named  Fitzpat- 
rick,  and  finding  that  Yeamans  was  not  only  prepared  to  receive  them,  but 
had  sent  Colonel  Godfrey  with  a  party  of  fifty  volunteers  to  attack  them 
m  St.  Helena,  they  did  not  wait  the  encounter,  but,  evacuating  the  island, 
retreated  to  their  quarters  at  Augustine.     The  more  formidable  hostilities 
of  the  Indians  were  quelled  for  a  time,  partly  by  the  conciliatory  address 
of  Yeamans,  but  chiefly  by  a  war  which  broke  out  between  two  of  their 
own  principal  tribes,  the  Westoes  and  the  Seranas,  and  was  carried  on  with 
such  destructive  fury,  that  in  the  end  it  proved  the  ruin  of  them  both.^ 

During  the  administration  of  Sir  John  Yeamans  [1673],  the  colony  re- 
ceived an  addition  to  its  strength  from  the  Dutch  settlement  of  Nova  Belgia, 
or  New  Netheriands,  which  had  been  conquered  by  Colonel  Nichols  and 
annexed  to  the  English  empire.  Charies  the  Second  bestowed  it  on  his 
brother  James,  who  changed  its  name  to  New  York  ;  and  by  the  prudence 
and  mildness  of  the  first  governor  whom  he  appointed,  the  inhabitants  were 

'  Hewiti  ~  ~ 


CHAP. 


I]  DISSATISFACTION  OF  THE  PROPRIETARIES. 


361 


altered  situaUon,  and  many  of  tC  h„H  r  ^"'j\d.scontente^  with  their 
.0  some  other  rngion  ;  wS  1  0^0  'f^r^'''"'^!*''  !-"""''^"  ""^  ^«"^°^'"g 
anticipating  their  desgn   and  ever  oTt/?  .°^  understanding  ov 

their  own 'provincial  teUory,  prevaSed  with Ti  h  P'°'"°''  "•""'S'"^*'"""  ^" 
direct  their  course  thither,  a^nd^dLpatchrd  t^o  v;^1^  °^^"'  ^° 

number  of  Dutch  families  to  Sle'town      Rt^n^^^  " 

general  of  the  colony,  was  directPH.n  „=  •  i  ^^P'^"  Bull,  the  surveyor- 
Ashley  River  for  the^  rccomSion  .'T!," '«"^^°"^he  southwest  side  of 
ing  drawn  lots  for  hdr  p^est 7  Vol  ^  ''u  ^"*'^^  emigrants,  hav- 
ment,  which  was  called  jSuestov^'  T  rlsVr  "^!'  7  i^""''f  ""■'^'- 
to  Carolina  produced  an  abundant  LvnV  F^V^^^ort  of  Dutch  seiiiers 
having  surmounted  amaJnrhardshrnT  hvT'?'''"°-  *°  '^'  P'°^'"^«  ?  ^^^ 
successful  establishmerTwch  thev  TttainL  "'j;  ^'i""""  '"?  '"^"^^^^  '^e 
men  in  ancient  Belgia ,  at  a  later  nerioH  .  ?  i  "'t'^  '"'^"'^  '^•^''-  ^°""try. 
The  inhabitants  of^Jamestou'n  St  en^th  fi^"^""  '•  ""  '° *^"  ^^^^'''^"  '^^''^' 
for  their  growing  number  be^an  .^^^^^  ^rl"^  «s  precincts  too  narrow 
.ill  the  ojinal  sftt^^^^^^^^^  the  province, 

signmeL  1  provisions  and  ^  sTore^t^^Tthrsll"^  ^"^^J^  ^°"- 
than  once  its  deliverance  from  the  brink  of  d^^Lh.^^  settlement  owed  more 
was  not  proportioned  to  thriiberali  v  nf  .h  •  "'     ^"^  ^^^''"  P«^'«"«« 

pectations  they  formed  of  speedy  Shli  f  ^'""'encement ;  in  the  ex- 
omitted  to  consider  some  of  the^mo  tmnn^^^^^^^^  -"^  ^'""'"^"^  'f^''^^  ^^ey 
dilion  of  the  persons  for  whom  tW  T7 so  fr^r'"''' "r'.  '"  *^/  ^°"- 
regardless  of  the  injustice  and  imnr7rl«n      '°.  V'^^^  F^vided  ;  and  quite 

off  great  numbers  ThXless  2\tt?  '"'!^  ^^'"*^  '^''^  ^'^  ^"'"^^ 
onl/ encumber,  disturb  anrjisot^^^^^^^  Tmor^  ^^T,"^"V'^^  '^^"'^ 
community,  they  were  exclusivplv  ^^^^  1  ^  "'^'^"'  members  of  the 
of  their  own  pecuZy  sacS^hfrh  t'^  ^' ^^^^^  ^"'^  '^'  ^''^'^^'^ 
.ion  that  the  coloni  L^haTno  ca  '  whJ.  'r  ^""^  to  warrant  the  convic 
of  .he  year  1673   a  dpht  n?  ^^atever  of  complaint.    Before  the  end 

cited  fresh  supplies,  without  beijrihip  to  ^l,'       1^     ^u  ^^  *'°'°""^'  «°"- 

disbursements  were  likrever  to  h''  r^-  ^  -^  '^°-''  '■  ^''* """  ^''^  '""^"''^ 
ity  of  the  hardships  hey  unde  went  th"v  '  «"^.'"  «"f  ^"g  to  the  sever- 
sinuated  reproach^  The  ZnrS-  ^  complamed  of  neglect,  and  in- 
gusted  with  this  result  aJXl  !?•  ' '''''''*'"?'^  P''^^^'^^^  «"d  dis- 
the  Dutch  war  rendPrpd  ,hl-  disappointment,  in   concurrence  whh 

freauent  t^^  -th  the  colony  much  less 

lately  emigrated  from  New  VorT  If'  ^°/"^°"r«Sf  the  settlers  who  had 
prom^ised  a^n  annu  Tne  nl74V  1  S;thl?P'''''1  T'^f  ^"PP^^'  «"'! 
siderhowthe  debt  was  to  £  liiddnti/  ^  '  \''"'^  ^^^  P'^^^^''^  ^o  con- 
they  declared,  to  make  no  mVrT'3       '  ''"".\they  were  now  determined, 

'4LustberbXt''th"^^^^^^^^ 

a'  omAVi  d  b7a  tmbe^o'f  ^^^^^^^^^  --  -^  other  usefuTpK. 
Pg!]i!g_'^y  a  number  of  pej;sons_whowprP  acquainted  with  the  cul' 


VOL.    1. 


46 


Hewit. 


EE 


362 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


ture  of  them  ;  but  they  refused  an  application  for  a  stock  of  cattle,  ob- 
serving that  they  wished  to  encourago  planters  rather  than  graziers  ;  and 
they  strongly  recommended  the  cultivation  of  tobacco,  till  more  beneficial 
staples  could  bo  introduced.  Mutual  jealousy  and  dissatisfaction  began 
now  to  arise  between  the  proprietaries  and  the  colonists,  and  embittered 
the  whole  of  their  future  intercourse.  But  a  useful  lesson  was  conveyed 
to  the  colonists  by  the  circumstances  which  thus  diminished  their  reliance 
on  foreign  support  and  enforced  their  dependence  on  their  own  unassisted 
exertions.  Ihe  proprietaries  ascribed  the  unproductiveness  of  the  colony 
and  the  poverty  of  its  inhabitants  to  the  misrule  of  Sir  John  Yeauians 
who,  in  the  commencement  of  this  year,  was  forced  by  ill  health  to  resign 
his  command,  and  try  to 'repair  his  constitution  in  Barbodoes,  where  he 
soon  found  a  grave.  The  factions  and  confusion  in  which  the  colony  was 
shortly  after  involved  have  rendered  the  annals  of  this  period  extremely 
perplexing  and  inconsistent,  —  obscuring,  with  an  almost  impenetrable  cloud, 
the  real  characters  of  men  and  the  connection  of  events.  Yet,  amidst  con- 
flicting testimonies,  it  seems  reasonable  to  believe  tliat  the  charges  of  the 
proprietaries  against  Sir  John  Yeamans  were  unjust,  and  either  the  effusions 
of  spleen  and  disappointment,  or  (more  probably)  the  artful  suggestion  of  an 
apology  for  the  main  body  of  the  colonists,  with  whom  it  was  not  convenient 
for  them  to  quarrel  irreconcilably.  The  only  offence  of  Yeamans  appears  to 
have  been  his  eagerness  to  procure  ample  supplies  from  the  proprietaries  to 
the  colonists  ;  a  policy,  which,  while  the  proprietaries  were  determined  to 
discourage,  they  were  naturally  disposed  to  ascribe  to  his  own  misconduct. 
When  he  abdicated  his  office,  the  couricil  again  appointed  Joseph  West  his 
successor  ;  and  on  this  occasion  the  palatine  thought  proper  to  confirm  the 
popular  choice,  with  many  compliments  to  the  object  of  it,  which,  however 
gratuitous  at  the  time,  were  eventually  justified  by  the  prudence  and  success 
of  his  administration.'  The  early  annals  of  Carolina  are  chiefly  interesting  as 
illustrative  of  a  state  of  society  not  likely  ever  again  to  occur  in  the  world, 
From  the  affairs  of  the  southern  plantation,  we  must  now  transfer  our 
attention  for  a  while  to  the  northern  setdement  of  Albemarle.  Instructions, 
similar  to  those  which  had  been  communicated  to  Sayle,  in  the  year  1670, 
were  addressed  to  Stevens,  the  governor  of  Albemarle,  at  tne  same  period  ; 
but  a  system,  replete  with  innovations  so  unfavorable  to  the  interests  of  free- 
dom, was  received  with  disgust  and  even  derision  by  the  people,  who  were 
no  more  disposed  to  execute  the  plan  of  the  Fundamental  Constitutions 
than  the  proprietaries  had  been  to  invite  their  assistance  in  its  composition. 
The  promulgation  of  this  instrument  produced  no  other  effect  than  to  awak- 
en the  most  inveterate  jealousy  of  the  designs  of  the  proprietaries  ;  till,  in 
process  of  time,  it  was  reported  and  believed,  that  they  entertained  the 

f)roject  of  partitioning  the  province,  and  bestowing  Albemarle  on  Sir  Wil- 
iam  Berkeley  as  his  share  of  the  whole.  This  apprehension,  though  per- 
fectly groundless,  prevailed  so  strongly,  that  at  length  the  assembly  of 
Albemarle  [1675]  presented  a  remonstrance  to  the  proprietaries  against 
a  measure  which  they  declared  to  be  at  once  injurious  to  individuals  and 
degrading  to  the  country.  Although  the  remonstrance  was  answered  in 
<t  conciliatory  strain  by  the  proprietaries,  who  graHously  confessed  that  they 
had  Been  deficient  in  attention  to  the  people  of  Albemarle,  and  solemnly 
promised  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the  province,  the  displeasure  of  the 
colonists  was  too  deeply  rooted  to  be  thus  easily  removed.  Little  satisfac- 
"^~~~  '  Chalmers.    Ilewit. 


CHAP.  I.] 


FACTIOUS  PROCEEDINGS  IN  ALBEMARLE. 


363 


)eople,  who  were 
tal  Constitutions 


tion  was  created  bv  the  e,\nont^,:        e 

whose  policy  had  bJcle  fife  oEt  t^T^  [r«quent  attention  from  .hose 
and  refractoV  spirit,  tSfing  posie' L.  of  Z  ' -'^P't". '  ""^  ^  >«'«"« 
.noted  sentiments'  and  praftiS  as  hosl  to  .7  w'  °^  "''  ^•^'^u^^''^'  P'°' 
ol'  the  proprietaries  was  reuuenamVn  n  '".^"^^^rd'nation,  as  the  policy 
ol-  the  northern  province  for  a  . Tip  'V  '^*  * >'"  *'»«  P«'-'od,  the  l^story 
and  contradiction^lat  it  is  imnossihTo^'""'  'V"'"'^^'^  '"  '"^^  ^°"^"«io" 
cult  to  unravel  its  intricacy  or  Cat  it  "■'"•'''  ,1^  '"«r^«»'""6>  a"d  cli/li- 
niost  accurate  of  its  historians  l,    1  'u?  !"V'"'S'^'*''-     ^^'halmers,  the 

sources  of  informaficlrtrr  aifytl^^'LZJ'V^^*^'^  ^'^'^^^^  '^  '^'^  best 
the  nature  and  order  of  the  n  Lh^«I  n  ^  f  other  writers  respecting 
practicable  to  account  for  e.n  ff?  '''?"''.'  ^^Z  ^'''^  '^"""^  ^^  utterly  inn 
lleeper  confusion,  fvl  be   rco.n  ett^' ^^'^'^  ^'''^  been  involved  i^n  the 

aptr;:Vstne  tn7i=r-:  th^ ;:;: '''-"''''  -^  ^'^-^■•'^'  ^^-"-^ 

and  having  been  acqui  ted   ,uL  .        Fovince,  was  accused  of  sedition 

justice  Ae  ^s^t:s^T':e;2^rs'r^^^  «"^  '- 

plain  to  the  proprietaries  of  the  tLunpTl^  m  order  to  com- 

the  governor,  died  soon  after  •  and  ZT.T  u     ^^t  ""•^"''Sone.     Stevens, 
to  replace  him,  until  orE  ^Sld  h^  ^'^  ^  T/"  "'l"'""  °^  ^^"^^^ 
.nan,Uer  a  short  attempt  rcSctfh/^?'-''*  ^'■°"'  *^"S'"°^  '  but  this 
with  the  scene  of  fooS    furious  1       "^^'"'"'^.^'•f^'""'  ^vas  so  disgusted 
volved,  that  he  abandoned  trcdonv    h   '"7^"''  .^'  '^"""^  himself  in- 
[1676],  vvhither  he  was  aton,paSVv  Ff    r  "J^  ^"'"''"^^  to  England 
dress  and  abilities  had  raised     m  to  Sf.  ^-    •^"■'^  '  P"'"'^"  ^^^ose^  ad- 
bly,  and  who  was  deputed  to    eLZn    .    F''^  of  speaker  of  the  assem- 
ation  of  their  people!^  it  proKrL,         "  P'^'^'f'^^  the  actual  situ- 
Eastchurch,  applted  him  gleCr  'f  A?h  "''T"^  "  ^Tl'^^'  °P'"'°"  °'' 
treatment  that  Aliller  hadTec^eived   Ls  owed  ofr  '   '"^  ^'^^PP^oving  the 
office  of  provincial  secretarr  to  whio?}  nf  I  Si   ?"  ?  "  ^o^^Pensation  the 
tion  of  his  proprietary  fVmc  ions      Th!  .S^l^ftesbury  added  a  deputa- 

pointed  Miller,  at  tlJsame  Z;   t^  «  commissioners  of  the  customs  ap- 
rovince.     The  pro m^^^^^^^  ^^'''-  f °"''^°''  °'"  ^^ese  duties  in  tin, 

designs  had  been  ^pS  ^m-  th4'7ilT'^  dissatisntction  how  little  their 
functionaries.  ThWrS  In  fied  h-t  h''°"'  T^arded  by  the  provincial 
to  the  southward  of  AlbeSe  SonS  T'  '°  ^'''''  .^^"^^'"ents  formed 
lablished  with  the  soXrn  colony  Burfh'  ^T"^""'«^tion  by  land  es- 
the  governor  and  council  of  AlbZ;,.lp  i  '  ''''''"!  ^'^  obstructed  by 
I)-  llie  whole  of  the  trade  with  the  neLhh"  ^""fT"^  '°  themselves  near- 
liended  that  the   extension  nfi    "^'S'  louring  Indians,  and  justly  appre- 

traffic  into';ht\:r"Ve'prprLtr^^^^^^^  ''^"^  ^'v«  P-«''ble 

success  to  alter  the  channeorafSn  trade  o'^^^^^^^^  ""' -"^  ^'"^•■ 
to  promote  a  direct  intercourse  wiUt  Sin  np^ace  of  Ih  "''"'""''  '"'^ 
of  commerc  al  dealine  to  wh'ioh  th^    ^'"f'"> '"  pjacc  ol  the  narrow  system 

New  England  setSn  °  Thl  r.  1  7"''  T'""^'^  themselves  with  the 
the  inteHor  of  the  pro"  inco  and  hrf '''  ^T-^'^' 5"Sland,  penetrating  into 
obtained  a  monopoirof  the  „  ol'/e  o^A^h  '^  f  °^^'°.  T'y  "»«"'«  ^"°^' 
ters  to  a  traffic  win  Jh  they  prefer  'd  on tl'^.^'V -"^  'i-'^'^"^*^^  ^^e  plan: 
to  the  superior  emolume  ft  of  more  ^xte  dT'^/ ''"  '"^^^  '"'  ^""P"'''^' 
was  hoped  by  the  oronrint-nries  h^?  .'„''  ™  _  ^T^^^  transactions.  It 
.     ,         -""^  ^"•^^^"'^"P^i^'ynt  aiteraiionm  thescparticu- 


3G4 


HISTORY   OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


lars  would  result  from  the  instructions  which  they  now  communicated  to 
Kastchurch  and  Miller.  These  officers  departed  to  take  uossession  of  their 
respective  appointments  ;  hut  Kastchurch,  enticed  hy  the  prospect  of  a 
wealthy  marriage  in  the  West  Indies,  deemed  it  prudent  to  remain  there 
till  his  object  was  accomplished,  and  despatched  his  companion  with  di> 
rections  to  ddminister  the  government  of  Albemarle  till  he  himself  should 
arrive.' 

As  chief  magistrate  and  collector  of  the  royal  customs,  Miller  [July, 
1677]  was  received  with  a  hollow  civility  and  affected  consideration,  of 
which  he  became  the  dupe  and  the  victim.  Unaware  or  regardless  of  the 
aversion  to  his  authority  that  prevailed  with  a  considerable  party  among  the 
planters,  he  at  once  proclaimed  designs  and  commenced  innovations  tlint 
gave  offence  and  alarm  to  them  all.  The  settlement,  of  which  he  now  as- 
sumed the  governance,  consisted  merely  of  a  few  insignificant  plantations 
dispersed  along  the  northeastern  bank  of  the  river  Albemarle,  and  divided 
into  four  districts.  The  planters  were  yet  but  an  inconsiderable  body; 
the  tithableSj  under  which  description  were  comprehended  all  persons  from 
sixteen  to  sixty  years  of  age,  amounting  only  to  fourteen  hundred  ;  of  whom 
one  third  was  composed  of  Indians,  negroes,  and  women.  Kxclusive  of 
the  cattle  and  Indian  corn,  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco  was 
the  annual  produce  of  their  labor,  and  formed  the  basis  of  an  inconsidera- 
ble commerce,  which  was  monopolized  by  the  traders  from  New  England, 
who  enjoyed  unbounded  influence  in  the  province.  Remote  from  society,  and 
destitute  of  the  means  of  education,  the  planters  were  remarkable  for  igno- 
rance and  credulity,  and  were  implicitly  directed  by  the  counsels  of  those 
traders,  who  regarded  with  the  utmost  jealousy  the  commercial  designs  whirh 
Miller  was  instructed  by  the  proprietaries  to  pursue.  Unsupported  by  any 
effectual  force,  and  possessing  neither  the  reputation  of  emment  ability  nor 
the  advantage  of  popularity,  this  man  commenced  his  work  of  reformation 
with  a  headlong  and  impetuous  zeal  that  provoked  universal  disgust.  He 
was  reproached,  and  perhaps  justly,  with  some  arbitrary  exertions  of  power ; 
but  the  rock  on  which  his  authority  finally  split  was  an  attempt  to  promote 
a  more  direct  trade  with  Britain  and  with  the  other  colonies,"  in  order  to 
destroy  the  monopoly  enjoyed  by  the  traders  of  New  England,  whom  the 
proprietaries  regarded  as  insidious  rivals,  and  pernicious  associates  of  the 
people  of  Carolina.  On  the  arrest  of  a  New  England  trader  who  was  ac- 
cused of  smuggling,  an  insurrection^  broke  forth  among  the  settlers  of 
Pasquetanke  [December,  1677],  one  of  the  districts  of  Albemarle  ;  and  the 
flame  spread  through  the  whole  colony.  The  insurgents  were  conducted 
by  Culpepper,  who  had  formerly  excited  commotions  in  the  settlement  of 
Ashley  River,  and  whose  experience  in  such  enterprises  seems  to  have 
formed  his  sole  recommendation  to  the  regards  of  his  present  associates. 
As  the  government  possessed  no  force  capable  of  withstanding  them,  they 

'  Chalmers.     Williamson. 

*  Virginia,  from  her  situation,  miglit  have  absorbed  the  whole  of  this  traffic,  of  whii'h  slip 
then  enjoyed  only  a  very  inconsiderable  portion.  But  so  narrow  were  the  conuneroinl  virwii 
by  which  she  wns  governed,  that  two  years  after  this  period  sJie  passed  an  act  prohibiting 
•' tho  importation  of  tobacco  from  Carolina ;  as  it  had  been  found  very  prejudicial."  lyiirs 
pf  Viifinia.  In  the  year  1681,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  writing  to  tho  English  Committee  of 
Colonies,  declares  that  "  Carolina  (I  mean  the  north  part  of  it)  always  was,  and  is,  tiic  sink 
nf  America,  the  refuge  of  our  renegadocs,  and,  till  in  better  order,  dangerous  to  us."  Stoft 
Pttpf,r$,  afmd  Chalmers. 

*  This  insurrection,  it  will  be  remarked,  broke  out  but  a  few  months  after  the  suppression 
of  Racon's  rnbellion  in  ViT'inia-  Rut  no  connection  hna  been  truced  botwccn  these  tw»  events. 


CHAf.  I.J  INSURRECTION   UNDER   CULPEPPER  o^^ 

Sou 

l»mlod  officers,  convoked  a  pa  li'amom  ?„fll     J  ■"  "T"  "'  J"""'"'  T 
iraumcd  to  ooDosc  .l,!^r,   ^wPf  '    ■"'""'  P""»llmenl!  on  all  who 

i:  SpiiiSorgovo  2.  A "  rr.::\^^^^^^     "-^  '"'''""'^  -f 

„„accora|,anicd  Cy  a  maoifesto  iho  ioZi      r  ■"        "TP'"  °'  »  ■•"•■"" 

.iitacmient  conduct  of  ,|,e  insurgents  demonstrated  how  IM.  of  „.ljf 

for  assistance  to  the  goverSrVirlt     h  ."'."^'''f''""^-   .^"'ff'"'* 
farce  sufficient  for  his  ^urp^osrc'ould'^bfrLmt;^*'"'  "'  ""'"'"'"  '•^'^°-    ' 

,aenl       1  his  unlbrtutiato  president,  and  the  other  officeT  who  had  I.T 

complaints  of  their  own^Sftferini    and  Izt^-  •=•"■"  »^  ,"•» -ation  with 

Ifth^  proprietaries  cou,jtr^:;„Z'dr     ^^Wgir  ZTZ 
formity  with  their  own  notions  of  rlo-ht    W  ,.r„o  .i  ^    '     "      "  *'**"' 

taler 'party  that  would  double"   havetLle7„ifh.heT''R'r°  •,"'?" 
hesitated  to  e„,broil  themselves  irrecoEably  ^  ,  ,Le Tolonfs,"  XiTt? 

E?f^:i"fh-ig-^£3!ES^^ 

sal  of  the  popular  cause  in  England  placed  him  at  vaWancrwUrsoTof 
strument  in  the  nrov  ncp    nnH  thnt  M;ii„»   u-  •    "ecoming  a  useful  in- 

ofTbe^^llil  .h  T°'. "'  '"'"5  "'  ™"'="<"  -"i""""  <l>eir  authority,  and 

■  Chalmers.    Wimammt. ^ 

■BE* 


366 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


.iience  of  which,  the  report  of  the  committee  impeached  him  not  only  of 
embezzlement  of  the  customs,  but  of  having  promoted  a  rebellion  in  the 
province.    It  was  in  vain  for  him  to  acknowledge  the  facts  laid  to  his  charce 
and  beg  for  mercy,  or  at  least  that  his  trial  might  take  place  in  Carolina' 
where  the  offences  had  been  commilted  ;  his  powerful  accusers  were  deter' 
mined  to  wreak  the  uttermost  vengeance  on  so  daring  an  opponent  of  legit- 
imate  authority  ;  and,  in  copformiiy  with  a  statute  of  Henry  the  Eighth 
which  enacted  that  foreign  treasons  might  be  judged  and  punished  in  Ene' 
land,  he  was  brought  to  trial  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  on  an  indictment 
of  high  treason  committed  without  the  realm.     There  is  no  departure  from 
justice  in  requiring  a  colonial  governor,  or  other  public  officer  delegated 
by  the  parent  state,  to  answer  before  her  domestic  tribunals  for  betraying 
the  trust  or  perverting  the  power  which  he  derived  from  her  appointment 
But  Culpepper  had  not  been  an  officer  of  the  British  government ;  and 
however  consonant  with  the  statute  law  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  it  was  plainly 
repugnant  to  the  spirit  of  the  English  common  law,  as  well  as  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  equity,  to  compel  him  to  take  his  trial  at  such  a  distance  from 
all  to  whom  his  conduct  and  character  were  known,  and  in  a  community 
to  which  the  witnesses  on  both  sides  must  be  strangers,  and  where  conflict- 
ing testimony  could   not   be  properly  balanced.     It  must  be   confessed 
however,  that,  from  the  actual  state  of  the  province,  the  British  government 
was  reduced  to  the  alternative  of  either  trymg  him  in  England,  or  not  trying 
him  at  all.     His  destruction  at  first  appeared  inevitable  ;  for  the  judges 
pronounced,  that  to  take  up  arms  against  the  proprietary  government  was 
treason  against  the  king  ;  and  the  amplest  evidence  was  produced  of  every 
circumstance  requisite  to  substantiate  the  charge.     But  Shaftesbury,  who 
was  then  at  the  zenith  of  his  popularity,  appearing  in  behalf  of  the  prisoner, 
and  representing,  contrary  to  the  most  undoubted  facts,  that  there  had  never 
been  any  regular  government  in  Albemarle,  and  that  its  disorders  were  mere 
feuds  betweeen  the  planters,  which  at  worst  could  amount  to  no  higher  of- 
fence than  a  riot,  easily  prevailed  with  the  jury  to  return  a  verdict  of  ac- 
quittal.»  [1680.]     This  Avas  the  last  transaction  by  which  Shaftesbury  sig- 
nalized his  participation  in  the  government  or  affairs  of  Carolina.     His 
attention,  thenceforward,  was  absorbed  by  the  deep  and  daring  cabals  that 
preceded  his  exile  ;  and,  about  three  years  afterwards,  having    ruined  or 
dishonored  every  party  with  which  he  had  been  connected,  he  was  obliged  to 
fly  from  England,  and  implore  the  hospitality  and  protection  of  the  Dutch, 
whom  he  had  formerly  exhorted  the  English  parliament  to  extirpate  from  the 
face  of  the  earth.     The  ruin  of  this  ablest  of  the  proprietaries  extended  its 
influence  to  the  fortunes  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  landgraves.   Locke 
had  been  so  intimately  connected  with  Shaftesbury,  that  he  deemed  it  pni- 
dent  to  retire  from  England  at  the  same  time  ;  but  so  remote  was  he  from 
any  accession  to  the  guilt  of  his  patron,  that,  when  William  Penn  afterwards 
prevailed  on  James  the  Second  to  consent  to  the  pardon  and  recall  of  Locke, 
the  philosopher  refused  to  accept  a  pardon,  declaring  that  he  had  done 
nothing  that  required  it." 

Meanwhile,  the  palatine,  and  the  majority  of  the  proprietaries,  reduced 
to  their  former  perplexity  by  the  acquittal  of  Culpepper,  pursued  a  tempo- 
rizing policy,  that  degraded  their  own  authority,  and  cherished  the  factions 
and  ferments  of  the  colony.     Fluctuating  between  their  resentments  and 


■  LtfeoflMcke.    Clurkson's  Lift  of  Penn. 


.  D <. 


CHAP.  1}       TEMPORIZING  POLICY  OF  THE  PROPRIETARIES.  3^7 

their  apprehensions,  they  alternately  threatened  the  insurgents  and  re- 
proached  the.r  own  partisans.  The  inevitable  consequence  of  this  polic^ 
was  to  exasperate  st.U  farther  all  parties  in  the  colony  against  each  oTi 
Without  attaching  any  to  the  propri'etaries,  who  very  soon  Sovered  Sat  h 
was  no  longer  in  their  power  either  to  overawe  their  mutinous  subiectsbv 
vigor,  or  to  cone    ate  them  bv  lenitv    rifisi    '*"\'""""°".s  suDiects  by 

hfless  attempt  to  vindicat^tELSJl'Io  ityf^^^^^^^^^^^ 
adopted  the  humbler  purpose  of  accommodating  aiiSensons  Ind  the 
strain  of  their  government  in  future  to  whateve?  degree  of  obeSLnce  the 
colonists  might  be  disposed  to  yield  them  Having  o!.„v,i-  u  "" ^"'^"^^  '"^ 
administration  at  the  h^ad  of  wS  t^  p&„r£f;y'a:  pS7 
they  announced  immediately  after,  their  intention  to  send  o^  S  r^rmanent 
governor  Seth  Sothel,  who  had  purchased  Lord  Clarendon's  shar^Tf  the 
province  and  whose  interest  and  authority  they  hoped  would  effectuallv 
conduce  to  the  restoration  of  order  and  tranquillity.  ^  But  these  measur^ 
were  productive  only  of  additional  disappointment.^  Little  regard  TasS 
to  the  rule  of  Harvey  by  men  who  were  already  apprized  thaThis  govern- 

Slrn?  hi  '''^"-  "  '^°"  ^"'■^"°"  '  ^"•^  ^he  proprietaries,  along  S  the 
tidings  of  his  inefficiency,  received  intelligence  of  the  can  ure  of^nth!S 
on  his  voyage  by  the  Algerines.  Undfsmayed  by  so  ^y  di  appoint 
ments,  the  proprietaries,  now  resolutely  embracing  a  mild  and  Lcommodl 
ing  policy,  pursued  it  with  commendable  perseverance  ;  and  Henry  wSkin 
son,  a  man  from  whose  prudence  more  happy  results  were  expected  wa, 
appointed  governor  of  the  whole  of  that  porUon  of  Carolina  sSngfr7m 
Virginia  to  the  river  Pamlico,  and  five  miles  beyond  it.     The  most  e^^^^^^^^ 

mg  disorders,  lo  the  governor  and  council  they  recommended  in  ner- 
su  sive  language  the  promotion  and  exemplification  of  forbearance  and  L- 
dulgence;  and,  ,n  compliance  with  their  desire,  an  act  of  ow'vlon  was 
passed  by  the  assen  .ly  of  Albemarle  in  favor  of  the  late  insurgems  on 
condition  of  their  restoring  the  money  of  which  they  had  plundered'  the 
provincial  treasury.    But  it  was  found  easier  to  inculcate  the  virtue  of  mod! 

Se"dit.tdXt."'°  '^'  "^T'  ^'^^"S,  than  on  XsTwho  had 
mflicted  It ,  and  the  late  insurgents,  who  were  still  the  stronger,  or  at  least 

rfT"tX7rJSrt"°H'"'°"'"^*  °"'y  ^'^"^^'"-^  t'he'crditb^' 

01  an  act  which  they  felt  to  be  quite  unnecessary  to  their  security,  but  ac- 

nTbliSfce'ToTnl"^^^^  T"'?^,l  T^^^^^'  ^^'^h  triumphant insoin'e 
h    St  rk   to  nrT'/"^  punish  the  party  which  had  so  far  mistaken 

IS  fi  A  ^  °^^.''  ^°™'  °^  P''"*^^"  «"d  indulgence  to  them.     They 

'-     heltln'^rri"'"^^^^^  opponent!,  who  were  forced    S 

:Zt  ."""^V  ^"^f"^'  a"d  w'th  whom  every  trace  of  justice  and  freedom 
took  a  long  leave  of  the  unhappy  settlement.  •' 

1  he  miserable  scene  of  violence  and  anarchy  that  ensued  was  not  abridged 

f  SctilJl  n?r^'""  ""■  ^'^'""'•'^  '"  ^"^  ^-^Sree  meliorated,  by  the  arrival 
of  bethel  as  go^^rnor,  m  the  year  1G83.  The  character,  at  once  odious  and 
despicable,  ol  th^  unprincipled  man  disclosed  itself  in  th^  very  ouSet  of  his 

lomnn^pJ   f  1  ^°"^''^'-"ed  m  the  late  disorders  ;  to  establish  a  court, 

d  e^of  wrnn^  ^''°«t  ^Pectable  and  impartial  of  the  inhabitants,  for  the  re: 

-.j_..r.„. .,.  ,n^  .,u=tuii,3  u,  coilecung  the  royal  revenue  and  executing 


I 


568 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[ROOK  IV. 


the  Acts  of  Navigation,  —  he  declined  to  comply  with  any  of  tliese  man- 
dates ;  and,  seeking  only  his  own  immediate  enrichment,  disregarded  equal- 
ly the  happiness  of  the  people,  the  interest  of  his  colleagues,  and  the  deep 
stake   which  he  himself  possessed   in  the  lasting  welfare  of  the  colony. 
Newly  escaped  from  captivity  on  the  coast  of  Barbary,  he  was  ao  far  froni 
acquiring  an  increase  of  humanity  or  a  stronger  sense  of  equity  from  the 
experience  of  hardship  and  injustice,  that  he  seemed  to  have  adopted  the 
policy  of  his  late  captors  as  the  model  of  his  own  government ;  nor  have 
the  annals  of  colonial  oppression  recorded  a  name  that  deserves  to  be 
transmitted  to  posterity  with  greater  infamy  than  his.     Rapacity,  cruelty 
and  fraud,  formed  the  prominent  traits  of  his  official  conduct,  which,  aiter 
afflictbg  the  <;olony  for  a  period  of  five  years,  finally  3xhausted  the  patience 
of  all  parties,  and  produced  at  least  one  good  effect,  in  uniting  the  divided 
people  by  a  sense  of  common  suffering  and  danger.     Driven  to  despair 
the  inhabitants  universally  took  arms  against  his  government  in  1688,  and 
having  deposed  and  imprisoned  him,  were  preparing  to  send  him  to  Eng- 
land for  trial,  when,  descending  to  the  most  abject  supplications,  he  entreat- 
ed to  be  judged  rather  by  the  provincial  assembly,  whose  sentence  he 
declared  himself  willing  to  abide.     If  the  colonists,  in  granting  this  request 
arrogated  a  power  that  did  not  constitutionally  belong  to  them,  they  exercised 
it  with  a  moderation  that  reflects  honor  on  themselves,  and  aggravates  the 
guilt  of  their  tyrannical  governor.     The  assembly  declared  him  gpilty  of  ail 
the  crimes  laid  to  h^s  charge,  and  sentenced  him  to  a  year's  banishment  and 
perpetual  exclusion  from  office.     When  the  proprietaries  received  intelli- 
gence of  these  transactions,  they  deemed  it  proper  to  signify  some  disap- 
Erobation  of  the  irregular  justice  of  the  colonists  ;  but  they  expressed  a  live- 
j  concern  for  their  sufferings,  and  great  astonishment  and  indignation  at  the 
eonduct  of  Sothel.     They  summoned  him  still  to  answer  for  his  crimes  be- 
fore the  palatine's  court  in  England  ;  and  they  protested,  that,  if  their  people 
would  render  a  dutiful  obedience  to  legal  authority,  no  governor  should  in 
fiiture  be  suffered  to  enrich  himself  with  their  spoils.'     Such  was  the  con- 
dition to  which  North  Carolina  was  reduced  at  the  epoch  of  the  British 
Revolution. 

'  Williamson.  Chalmers.  Hewit.  Ilewit  haa  related  tliese  proc«edin|(s  against  Sothel 
w  having  occurred  in  South  Carolina.  Nor  is  this  thu  only  error  with  which  he  is  charge- 
able. He  perpetually  combines  events  that  are  totally  unconnected.  His  notation  of  date« 
is  extremely  scanty,  and  sornet.mes  very  inaccurate.  While  he  abstains  from  the  difficult 
tuk  of  relating  the  history  of  North  Carolina,  he  selects  the  most  interesting  features  of  iti 
•anals,  and  transfers  them  to  the  history  of  the  southern  province.  His  errors,  though  hardly 
honest,  were  probably  not  the  fruit  of  deliberate  misrepresentation.  Almost  all  the  prior  his- 
torians of  America  have  been  betrayed  into  similar  inaccuracies  with  respect  to  the  province! 
of  Carolina.  Even  that  laborious  aiid  generally  accurate  writer,  Jedediah  Moise,  has  been  ao 
fiur  misled  by  defective  materials  as  to  assert  (^Amtritan  Gazelleer)  that  the  first  pennanent 
■ettle:^ent  in  North  Carolina  was  formed  by  certain  German  refugees  in  1710. 


CHAP.  II.] 


ADMINISTRATION  OF  WEST. 


369 


Affairs  of  South  Carolina. 


CHAPTER   II. 


nairs  oi  aoatti  Carolina  —  Iii/1!.„  «r  „ 

fromlreland  — Scotland  — and  F^^"j~'i?''*'«=«  o'' kidnapping  Indians       V    ■       ■ 
tion  of  French  Protestants  L  r*^-"*^' ~J^'™t««  «ntertainT"n  th^  r„ln7        r"^"°' 
Progress  of  Disconten    "n  the  ^T^'""— D'sputes  created  by  the  NavS^^""!™'^"- 
of  the  Proprietaries  to  re"  tore  &der"^-^®*''''1^   "«"'P«  t^e  LverrimeT    ^n^'^'-" 

Intolerant  Measnrero^ffhTj^oSS^-sla^ote^^^^^ 

which'ui'rg^^etj;;^;^]^  province  of  Carolina, 

dency  in  1674  we  have  already  remX^  •'  5°'^  elevation  to  its  presi' 
prosperity  than  fell  to  the  To^^X telSf^?  A^'  T^'^^  «h«'«  °f 
ernor  has  been  celebrated  for  h;<:  V.!.  °^°'  Albemarle.     This  eov- 

the  state  of  the  province  over  which  hTfr^  ^'1°"'  ^"^  "moderation  ;  ^and 
exercise  of  these  oualities.     sloS^  svnfototf  f^""''*  T^^^  «^0P«  ^o  the 
like  began  to  manifest  themselvos  beS  Z  D"  ""!"'^  J"'^°"^:^  «"d  dis- 
the  one  hand,  who  were  the  niost  n,  ml!         ^'^^enters  and  Puritans,  on 
Cavaliers  and  Episcopalians,Tn  hrSrwEr  '"  ?'  ^°1°">''  ^^^  ^^e 
prietanes  m  the  distribution  if  land  nnH  nf'  ''J°.T''«  ^^vored  by  the  pro- 
and  although  the  firmness  L  prudence  ,/ W^^^^^^^  Power  and  eiiolum^nt ; 
those  parties  from  ripening  into  S  and  .nV"- "^^"'^^  '^^  ^'''^'>'^  ^^ 
power  to  eradicate  the  evil,  or  to  re  tSnJ^  confusion,  it  was  beyond  his 
posed  of  the  leading  Caval  ^rs  from  tll^?       u'"^  ^?""^'^'  ^^'^^  was  com! 
contempt      The  Cavalier  pa  fyw™  reTnS^d'f^Tj  ^"'^  '"^^^^^^^  ^^ 
debauched  habits  and  brokVn  Vracte   «nH  r^  .  ^       *^''  P^'^^"^  ^^o™ 
province,  not  for  a  cure  but  a  sheler  of  their  v""'     ^^.  '°u"^"^*^'^  ^^  the 
austere  manners  of  the  Puritans  whh  1  m    rT?.'  '"^  ^^°  '^^^'^^^  'be 
tertained  for  their  political  prfnc  Is      Th     '  f"^'^'-^'  '^'  ^*^^'«»-«  ««" 
nding  that  it  was  ^n  their  pS^To  shock  an7T'^  *?  *^^  P""^^"^' 
behaviour  opposed  to  their  own,  affected  an  oZr       '"r  '^^"^  ^^  ^  ^°^'^ 
cense.     Each  party,  considering  iirmnn  'T^  °^  Sa/  and  jovial  li- 

emulously  exaggeraiid  the  dis^c  ve  fit  ''  V^^  '^''  °^"«  P""C'Ples, 
our;  and  an  osTentatious  comSrentT^^^^^  °1-'k  r^oP^'ate  demean! 
countenance  and  encoura^Z^nt  ?  •  ' '"  ^^'''^  ^^^  ''"'"ig  Party  gave 

•0  the  prevalence  of  iS'rand  the^:"'--  '"^^'^"^  very^unfa^orS^ 
tanes,  whose  imprudence  hTdoecasioneff'tr"  ^  '^'•'^'^-  ^^'  P'^P"-' 
sufferers  from  them,  and  found  anZ^-rpfrf'"  "^'""^l?"''  ^^^''^  ^^-^  ^rst 
ment  of  the  large  advances  which  th.  I  !i  "",  ""^^^'^'ng  to  obtain  repay- 
colonists,  who  had  undertaSlo  nT  ft  "^'^'n^'"  '^^  «"^«lement.  The 
pounds  a  year,  allottertoXtth^PYpr^^  small  salary  of  one  hundred 
ischarge  even  this  obligation  ind  £  "°'-'  P'-^.^'^d  "»«ble  or  unwilling  to 
April,  ,1677,  to  assign  fo  hTm'  he  loirrfT /^-""^  "  "^^^^^^X'  '" 
debts  in  Carolina,  in  recomnlse  of  F^  •      °^'^".  '"^''^^handises  and 

expenditure.     MeanwhileThe  ponulatfon  172""  ""^-  ^^'"^bursement  of  his        - 
able  accessions  from  the  conffi  r^l  .  ^/ ^'"^JT^  '"^^^•^^'^  <^0"«ider- 

vo.    ,:  -"  ^^'"'"S  '^  S^-^^  t^«  proprietaries,  and-hc^iing,^!^^^;^ 


370 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


divert  the  tide  of  emigration  from  Massachusetts,  ordered  two  small  ves- 
sels to  be  provided,  at  his  own  expense,  for  the  conveyance  of  a  band  of 
foreign  Protestants  to  Carolina,  who  proposed  to  add  wine,  oil,  and  silk 
to  the  other  produce  of  the  territory  ;  and  he  granted  to  the  colonists  an 
exemption  for  a  limited  time  from  the  payment  of  taxes  on  these  commodi- 
ties, in  spite  of  a  remonstrance  from  the  commissioners  6f  customs,  who 
insisted  that  England  would  be  ruined  and  depopulated  if  the  colonies  were 
rendered  a  more  desirable  residence.  Although  the  nevy  colonists  were  not 
able  to  enrich  the  province  with  the  valuable  commodities  which  they  had 
hoped  to  introduce,  they  preserved  their  settlement  in  it,  and  formed  a 
useful  and  respectable  addition  to  its  population.  The  proprietaries  having 
learned  that  the  agreeable  district  called  Oyster  Point,  formed  by  the  con- 
fluence of  the  rivers  Ashley  and  Cooper,  enjoyed  greater  conveniences 
than  the  station  which  the  first  settlers  had  chosen,  encouraged  the  incli- 
nation of  the  people,  who  began  to  remove  thither  about  this  time  ;  and 
there,  in  1680,  was  laid  the  foundation  of  the  modern  Charleston,  a  city, 
which,  in  the  next  century,  was  noted  for  the  elegance  of  its  streets,  the 
extent  of  its  commerce,  and  the  refinement  of  its  society.  It  was  forthwith 
declared  the  seaport  and  the  metropolis  of  South  Carolina.  For  some 
time  it  proved  extremely  unhealthful  ;  insomuch  that  from  the  month  of 
June  till  October  the  courts  of  justice  were  annually  shut ;  and  during  that 
interval  no  public  business  was  transacted,  and  the  principal  inhabitants  re- 
tired to  a  distance  from  the  pestilential  vapors  with  which  the  atmosphere 
was  tainted.  The  inconvenience  at  length  was  found  to  be  so  great,  that 
measures  were  taken  for  exploring  and  appropriating  another  metropolitan 
situation  more  friendly  to  heahh.  But  happily  (in  consequence,  it  has  been 
supposed,  of  the  purification  of  the  noxious  vapor  by  the  smoke  of  nu- 
merous culinary  fires)  the  climate  underwent  a  gradual  change,  which  has 
progressively  diminished  the  insalubrity  of  Charleston.*  The  lapse  of  time, 
moreover,  contributed  to  render  the  place  less  unhealthy  to  its  inhabitants, 
by  attempering  their  constitutions  to  the  pecuhar  qualities  of  its  climate. 

Notwithstanding  the  earnest  desire  of  the  proprietaries  that  the  colonists 
should  cultivate  the  good-will  of  the  Indians,  a  war  that  proved  very  detri- 
mental to  the  settlement  broke  out,  in  the  year  1680,  with  a  powerful  tribe 
that  inhabited  the  southern  frontier.  The  war  seems  to  have  originated 
partly  from  the  insolence  with  which  some  idle  and  licentious  planters  be- 
haved to  the  Indians,  and  partly  from  the  depredations  of  straggling  parties 
of  Indians,  who,  being  accustomed  to  the  practice  of  killing  whatever  ani- 
mals they  found  at  large,  accounted  the  planters'  hogs,  turkeys,  and  geese 
lawful  game,  and  freely  preyed  upon  them.  The  planters  as  freely  made 
use  of  their  arms  in  defence  of  their  property  ;  and  several  Indians  having 
been  killed,  the  vengeance  of  their  kindred  tribe  burst  forth  abruptly  in 
general  hostilities,  which  for  some  time  threatened  the  most  serious  conse- 
quences to  the  colony.  So  divided  were  the  colonists  among  iheniselves, 
that  the  governor  found  it  difficult  to  unite  them  in  measures  requisite  even 
for  their  common  safety,  or  to  persuade  any  one  to  undertake  an  effort  that 
did  not  promise  to  be  attended  with  advantage  immediately  and  exclusively 
his  own.  Conforming  his  policy  to  the  selfish  strain  of  their  character,  he 
offered  a  price  for  every  Indian  who  should  be  taken  prisoner  and  brought 
to  Charleston  ;  and  obtained  the  requisite  funds  by  disposing  of  the  captives 

'  i^Oldmison.    Hewit.    Chalmers. 


CHAP,  ir.] 


SALE  OF  INDIANS  INTO  SLAVERY. 


to  the  traders  who  frequented  tho  «  i  .  ^^' 

the  West  Indies.     ThH;   eVts  tS  7^  "r°  '°^^  '^^"^  ^°^  ^'^^es  in 
enterprises  so  agreeable  to^he  temper^and  hilt     /°  "'"'u  P''^^^'  «"d  o? 
ers,  that  the  war  was  carried  on3.   "        i  ''  °^  ^  number  of  the  plant- 
ment  to  dictate  a  treaty  of  !"«  whh  tK'.' '"'  '°°"  ^"'''b'^d  the  govern- 
s.nn|  that  this  pacification  Cd     Ue  on  ??•  /^^^^  P^oprietarfes,  de- 
[1681],  appointed  commissioners  who  w.."        ''""^  and  ^q^'^able  basis 
ture  controversies  between  the  conllnHin?     ^'?'P°^«red  to  decide  all  fu- 
the  tnbes  within  four  hundrfd  miCof  ChaK'''  '  '"^  ^''^'''^^  »h«t  all 
protection.    But  the  practices  thThad  beenttrtd"  'T.  ""^^^^  '^^'•-  «P«^'«I 
too  firmly  established  to  be  thus  ZJ'^    '"  '^°^"«ed  during  the  war  were 
nists  found  it  a  more  profitable  a    wpI^  "'"''''''' •'^-     ^^'"^  °^  '^^  ^oU^' 
traffic  m  the  persons  of^t  Indians   thn'l'^T '"^rr^^^^^P^^-"^^^ 
ground  ;  and  not  only  the  DrincinTLV  if-?        ''^^''  ^^^  fo'-ests  or  till  the 
ment,  fomented  the  spirft  o^^  Sri  tt  o-^'-'l  ^"'  '^'  "^^^'"^  ^^  goverS! 
and  promoted  their  mutu.l  waS  for  tt    P'^^^'^^^^ /mong  the  savage  tribes 
ketable  stock  of  slaves,  iy7uXinetf."'^-''  ^'^  ^"^^^S'"S  their  Ln  mar! 
was  m  vain  that  the  governor  and  "^/^^•r'°""''^  '^^"^  their  captors,     ft 
system  of  intrigue  and^erfidy   that  bv  d;'^  T''T^^  '"  justification  o    this 
and  prompting  them  to  expend  thdrfor^-"^  the  attention  of  the  tribe 
the  most  effectual  security  trthe  coLra.a  ns^th  "-'^  ^°'?'''^^'  '^  ^^orded 
mamty  sanctioned  the  purchase  of  prroLrs  who  t'^f^f^'  '•  ^"^  '^''  hu- 
put  to  death      The  proprietaries  w^erTbv  no  mp»       "^  °?'/^'^^  ^^"^^  been 
sons ;  and,  firmly  persuaded  that  Twas  a  sord^drhl'f  r''^"^  -^"^  '^''^  ''^^ 
not  a  generous  concern  for  the  puwfc  safetv  ll/'''  ^or  Private  gain,  and 
unhallowed  and  ignoble,  they  ceased  not  n^'         f"S«"dered  a  policy  so 
for  .ts  entire  abandonment.     But  thpl  h        '''V«  ^he  strongest  injunctins 
vjailing;  and  it  was  not     11  afte    the  .h"""'"^  interference  was  4g  una 
t  at  they  were  able  to  proL  e  the  elc[S  '''^'T''''''  ^"^  "^«"«"es 
atlength  utterly  prohibit: this  proflTgara„d  dtri  \Y  ^o  regulate,  and 
tmuance  was  attended  with  consequeLeA Ji?  '"'^^"L-P'^^''^^'     Its  con- 
•njunous.     The  traders  who  carr  ed  thr^«n       '"^'^^^tely  and  lastingly 
ported  rum  in  exchange  for  th7m     and\!! ^'^ -'"'  l^''  ^^^^  Indies  im- 
excess  ,n  this  beveragi  depraved  rh-  destructive  habit  of  indulging  to 

many  of  the  colonists^  A  d^  and  tZTr  "rr*^  ''^^""'^  '^'  induft?|of 
and  the  victims  of  their  in^^fti  efv^ch  thet' ""'r^'™'^  ^'^"^^"  '^«™ 
fle.to  allay  ;  and  at  a  subsequen^nrriod  rl  .  T  F^  "^  J^'"^  ^^«^«  ^^'^s  una- 
but-on  on  the  posterity  of  threvhoT,d  t.  .'.'"'  't"''^  ^  ^«^«^«  retri- 
'  GovV  '"^W"'  '^'""'^  of  their  f^rodty  I  "  '^''  '"'^'°^^  °^  ^^eir  wrongs 
follovvin7year  [7682?- then' T'"''"'"'  ''  Charleston,  in  the  close  of  the 
which  the  late  lar  had  shown  0'^:""'  '"'^'^^  ^''  establishing  a^nili?a 
Jevast  forest  that  surrounded  the  ca"^^^^^^^^^ 

drunkenness  and  profanitv    an?  ItL.  P^^'  °"  ^^^'y  «'de  ;  for  repressing 
people,  who  were^generafc  d"  -.^^e  ^^'th   ^''"""^'"f  ^^«  "'-^'-'lity^f   h^ 
Shortly  after  this  legislativl  V       .«   w-t      '^'"?  of  religious  instruction, 
-re  of  the  proprietarL  by  supnortini  tbl  n'  '".•''  H^  T''"^'^  ^he  displeas- 
"nd  by  curbing,  the  excLef  oht  te^'' ""f ''"'"^  Indian  ca^^^^^^ 
proprietary  party,  was  removed  from  Sr''"'"''  ^1^°  "vere  accounted  the 
!i— ^U^olony^was  collided  b^^^S.^^^^l^Ji^  ^ov- 


of  Carolina.    Oldtpixon.    Hew 


It    C(ia]rQec9 


372 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


who  had  been  recently  created  a  landgrave  of  Carolina.  This  was  the 
commencement  of  a  course  of  rapid  succession  of  governors  and  of  all 
the  other  public  officers  in  the  colony  ;  a  system  arising  partly  from  unex- 
pected casualties,  and  partly  from  unstable  policy,  and  which  produced  its 
never-failing  consequences,  in  the  enfeeblement  and  degradation  of  the  gov- 
ernment, and  the  promotion  of  party  spirit  and  cabals.  But  however  much 
the  policy  of  the  proprietaries  might  fluctuate  in  other  respects,  it  continued 
long  to  be  steadily  and  strenuously  directed  to  the  increase  of  population. 
At  the  desire  of  several  wealthy  persons,  who  proposed  to  emigrate  to  the 
province,  they  once  more  revised  their  Fundamental  Constitutions,  which, 
at  the  time  of  their  first  publication,  were  declared  unalterable  ;  now  again 
promulgating  a  similar  declaration  of  their  future  inviolability.  The  object 
of  the  present  alterations  was  to  relax  somewhat  in  favor  of  popular  liberty 
the  rigor  of  the  original  constitutions  ;  but  it  is  the  less  necessary  to  par- 
ticularize them,  as  they  were  never  acknowledged  or  accepted  by  the  peo- 
ple of  Carolina,  who  were  more  jealous  of  the  power  assumed  to  introduce 
such  changes,  than  gratiCed  with  the  particular  advantages  immediately  ten- 
dered  to  their  acceptance.  i  •        . 

The  alterations,  notwithstanding,  proving  satisfactory  to  the  parties  who 
had  solicited  them,  one  Ferguson  shortly  after  conducted  to  the  province  an 
emigration  from  Ireland,  which  soon  mingled  with  the  mass  of  the  provincial 
inhabitants.  Lord  Cardross  (afterwards  Earl  of  Buchan),  a  Scot^sh  noble- 
man, also  led  out  a  colony  from  his  native  country  i  (then  groaning  under 
the  barbarous  administration  of  the  Duke  of  Lauderdale),  which  settled 
on  Port  Royal  Island,  and,  in  pursuance  of  some  agreement  or  under- 
standing with  the  proprietaries,  claimed  for  itself  coordinate  authority  with 
the  governor  and  grand  council  of  Charleston.  This  claim,  however,  was 
disaUowed  by  the  provincial  government ;  and  the  new  occupants  of  Port 
Royal  having  been  compelled  to  acknowledge  submission,  Lord  Cardross, 
whether  disappointed  with  this  result,  or  satisfied  with  what  he  had  already 
accomplished,  forsook  the  colony  and  returned  to  Britain.  Ihe  settlers 
whom  he  left  behind  were  some  time  after  dislodged  from  their  advan- 
tageous situation  by  a  force  despatched  against  them  by  the  Spaniards  at 
Augustine,  whom  they  had  wantonly  provoked  by  inciting  the  Indians  to 
make  an  irruption  into  the  Spanish  territory.  But  the  most  valuable  addi- 
tion to  its  population,  which  the  colony  now  received,  was  supplied  by  the 
emigration  of  a  considerable  number  of  pious  and  respectable  Dissenters 
from  Somersetshire  in  England.  This  band  of  emigrants  was  conducted 
by  Humphrev  Blake,  the  brother  and  heir  of  the  renowned  Admiral  Ulake, 
under  whom"  he  had  served  for  some  time  in  the  English  navy,  and  by 
whom  he  was  cashiered  for  deficiency  of  talent  and  spirit  as  a  naval  officer. 
Though  constitutionally  disqualified  to  excel  as  a  warrior,  Humphrey  Blake 
was  a  worthy,  conscientious,  and  liberal  man  ;  and  willingly  devoted  the 
moderate  fortune  bequeathed  to  him  by  his  disinterested  brother  to  facili- 
tate the  retirement  of  a  number  of  Dissenters,  with  whom  he  was  connected, 
from  the  persecutions  thoy  endured  in  England,  andjhe_greater^alamities 

"T-onHT^^^^'^iiidiMnVrt^  of  a  transaction  wliicli  oociirred  in  tlw  preceding  year,  and 
which  i«  Thus  Sled  by  Hume  :  -"  The  Pre»byU.r.ans  (of  Scolland)  alarmed  with  Kuch 
ymnny,  from  Sich  no  man  could  deem  himself  safe,  bcgnn  to  think  of  feav.nj?  the  co.mUy , 
iKLoJ  their  ««ent.  were  nonX  to  England  in  order  to  tr««t  w.th  the  propne™  C  • 
olin.  for  a  aettlemenl  in  lh«t  colony.  Any  condition  Beemed  preferable  to  their  living  m  \^^ 
n.!!tive  country,  xvhich,  by  the  prevaleocv  of  persecution  apd  violence,  WM  become  as  inse- 
cure  to  then)  w  9  den  of  robberu, ' 


CHAP.  II.] 


DISCORDS  IN  SOUTH  CAROLINA. 


373 


they  apprehended  from  the  nmhoKio  «         •        -   , 

throne,     l^everal  othS  persons  S-r'''°"  °^  ^^''  ^"'^^  °^  ^ork  to  the 
joined  the  expedition;  Slvft  «"^.  ^P^^  -b^^ant 

strengthen  the  hands  of  the  PuWtan  or  Lk        "^'"^  ?^"'^"  contributed  to 
counteract  the  influence  of  cifcumstanc.r    ?  ^'"1/"  '^^  ^°'"">^'  «nd  to 
manners  of  the  planters.     Fro^threxer  !-  '  r'''"^^^"  '°  '^'  ^^^'^^'^'  and 
conduion  of  England  at  the  prTsem  nerioH   t^^  the  proprietaries,  and  the 
lina  would  have  received  a  much  larJpr  «  '     "-^  ''  ^'"'"  ^""^t  that  Caro- 
recent  colonization  of  Penns^vanii  S  noTor^" /°. ''^  '"^^^'^«"^^'  '''  ^^e 
erally  attractive  to  mankind.     'rheliberah?v  7w\f  'V'^'^"™  "'^^^  S^"- 
the  friendly  sentiments  with  which    he  JnHJnn  ^;"'«"\ Venn's  institutions, 
pacific  demeanour,  the  greater  salubrifv  ^"'^'^"^'•^'"rned  his  courteous  and 
superior  adaptatio.;  of  it's  so"  to  the  Ll  itaL'^of  R -^^""^^'^-'^'  -d 
recommended  this  province  to  the  prefere^^^^^  British  grain,  stronglv 

tudes  resorted  to  it,  both  from  ESnTand  ^r'^.. "'' '  '"'^  ^"^^  ^^'^ 
as  soon  enabled  it  to  outstrin  th^iA  ,       ^^^^^  states  of  Eurone 

wealth  and  in  population  ?^  '^'  ''^^''  ^^"'^•^^"t  of  Carolina   both^f^ 

seijTa'^i:'^ C^;^^^^^^^^  V°hict  :?''  f  ^r--'  ^^--on  as- 
tions  for  the  remedy  of  sundrv  In  'n  •  Promulgated  a  variety  of  regula- 
ments  are  liable  in  [heir  LTan^y  ""Cm  T  ifw  T!"'""  ^"  ^°''"'^»  -"'- 
raising  the  value  of  foreign  coins  we  Zv  dntth        ^''  "^  ^"^^^ed  for 

currency  of  Carolina,  which  subsequenTl7inc,LH'  °"^'"  °^  '^"  ^"'"^^^'^ 
In  imitation  of  the  early  policy  of  thi.  "^  an  extreme  depreciation. 

cutions  for  foreign  debtsVerelspVntd  ™S^^^  P-- 

approvmg  a  policy  which  had  forSv  obt^li  fh^^'^^""'"'''"'' "°^  dis- 
escence,  interposed  to  annul  this  orX^r  ?  ?'^.*^^'':  °^"  express  acqui- 
to  the  king's  honor,  since  it  ob  tructd  ^V^^^^^^  ^^^^  ^Wnt 

provincial  parliament  had  no  power  rfrairr  °^  •?"''''.'  ^"^  '^ai  the 
jurisprudence  of  England  ;  and  the  more  spnlr!  '°  '"?0"sistent  with  the 
ure,  they  commanded  that^veVpubTc  officer  uL.'".'"'^'^'  '^'''  ^'^P'^^^" 
noxious  proposition  should  be  cashiered  A  nith  ^'"^  '"PP°"^^  ^^e  ob- 
t«'een  the  proprietaries  and  their  people  tose  from  rh  ''"''  "^-^'^P"^^  '^^■ 
parliament  was  constituted.  The  provhirp  i??v.  ^  ""'""^^ '"  ^^'^'^h  this 
vided  into  the  three  counties  of  BerkeTevc''^"  f-'Tl  '''"^'  ''^'  ^i- 
forrnerly  called  Clarendon),  and  Colletmf'  Tl!""  ^'"'^^^^'"S  ^he  district 
that,  of  the  twenty  members  of  whom  the  In  J  I  P^°P"f  a^ies  directed, 
composed,  ten  should  be  elected  by7ac    of  t^t   °"'^  ^^^ 

and  Colleton  ;  the  third  being  recLnednL^'° -''•"'  °^  ^''^'^'y 
merit  a  share  of  parliamentar^  representation  ^V^f'^'^'l  P°P"^°"«  to 
the  metropolis,  was  the  only  one  of  the  coZ-  ^^u^'^'  ""^''^  '°"'^'"ed 
machinery  and  accommodation  of  a  coun^von  .  ^''^.  ""'J^'  P^^^^^^^d  the 
ernment  having  appointed  the  election  t"^.  t"'  '  '"^  '^^  provincial  gov- 
habitants  of  Berkdey  combined  trni  .i^''"" '^  ^^'^"-^^^^  the^n- 
voting  at  all,  and  themse?v^s  returned^  hrV'^  P'°P^"  ^^  C°"«ton  from 
insisted  that  this  advantage  was  Sue  to  their  o'  '^''"^^  "?^"^^^^^-  '^^^Y 
people,  -  a  circumstancf  whLh  at  least  ennK?Ti"P'"°^"^  '"  ""'"bar  of 
tension  it  suggested.  ^"^^^^^  ^^^m  to  indulge  the  pre- 

■^^S£^-S^&^:;P^-p^!S^^^:^'^^'-^  of  d,eir  ,-„3,r„e. 

maanrfMe  Caro/z^r   /"v,.  fe..^''«.'"l«'-«-.    Warden's  Poi.;;ia/^^^-^,7:r-T77r— y^ 

c„,  /■j7f^.,rff«  ana  tuiet^t,  Vol.  II.         '  -"«.-  ^  l  ennsyiva 


374 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


tions,  they  expressed  the  strongest  displeasure,  and  commanded  that  the 
parhament  should  be  immediately  dissolved,  and  never  again  assembled  in  so 
irregular  a  manner.  But  their  commands  were  unavailing ;  and  the  unjust 
encroachment  of  the  Berkeley  planters,  after  maintaining  its  ground  for  some 
lime,  obtained  the  countenance  and  assent  of  the  proprietaries  themselves, 
and  continued  to  prevail,  till,  at  a  later  period,  its  abettors  were  compelled 
to  yield  to  the  indignant  and  unanimous  complaint  of  the  people  whom 
they  had  presumed  to  disfranchise.  The  proprietaries,  meanwhile,  we.s 
exceedingly  offended  at  the  reiterated  disobedience  of  their  deputies,  and 
in  a  remonstrance  which  they  addressed  to  the  governor  and  council,  re- 
minded them,  in  language  which  at  least  expresses  good  intention,  "that 
the  power  of  magistracy  is  put  into  your  hands  for  the  good  of  the  people, 
who  ought  not  to  be  turned  into  prey,  as  we  doubt  hath  been  too  much 
practised."  It  was  remarked  that  the  dealers  in  Indian  slaves  were  the 
keenest  opponents  of  the  claim  of  Colleton  county  to  share  in  the  exercise 
of  the  elective  franchise; — a  coincidence  forcibly  demonstrating  that  the 
indulgence  of  selfishness  and  tyranny  in  any  one  relation  or  department  of 
conduct  tends  entirely  to  pervert  or  extinguish  in  men's  minds  the  sense  of 
what  is  due  to  their  fellows.  Although  the  proprietaries  at  times  express- 
ed themselves,  as  on  diis  last  occasion,  with  vigor  and  wisdom,  they  seern 
to  have  been  quite  incapacitated,  by  ignorance  or  irresolution,  from  con- 
ceiving or  pursuing  a  consistent  scheme  of  policy.  It  was  found  that  some 
of  the  counsellors,  and  even  the  commissioners  that  were  appointed  to  watch 
over  the  interests  of  the  Indians,  encouraged  the  traffic  in  Indian  slaves ; 
and  though  Moreton  was  able  to  remove  these  delinquents  from  office, 
they  succeeded  in  rendering  his  own  situation  so  disagreeable  to  him,  that 
he  was  constrained  to  resign  his  command,  which  was  immediately  con- 
ferred by  the  council  on  West,  who  suffered  the  people  to  continue  the 
practice  of  inveigling  and  kidnapping  the  Indians  without  restraint.  The 
proprietaries  then  intrusted  the  government  to  Sir  Richard  Kyrle,  an  Irish- 
man, who  died  soon  after  his  arrival  in  the  province.  West,  thereupon 
[1684],  was  again  chosen  interim  governor  by  the  council,  whose  ap- 
pointment, on  this  occasion,  received  the  acquiescence  of  the  proprietaries. 
But  he  was  shortly  after  superseded  by  Colonel  Quarry,  who  himself  re- 
tained the  office  only  till  the  following  year,  when,  in  consequence  of  the 
countenance  he  was  found  to  have  given  to  piracy,  he,  in  his  turn,  was 
dismissed  [1685],  and  Joseph  Moreton  reinstated  in  the  government.' 

The  American  seas  had  been  long  infested  by  a  race  of  daring  ad- 
venturers, privateers  in  time  of  war,  pirates  in  time  of  peace,  whose  martial 
exploits,  and  successful  depredations  on  the  rich  colonies  and  commerce 
of  Spain,  enabled  them  to  conciliate  the  regard  or  purchase  the  connivance 
of  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  British  colonies,  and  even  of  the  anthoii- 

'  Ofdinixon.  Hewlt  Chalmers.  FromliTdmixoirs  Lists,  it  nppears  that  Colont-l  Quarry 
Held  oflUnnl  situations  under  the  crown  in  several  of  the  provinces  ot  the  same  time.  In 
the  vear  1703,  ho  presented  to  the  Lords  of  Trade  a  memorial  on  the  state  of  the  Amcriran 
colonies,  which  is  preserved  among  the  Hiirhian  Colleetian,  in  the  British  Musriini.  The 
main  object  of  this  memorial  ia  to  recommend  an  alteration  of  the  colonial  constitutions,  fnr 
the  promotion  of  the  power  of  the  crown  in  the  several  States,  and  facilitating  the  gnncriil  ilc- 
R>nre  of  the  territorial  claims  and  possessions  of  England  in  America.  Quarry  expresses 
dislike  and  disapprobation  of  everv  colony  in  proportion  to  the  freedom  of  its  nnmicipai  con- 
stitution, and  dwells  with  emphatic  malignity  on  "the  robbery  and  villany  of  the  rulers  of 
Connecticut."  He  undertakes  to  prove  that  the  charter  of  Pennsylvania  conferred  no  nowers 
of  government.  He  eulogizes  Lord  Cornliury,  the  tyrannical  governor  of  New  York,  and 
stfonglj  recomniends  his  appointmont  to  the  command  of  Pennsylvania. 


CHAP.  II.] 


DEALINGS  WITH  THE  BUCCANEERS. 


376 


age  ;  aid  he  even  Jamed  ,t  ^°  'hen.  his  p'atS 

Henry  Morgan  a  Vel«hn.an,  w^  ^undSXn^^^^^^^^  "'.  t'"'  ""'"^^^' 
acquired  a  prodigious  booty  by  his  achievemlt^  °p?"  '""^  Panama,  and 
the  king  to  the  favorable  regards  of  I. uT  f  ^^^  recommended  by 

it  no  less  easy  than  advant^g  ts    o    lltTva^^/- ^^^^^  ^^"^ 

the  people  of  Carolina,  who^  wU  inl  o 'enld  th  ''"'''^  connection  with 
supphes  of  provisions  to  guests  whTiv^Kl  ^^^''P?'^^  and  furnished 
the  colony.  The  treaty  befween  End  nd  anJ  T""'  '^t  S^'^'^"  ^P"'^^  '" 
the  increasingly  lawless^haracter  Ke  llvl*^"'"  u  i^^^'  '""^^'^^^  ^^ith 
to  withdraw  his  protection  from  them  tlT''''  ^^^  *='"^^^  *«  king 
to  maintain,  and  even  extend  T.;!-T '  ^^^^  '^•'"^'n^ed,  nevertheless 

thorities  of  Carolina      Tirg^vtnor'T'""'''- ^'"^^^^  P'^"'«rs  and  au^ 
cipal  inhabitants,  degraded  tEve;  to  a^ffi'^'T ''^^"'r '  «"^  ^^^^  P""" 
by  abetting  the  crimes  of  Ses   and  ^mi    f  ''"^'  1^'^'^'"'  °^  "'unkind, 
acquisitions.     The  propriLa  Ls    Ci    Im^  ^^"''^.''''"S  their  nefariou 
disgraceful  to  the  province,  and  coSve  of  '1^''^  '^''"l'  P^«^^'^^«  «« 
tic.pated  in  them  /  and  the  r  orders  backed  hv        '"?""'''.  ^^  ''^  ""^^  par- 
prevailed  so  far  as  to  restrain  the  colonistffrnL  •  Pf  f  l^^^^^ion  from  the  king, 
had  entertained  of  sharing  in   he  entern  s^??  '"^IF""^  I"  ^^<^y^nation  they 
piratical  associates.     But  tLy  obSdvnersisTpl^  '''  u'-   ^ains  of  their 
course  with  these  adventurers,  _SHiffl-T  '"  '^"'  ^^°"'«d  ^nter- 

desire  of  sudden  wealth  and  he  relth  of  f^nll^'  ""?  '^''^  '^^  '"^^^^ious 
cctributed  to  the  formation  o?  1  ab£  pe  nici^^"'.'"^  '^^'"'^^^  P'^^^"^^' 
more  particularly  injurious  to  thp  nml^  1^^'^"'^'°"^.  '^  every  community,  bu 

of  thefe  habits  c'ontinued  longt  T  fsce  iiib  e"  Tl  "^  ""'^"^?-  t'^- 
itants  of  Carolina.     The  kins    at  Ipn^th  ",  u  ^  "?^""^'''  °^  'he  inhab- 

allies,  and  sensible  how  nuSf 'the  t lade  of  his"n'^  ^\^'  ^"'"P^^'"^^  °^  his 
piratical  ravages,  transmitted  to  the  o  ony,  TpHl'te  r /"J^^^  ^ 
pirates,"  which  the  proprietaries  rpn.,;.w  1. 1  "  ^r  '  ^^'  ^  ^^^  against 
lish,  and  their  execuLe^Sr;  s  r  c"  ;1  'eXe'"  tU^'.^^'  ^"'.P^ 
injunction  was  readily  complied  with  •  but  th^  pvU,  7k  ''^  P^".°^  ^^is 
ate,  that  the  law,  instead  of  being  carried  tl  I  f"^  ^'^°'"^  '°  '"^^^er- 
e.en  by  its  promulgators.     It  w  s^not  t"^  thr^^  ''  T'  T"^y  ^'^'^^ed 

ceiVed  an  effectual  check  from  .n  ^v   *'j!.*hree  years  after,  that  the  evil  re- 

patched  under  Sir  Robert  HoTme  fof  tsln^  '  ''T-'"''  ?^^°"^  ^- 
Indies.  Of  this  expedition  the  rrooret«r;.l'^Pf'-°"  °^  ^^'^'^^ '"  '^e  West 
or  and  council  of  cLrleston,  LrrSmmend?^^  ^^  '^'  govern- 

siontothe  authority,  and  cooperation  xrTfi?  ^-^"^  ^  P'^^^P^  ^ubmis- 

their  mandates  being  now  sin- p^  K  r  '  ^"^erprise,  of  Holmes  ;  and 
opposition,  those  c^LacIfu  'T.i!!-  ^  '  '^"'•^  f  ^^'^"*  *«  ^^^^eoie  all 
forgnately,  only  a  t^^p'^ra':^  ?n7emS  x"^^'"^'  ^  ^"'"P'^^^'  ^^ough,  un- 

oliSufttVdblTc^nr^ed  ^^"""^  '''  P^^^  «^  S^-h  Car- 
from  its  connectionTith  hTptaTe  Thl  "S^  'I^^T'""'!" '^^  '^''  ^^«"^ted 
always  regarded  the  southern^se  t'emenTs  of  tS^'F  "^  rt  ^K^I^Sf  ^ine  had 
dishke  ;  they  suspected   and  not  S?  F"§l"h  ^^"h  jealousy  and 

Port  Royalfnflam'eS  1^  dian  g  nsTtrer"'n^'\^  ^T^^  P^""^^"  «* 
^^^^ii^^LP!^^ 

'  Hewit     '"Salmersr"  "^ 


376 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


After  threatening  for  some  time  to  avenge  themselves  by  hostilities,  they 
invaded  the  southern  frontiers  of  the  province,  and  laid  waste  the  settle- 
ments of  Port  Royal.  The  Carolinians,  finding  themselves  unable  to  de- 
fend a  widely  extended  frontier,  resolved  to  carry  their  arms  into  the  heart 
of  their  enemy's  territory  ;  and  deeming  themselves  authorized  by  the  tenor 
of  the  provincial  charter  to  levy  war  on  their  neighbours,  tliey  made  prepa- 
rations for  an  expedition  against  St.  Augustine.  [1686.]  But  the  proprie- 
taries, informed  of  this  project,  hastened  to  withstand  it  by  their  remon- 


charter  which  was  relied  on  by  the  colonists  to  justify  their  projected  invasion 
meant  no  more  (they  maintained)  than  a  pursuit  in  heat  of  victory,  and 
never  could  authorize  a  deliberate  prosecution  of  war  against  the  king  of 
Spain's  subjects  within  his  own  territories.  "  We  ourselves,"  they  protest- 
ed, "  claim  no  such  power  ;  nor  can  any  man  believe  that  the  dependencies 
of  England  can  have  liberty  to  make  war  upon  the  king's  allies,  without  his 
knowledge  or  consent."  They  signified,  at  the  same  time,  their  dissent 
from  a  law  which  had  been  passed  for  raising  men  and  money  for  the  pro- 
jected expedition  against  the  Spaniards  ;  and  the  colonists,  either  convinced 
by  their  reasonings,  or  disabled  from  collecting  the  necessary  supplies, 
abandoned  the  enterprise,  licarning  this  result,  the  proprietaries  congratu- 
lated the  governor  and  council  on  their  timely  retraction  of  a  purpose, 
which,  had  it  been  carried  into  effect,  they  declared,  would  have  exposed 
its  authors  to  capital  punishment.  They  instructed  them  to  address  o  civil 
letter  to  the  governor  of  St.  Augustine,  desiring  to  know  by  what  authority 
he  had  acted  in  com  ^  the  late  hostilities  ;  and  in  the  mean  time  to 

put  the  province  in  a  pob^jre  of  defence.'  From  this  period,  mutual  suspi- 
cion and  animosity  rarely  ceased  to  prevail  between  the  Spanish  and 
English  colonists  in  Florida  and  Carolina. 

When  the  governor  and  council  received  intelligence  of  the  death  of 
Charles  the  Second,  they  proclaimed  his  successor  with  expressions  of 
loyalty  and  joy,  probably  the  effusions  of  mere  levity  and  love  of  change, 
but  which  gave  so  much  satisfaction  to  James,  that  he  communicated  to 
them,  in  return,  the  assurance  of  his  favor  and  protection.  His  sincerity 
herein  was  on  a  par  with  their  own  ;  for  he  already  meditated  the  revoca- 
tion of  the  colonial  charter,  and  the  annihilation  of  all  their  privileges.  He 
was  prevented,  indeed,  from  completing  these  intentions,  and  his  reign  was 
productive  of  events  that  proved  highly  advantageous  to  the  colony.  Many 
of  his  English  subjects,  apprehending  danger  from  his  arbitrary  principles 
and  his  adherence  to  the  church  of  Rome,  sought  beyond  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  a  retreat  from  his  more  direct  and  immediate  sway  ;  being  deter- 
mined rather  to  endure  the  severest  hardships  abroad,  than  to  witness  the 
establishment  of  popery  and  tyranny  in  England.  The  population  of 
America,  recruited  by  these  emigrations,  derived  even  a  larger  accession 
from  the  persecution  of  the  Protestants  in  France,  that  followed  the  revo- 
cation, in  1685,  of  the  edict  of  Nantes.  Above  half  a  million  of  her  most 
useful  and  industrious  citizens,  expelled  from  France,  carried  with  them 
into  England,  Holland,  and  other  European  states  the  arts  and  manufactures 
to  which  their  own  native  land  chiefly  owed  her  enrichment.     .Tames,  af- 

I  Chalmeii. 


CMAP  II.] 


RESISTANCE  TO  THE  NAVIGATION  ACTS. 


377 


most' friendly  assistance  to  [h^is^tSVi^^^^^  '''V  '1  '^"^«^  ^''° 

his  dominions  ;  and  besides  tLse  who  esta M  T'^'f  ^^''^ ,«°"Sht  shelter  in 
considerable  numbers  were  enabl  .n  f  ^"^^"^''«d,  ti'emselves  in  England, 
settlen^ents  in  America  k;fa,l'U'n7°ri''''"l'.^^^^  ^°  '^'  ^'"i"^^'' 
dreaded  his  designs,  purchased 'est. ^^^^a"^"'^  """'  ^'^  ^"""'3^'  «"d  who 
and  retreated  to  ti,e  ame  d  sta„t  redon  I'"'''"'.  ^'"^'  ^'^''-  «^"  •"«"-/' 
thus  reaped  advantage  from  the  onnl  •  ""^^  '''",  °^^*''*  ^°'°"'««  ^'^'^h 
apprehensions  entertaledrEndanT  Cnrnr  '""f '^  '."  *^''""^«  «"d  the 
people.  A  number  of  the  fS  r 'futp^  "'  °''-"T'*  u^"  «^q"i«ition  of 
lands  from  the  proprietaries  who  werf  pv  '"  P""f  "''•■'  ^'^'"S  P"rch.sed 
emigration  to  their  tLtSs  embarLT  T.  T-  'i'"  ^"''''^  ^«  encoun.ge 
and  made  a  valuable  addTton  to  its  IndustTv     '^'"'  ^'""^'"^  ^°^  ^^^'^  '^«'°"y' 

Although  the  colonists  Td  as  betide  It  t^T'^'  '"^'  P.«P"'^'i«n.^ 
their  territory,  and   still  found  E    !fl^  .    ■     "'  '  r°S''ess  in  cultivating 

abridged  by  t'he  obs.rJctio„rj-  tt  LesraLl'St  "^'  /'.^'^  ""'"^^" 
were  now  beginning  to  surmount  thJTrH  ^"J^f /^^^ges  of  disease,  they 
their  situation.     'Aeir  cattr  r.n  ^'^^"'t'es  and  disadvamages  of 

found  sufficient  sheher  and  abu'ndanTZf '  l"'"*'' •  'f  ^^^^  "°^  attendance, 
ed  to  an  amazing  degree      The  ntnt  ??'  '"/^^  "'°°'^^'  «"d  increas' 

and  sugar,  in  re^Sr  their  lumtrrn  "^^  '^'  ^'''  I"^'««  f°^  rum 
them  with  clothes,  arm  ,7m„  udtJo!  l^T'TV  ^'d.,^'^"g>«"d  supplied 
tion,  in  exchange  for  therdrr'  ?1"^^^^  for  b,iidi„g  and  cultiva- 
merce,  inconsiderable  as  it  was  rp'.Hv  '  ^  "'""'  ''''''''  '^^''  ^°'"- 
collector  of  the  customs  was  e  'taSd  at??, '^  T"''  '"^"^^"  '  «"^  « 
cession  of  James  to  the  throne  THp  nr.  •  p'l^''^'^^^?'!'  s"""  after  the  ac- 
officers  to  show  a  becomin  °  fonva^L^    ?^^  '""T'"^  ^^^'^  Pr°^'""«''al 

duty  on  tobacco  transpS  to  oXer  nl  •  ''"""^  '^^  "°"^^''°"  «f  ^^e 
sun!ed  to  trade  withouT  rega  d  'f the  ActroV^N  '"  ""'"^  t^'  '^''  ^''■ 
the  proprietaries  enjoyed  in  thpn^v  fif  "^  Navigation.     But,  although 

province,  and  sLmTdrindeeftrentosTthl  '  h  t^'  '"^^^?^  ""^'"  ^^e 
they  had  long  been  sensil  of\he  prSa  tSi'  ^"'T  "^  S°^«'-""^«"t, 
mandates  that  were  opposed  to  the  ?pnS  '"^'^^'^"cy  ^^  every  one  of  their 

The  injunction  wS  we  have  iT^"  IZ  '"'""''"'  °^,  '^'  P^°P'«- 
openly  and  argumentative7v  disnuted  hv  ^  '"*  T"-  "°*  °"^>^  ^'°^^*«d'  ^ut 
judges  and  magistrates  who  iSed  thaltl/v  '°^°""''  """^  Z*!-^  P^^^^"^'^^ 
eration  of  the  Navigat  on  Ac  s  bv  rhlf  ^  r^'u  ^-^^n^Pt^^  ^om  the  op- 
«,^am,^  t.A/cA,  theySv  inform  J  .1  T  ""^  ''^'.  provincial  charter, - 
kk  an  act  ofW^iat^XtTno^^^^^^^^  %IT'^^  that  key 

posterior  in  date  to  the  Navigation   Art    Xi  -      J  ^^'^  ''^^'^''  ^^^^ 

the  dispensing  power  of  thJTnZ  .  i'/  ""^^  '"  ^^^'^  '"  ^^"^^^^  <'°'- 
il.e  verv  doctrine  wh  c h  he  for  3  r  u  "'"S^^S^'^st  the  king  himself 
Illegal  and  dangerou  as  a  nlea  tvnl  '  ^'T  ^^  '""'"P'''"S  ^o  establish. 
acpear,  it  will  be  ound  in  prooortioi  '"^  "''"^  ^"- *""'  "^^^  ''  ^'''  «'gh^ 
from  being  destitute  of  JLS?^°S  "'/"  "^'""T  '''  ^^^^^  "  '«  ^^^7  'ar 
pie.  It  was  the  charte  IT  h^tllj  ^^^•^."^^"••al  reason  or  legal  princi- 
ritory  to  the  Brit  h  emo  re  InH  '?  P''''^"''?^"^  «""^^ed  »''«  Provincial  ter- 
-— 2__j^^j™l»^pn^^^nd^t^     the  execution  and  validity  of  this 

of  he  governments  of  Europe;  and  aLd  hTmfr ';r    ^   "  Profit  by  the  folly  and  madness 
vmues  and  hiesair.s.  thoy  wantonly  contemn"-  ''  -^ongen^^l  cl.me  an  a.jlua,  to  iho*e 

VOL.    I.  40 


378 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


charter  alone  that  Great  Britain  could  refer  for  legal  evidence  of  the  connec- 
tion between  herself  and  the  provincial  population.  The  planters,  possess- 
ing the  power  of  transferring  their  residence  and  labor  to  any  region  where 
they  might  please  to  setde,  and  the  benefit  of  their  allegiance  to  any  sove- 
reign wiiose  stipulations  in  their  favor  might  appear  satisfactory  to  them, 
had,  on  the  faith  of  this  charter,  and  of  its  due  fulfilment  in  all  points, 
formed  and  reared,  at  a  great  expense,  their  present  settlement  ;  and  in  all 
the  courts  of  Great  Britain  the  charter  was  undoubtedly  held  a  valid  paction 
in  so  far  as  it  imposed  obligations  on  them.  There  appears,  then,  nothing 
unjust  or  inequitable  in  the  claim  of  these  persons,  that  a  charier  wiiich 
formed  their  original  paction  and  bond  of  union  with  the  mother  country, 
on  the  f;  'th  of  which  their  allegiance  was  pledged  and  their  settlement  cre- 
ated, and  which  was,  on  all  hands,  acknowledged  to  be  strictly  valid  in  so 
far  as  it  imposed  obligations  upon  them,  should  be  held  no  less  sacred  in 
respect  of  the  privileges  which  it  conceded  to  them.  While  it  enjoyed  a 
legal  subsistence,  it  was  entitled  to  claim  an  entire  and  equal  operation  ; 
and  if  it  were  to  be  set  aside,  the  grantees  should  have  been  loft  at  li'.i- 
erty  to  attach  themselves  to  some  other  dominion,  if  they  could  not  ariaHj^i; 
with  Britain  new  terms  of  a  prorogated  connection  with  her.  Yet  must 
it  be  acknowledged,  that  the  legal  comjjetence,  if  not  the  natural  equity,  of 
this  plea  is  not  a  little  abated  by  the  consideration,  that  it  was  disclaimed  by 
the  proprietaries,  and  preferred  exclusively  by  the  resident  provincial  popu- 
lation. The  proprietaries  vainly  disputed  the  reasonableness  of  the  provin- 
cial plea,  and  as  vainly  prohibited  the  continuance  of  the  relative  practices. 
Neither  awed  by  their  authority,  nqr  convinced  by  their  reasonings,  nor  yet 
deterred  by  the  frequent  seizures  of  their  own  vessels  and  merchandise, 
the  colonists  continued  to  defend  the  legitiniacy  and  persist  in  the  practice 
of  trading  wheresoever  and  in  whatsoever  commodities  they  pleased. 
While  the  proprietaries  were  struggling  with  the  difficulties  of  this  contro- 
versy, they  received  a  new  and  more  painful  addition  to  their  embarrass- 
ments, from  the  alarming  intelligence,  that  the  king,  having  adopted  the  res- 
olution of  annihilating  all  proprietary  governments,  had  directed  a  writ  of 
quo  warranto  to  be  issued  against  the  patent  of  Carolina.  Thus,  neither 
their  submission  to  every  royal  mandate,  nor  their  readiness  to  assist,  witli 
their  feeble  power,  the  collection  of  the  royal  revenue  and  the  execution  of 
the  Acts  of  Navigation,  could  protect  the  chartered  rights  of  the  proprietaries 
from  the  injustice  of  the  king.  Yet  prudentially  bending  beneath  the  vio- 
lence which  they  were  unable  to  resist,  they  eluded  the  force  of  an  attack 
which  proved  fatal  to  the  charter  of  Massachuse'  r  d  by  proposing  a 
treaty  iorthe  surrender  of  the',  patent,  they  gained  s>  t.  ,;  ay  as  left  tliern 
in  possession  of  it  at  the  period  of  the  British  R    '  h'^tion. 

Governor  Moreton,  after  his  second  appointment  Ll68bJ  to  the  presi- 
dency of  the  colony  was  permitted  to  retain  it  little  more  than  a  year. 
Though  endowed  with  a  considerable  share  of  sense  and  ability,  and  con- 
nected with  some  respectable  provincial  families,  he  found  his  instructions 
(r."\  F.ntfland  so  inconsistent  with  the  prevailing  views  and  general  interests 
of  \h'^.  i>eople,  that  it  was  difficult  to  perform  the  duties  of  his  office  at  ail, 
Bfid  uP:.os?li=!e  to  discharge  them  satisfactorily.  He  was  a  man  of  sober 
awi  it]!;;ious  disposition  ;  and  being  married  to  the  sister  of  Blake,  it  was 
hoped  by  the  friends  of  piety  and  good  morals  that  his  authority  would 
^  •  Hewit.    Chalmers,    State  Pvprrt^  ibid. 


CHAP.  II.]  COLLETON  APPOINTED  GOVERNOR  ^^ 

bo  strengthened  by  this  alliance   nn.l  nn  «fl-    .*    i     .     ,    . 
more  licentious  and  disorclerlHon  ol  ^,fi^r'  f  ^^^  "nposed  on  the 
the  council  entertained  very  d  tFo  en   vL  ""'''     ^*"'/  "'""''•/  "^ 

the  governor  with  respect  to^    !lur„V;;^  '''"'""^"?  ^^°'"  ^''"««  of 
and  incessantly  claimed  much  greater  ^  I  P"""/'"^-'"'  a<ln'inistration, 

felt  himself  warranted  to  bes,' ,w      Henr«    f'"'''  '^"'" '''"  P^"'''«  ^''°"  ''« 
political  parties  ;  the  one  attached  tntl     ,,'"''  "'"'^  '"  '''^^  ''o'^ny  '^^o 
proprietaries,  the  other  devoid  tolho  t^e7:sTZT\T''''''4j  ''' 
one  It  was  contended  that  ti.e  laws  ami  ZlTl-        ^  ''''''"■  ^'^""'^y-     %  "'e 
should  be  strictly  and  inipicitvrbeved  wh       .?  ^'•°"'''"»"«d  from  England 
tied  more  regard  to  the  C  Lcum!,!:  "'"  f^  J"'?'««««d  and  exempli- 
.hat  thefrecLn  were  req^  d  o  ^  ^v^tL  ' '^^^    colony   and  maintained 
.ir     only  in  so  far  as.  the?  coincild   vhlw      •  "•J""^"""^  "^  the  proprieta- 
latin.  ,u.d  the  prosperit/of  The   setnement  T''  >'  ''"  ''^■-''^"t 'popu- 
governor  could  long  inaLain  hTs  au  lo  "tv  ov.r     '"   '   ^"•p"'^^!«"«««>  "o 
restless  adventurers,  averse  to  all  re"S       .       ':°'"'."""'0'  of  bold  and 
occasion  of  advancing  their  mvn  in  teres      '  ?       'T'  '"  ""P''^^'"S  ^^ery 
control  their  inclinations  by  tl  lexec  se  o    I  U  '  f 'T'^'"  ^''  «"^'"P'«''  »° 
Lis  person,  and  aspersed  hi    conduc     till   tl v       "'  ''T^'f?  '^['^  '"^"^'^^ 
deprived  of  his  functions.      The  1; Heta rie    /ndinrth"  M  '"  *'"""S  »^'"^ 
come  obnoxious  to  a  considerable  mrVv  „  i^  ^""^  Moreton  was  be- 

with  their  usual  feeble  poic^tosSLpT^'*''.  ^'^^^P'"'  "°^  '^^^^^ved, 
tegrity  had  provoked  ;  and  havintncr  J-"V°  !^^«""'"y  vvhich  his  inl 
I686J,  they  Appointed 'as    is  stcefsor  JanS  IT^^^^  ^T  ^^"S-^ 

their  own  number,  and  on  whose  at  acl'meMo^."'  '  ^''■'^'^'."''  ^'  °"«  ^^ 
thought  themselve's  entitled  to  elf  cX  o,-^f^^  Proprietary  interest  the^ 
was  expected,  would  add  to  thrLsideration  of  h  '"^  '",^  connections,  ft 
lend  him  the  greater  vveieht   he  wn,  pl„t  ^  i  '  ''^'^'"^  '''S"'^^  5  and  to 

the  appropriafe  endowS'o  ^r  leS  tl.^^^^^^^^^^^^  °^  i\'  ^j''°">^'  "'"^ 
opinion  was  entertained  bv  bis  rnn^tl"  .  r  l-""^  ^""^^^  °^  '«"d-  A  high 
but  either  it  was  ve  y' [l-fo^unded   or  *"   ^''  ^""^  ««"^«  ^d  address  ; 

possession  by  the  7onfb  b.^  a 'd    .   %"^^^ 

lolved.  To  his  grearmort  fir-ation  h  '"  ''^f  ^''  ^"""^  ^'""^^•f  '"- 
proprietary  govenfmrnt  Kf  c^  veVhttlTsSitT '^  ^"^''^^  ^''^^  ^^^^ 
declining  in  the  respect  of  ifs  l,\Zn,.      ii-     ^^^^"^> '  and  was  contmua  ly 

was  insufficient  lo  nccomDlisr  L  M  ""'''"■'">  "''"  '''^  »'"''<>"'y 
provincial  officer,  for  3  in,^,i,  „TJ-  Tr  ""^  ''''"°"  »"  "'«  <«l>" 
.nd  the  rigorous  execSn  of  | T  lopulf  i1Tv'°^  P^P''^'"-'. 
soon  e,„broiled  hi™  wi,h  a  numeroTp'a"  ^  oAeTn  ,r' 'iv/"^ 
ol  the  mumcipa  const  tiitinn  Pn.r.„,^c„J  r  "'^  •  "'*^  P'?nteis.  llie  form 
vesting  the  plrliamrn  whh  the  rh^oin!    ?    '  ^^r.ety  of  jurisdictions  and  in- 

afford?d  per%tuaT  scopfand  temDtatLftn"''f ''1  ■^°'-  '^''  S""^"^  ^«""^il' 
of  factions  sprung  up!  a'^^^ra«  '"'.7"«  5  «"d  a  diversity 

monad  by  Colleton  rNovember   iSl  ^i.         P"''.''"'".^"?  ''^vrng  been  sun> 
expressed  their  disapprobTt^i'  of  thl'  FunS^'-^'^I^.^^^'^'  "^'"^^^'"^  "P^"'/ 

'  He  wit.  -^ — 


380 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IT. 


political  compact,  deliberately  composed  the  frame  of  a  new  and  very  different 
scheme  of  government,  which  they  denominated  tlie  standing  laws  of  Car- 
olina, and  transmitted  to  England  for  the  consideration  of  the  proprietaries. 
The  reception  of  such  a  communication  might  have  been  easily  foreseen. 
The  proprietaries  hesitated  not  a  moment  to  reject  those  audacious  innova- 
tions,  and  to  command  an  instant  and  unreserved  submission  to  the  Funda- 
mental Constitutions  thus  irreverently  handled.    But  men  who  had  espoused 
such  resolute  policy  were  not  to  be  deterred  from  the  prosecution  of  their 
purpose  by  a  consequence  so  obvious  as  the  displeasure  of  the  proprieta- 
ries ;  and  a  majority  of  the  assembly  still  positively  refused  to  acknowledge 
the  authority  of  the  Fundamental  Constitutions.     The  refractory  members 
were  then  expelled  from  the  house  by  the  governor ;  whereupon,  after  an 
open  protest  against  the  validity  of  any  laws  that  might  be  enacted  m  their 
absence  by  a  minority  of  the  commons,  they  retired  mto  the  country,  and 
diligently  endeavoured  to  instil  their  own  principles  and  discontents  into  the 
minds  of  their  fellow-colonists.     So  successful  were  their  exertions  for  this 
purpose,  that,  when  a  nev/  parliament  was  convoked,  the  undisguised  and 
unanimous  purpose  of  the  members  was  to  thwart  and  contradict  the  gov- 
ernor in  whatsoever  proceedings  he  might   embrace,  recommend,  or  be 
supposed  to  approve.     To  this  line  of  policy  they  adhered  with  the  most 
inflexible  pertinacity  ;  they  even  refused  to  frame  a  militia  act,  though  the 
safety  of  the  province,  endangered  by  the  Spaniards  and  their  Indian  allies, 
seemed  urgently  to  demand  this  measure  ;  and,  in  fine,  to  make  sure  of  giv- 
ing sanction  to  nothing  that  could  possibly  be  agreeable  to  the  governor, 
they  flaUy  declined  to  pass  any  laws  at  all.     A  dispute  m  which  they  en- 
gaged with  him  about  the  payment  of  quitrents  aflbrded  them  an  additional 
opportunity  of  indulging  their  spleen  and  increasing  their  popularity.    Colle- 
ton urgently  pressed  for  payment  of  the  arrears  of  the  quitrents  due  to  the 
proprietaries  by  the  colonists,  which,  though  inconsiderable  in  amount,  were 
reckoned  extremely  burdensome,  inasmuch  as  not  one  acre  among  a  thousand 
for  which  quitrents  were  demanded  yielded  as  yet  any  profit  to  the  pos- 
sessors.  [1G87].    Finding  it  impossible  to  accomplish  an  object  so  unpopu- 
lar, without  the  active  cooperation  of  the  other  provincial  officers,  he  wrote 
to  the  proprietaries,  requesting  them  to  appoint  as  deputies  certaui  persons 
whom  he  knew  to  be  favorably  disposed  towards  their  authority,  and  from 
whom  he  expected  to  receive  a  cordial  support  in  the  execution  of  his  offi- 
cial duty.    Apprized  of  this  measure,  the  adverse  party  scrupled  no  violence 
or  injustice  to  defeat  or  counteract  it.     Letters  from  England,  suspected  to 
contain  deputations  to  persons  obnoxious    to   the   people,   they  seized  and 
suppressed  ;  and  themselves  presumed  to  nominate  other  individuals  better 
aflected  to  the  popular  cause.    Advancing  ii'  this  lawless  course,  the  leaders 
of  the  popular  party  ventured  to  issue  writs  in  their  own  names  [1688], and 
convoked  assemblies  in  opposition  to  the  governor,  and  in  utter  disregard  ol 
the  sovereignty  of  the  proprietaries.     They  imprisoned  the  secretary  of  tlio 
province,  and  took  forcible  possession  of  the  public  records  ;   and  witliout 
apprarinir  to  have  any  fixed  or  definite  object  in  view,  effected  a  complelp 
practical'^subversion  "of  legitimate  nuthority.     Only  a  bold  and  determined 
usurper  was  wanting  to  possess  himself  of  the  power,  which  thoy  seemed 
more  eager  to  suspend  or  overthrow,  than  resolutely  or  i)ermanently  to  ap- 
propriate ;  and  a  personage  altogether  fitted  to  take  advantage  of  the  oi)por- 
tniity  did  not  fail  shortly  after  to  present  hinij'uif.     Amidst  this  scene  ot 


CHAP    II.] 


MARTIAL  LAW  PROCLAIMED. 


381 


confusion,  the  tidings  of  the  birth  of  «  r»  •         r  «r  i 
colony,  and  celebrated  by  a^mL^T  ""^  ^'^'' ''''^^^^^^ 
congratulation  ;  and  yet  so  nnml  •         ^  appearances  of  sympathy  and 
sorbed  were  the  coloS  s  vvith  tTfr^^  T'  '^^''  ^^^Pressions,  or  so  ab- 
of  all  changes  beyond    h  ir itnt^^^^^^  ''^Y^^  ^^  ^«S--^^^^« 

the  revolution  in  England  tho^h  Tli    ?  ,1^^^'^' ^^^^  ^^^  intelligence  of 
no  emotion  whatever^  and  Wn^ao^t/^^^^^^  '^'  r^^''  ^^^"*'  '^^'^^^^ 

the  most  -echanicaUeguladly  a^^ndifcT  ''''''''"''  t»«««J  -"h 

ala^dty'trS  ^^^rrT?""^  '^  ^  ^^-^^^  and 
himself  with  a  variety  of  schemes  forC'  .11  ^^\P«°1^^^'  ^^i"!/  perplexed 
legal  autl^ority.  His'own^ondue  lad  ^|r  torn  \V''  r^^^'f"  °^ 
attracted  censure  from  the  quarter  on  wh^rh  h!  •  ^  blameless,  and  even 
nance  and  protection.  Amonf  other^r  ^  1  T^'-P'"^  '"""^  ^""^  ««""»«- 
trayed,   he  had  imposed  ararLrm^^filS'""!.'  '"^^  which  he  was  be- 

^sler,  for  preaching, yhatheTcSf/n^IiT  ^"""^''"^  P°""^^  °"  «  "'i"- 
etaries  remitted  the  fine    not  on  «"^    ci  sedtttous  sermon ;  and  the  propri- 

but  of  the  exorbitance  ^f  Us  amount    T?    '^'  «"T^'*>^  °^  "«  '"fl^^^'on^ 
whether  by  imprudent  pa  ti  Ins  or  insidio^  ?'  ^"n"^  '"jested  to  him 
martial  law,  and  thereby  approp^trto  Z  ^^''  '"^  P^^^^^'"^ 

power  to  punish  mutiny  anrsediUon  L.Z  f "  ''''^"''?  '"^  """'"i'^'l 
reducing  the  people  t^  subordinS      let  a^"^^ 

professnig  to  apprehend  an  invasion  of  th^  inl'  I  J  Purpose,  though 
lished  a  proclam'ation  announcing  le  prevalencrorlll  "'""'.'^  P"^" 
-ag  every  one  of  the  inhabitants^o  appear  Tn  arms  for  hi  7^  '"^  'T^ 
province.     However  Jpp-itlmafo   u     ^^  .      ^  '"'^  ^"^  defence  of  the 

Ihe  charter,  this  r^eLure  wastjorudTt'-  T^''""^  ^'^^>  ^^«  P-'^^'^'ons  of 
nists,  d,us  LummoneTto  a^s   w^e  S  1  e^^  ^he  colo- 

against  the  governor  hlmsel?d^an  aea  nstT  "'!?  '^'1!'"  ^^^■'"  ^««P<^»s 

ton's  policy  was  easilv  nenlfrn^L  ^  f  supposed  public  enemy.  Cdle- 
of  the  prov^inci^  legi  fatS  e  h Tvln^  snonJ!  ''"'f  ^^'^'^^l^-  ^^^  "^^^ers 
a  short  deliberation,  tha^tL  pernor tvh""^^  '''''"^'!^'  ^'^^^"^^'  'f'^' 
daring  encroachment  on  thelrCtLs  and  «n'''"'  '""'^"u?  '^^^  ""^^^  « 
power  at  a  time  when  the  ToTonv  wl<? in  T  "" warrantable  exertion  of 
Colleton,  however,  driven  to  extrcmiv  "°  ^^^^^ -^'T  ^'^^^'g"  ^"^^i^^y- 
".artial  law,  and  vainlv  at?e  nntPH  7n  ^^^  ^^''f'"^  '"  '"^  Proclamation  of 
very  soon  discoverecTha  re^«etron  ?'  '^  ''**'''*^^°^  '''''  ^"^  ^e 
a  remedy,  and  that  all  hs  effort    f'verbuMn  ^  '°  "^'^  «^  «»«h 

more  firmly  in  opposition  to  his  nntWW  ?  ""^  ^^^  "''^'^  ^'^  ^^^  P^^P'^ 
1-is  opponents,  that  the  soil  ob  ect  of  h  ^'  ^'  ^''  '"^gested  by  some  of 
to  himself  a  monopoly  of  tirin  linn  rlf'"''"'.  operations  was  to  acquire 
other  imputation,  J  owever  eronnd  p«        •    '  '"k"'/"'  '"™'^^'  ^^"^  every 

by  a  peciple  to  whom  fo  fears  teh.d  T''"^'^\-'''  ^/^^'"^  ""'^^^'^^ 
dislike.a  ^""^^  ''^  ^'^^  been  a"  object  of  suspicion  and 

-tve"'set  trhiJtm"  me°"  ^"  ^"^^^1'""^'  «^^'^  ^othe),  whom 
«laries  to  justify  conduct  s^T/f'  ""'^  ''''^H  ^>^  '^^  ^'^'''  P^^Pri" 
and,  in  the  double  capTckv  of  rnn"^^^'''T?  ^'"^^"""  ''^  <^'harles/on, 
Pion  of  popular  riglus  Snst  nrnnTf '"'""^  °^  -'^^  P'"*^^'"^'«  ^"^  «  ^J'"'"- 
-ionj^Lpremfth?^;  fZor^a'T^'^V^"^^  ^^ 


Oldmixon.    Hwit.    Chalmers.' 


*  Hewit.     Chalmers. 


382 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


eager  acclaim  of  a  numerous  party,  he  succeeded  without  difficulty  in  pre- 
vailing over  the  opposition  of  the  governor  and  the  more  respectable  inhab- 
itants, and  in  possessing  himself  of  the  reins  of  government,  which  had 
long  waited  and  invited  the  grasp  of  some  vigorous  hai.d.  With  a  specious 
show  of  respect  to  petitions  which  had  been  suggested  by  himself,  he  con- 
sented to  convene  a  parliament ;  and,  amidst  the  confusion  and  distraction 
to  which  the  province  was  a  prey,  found  it  easy  to  procure  the  election 
of  members  who  were  ready  to  sanction  by  their  votes  whatever  measures 
he  might  propose  to  them.  Colleton  was,  in  this  assembly,  impeached  of 
high  crimes  and  misdemeanours,  and  by  their  sentence  not  only  adjudged 
incapable  of  ever  again  holding  office  in  the  government,  but  banished 
from  the  province.  Other  persons,  who  were  accused  of  having  abetted  his 
misconduct,  were  si  lyected  to  line,  imprisonment,  or  exile.  Having  now- 
gained  firm  possession  of  the  supreme  authority,  and,  under  pretence  of  grat- 
ifying the  resentments  of  the  people,  enriched  himself  by  forfeitures,  and  dis- 
encumbered himself  of  rival  candidates  for  office,  Sothel  exercised  his  power 
with  a  despotic  energy  and  indiscriminate  insolence,  that  effectually  rebuked 
and  punished  the  folly  of  those  wiio  permitted  him  to  obtain  it,  and  soon 
united  the  southern  colony  against  iiim  in  the  same  unanimous  hatred  which 
he  had  provoked  in  the  sister  settlement  of  North  Carolina.  He  is  said  to 
have  trampled  under  foot  every  restraint  of  justice  and  equity,  and  to  have 
ruled  the  colonists  with  a  violence  of  undisguised  tyranny,  of  which  the  en- 
durance, even  for  the  short  period  of  two  years,  appears  altogether  surpris- 
ing. The  replenishment  of  his  coffers  was  the  sole  object  of  his  govern- 
ment ;  and  his  financial  operations  were  varied  only  by  varieties  of  fraud 
and  rapine.  The  fair  traders  from  Barbadoes  and  Bermuda  were  seized  by 
his  orders,  upon  false  accusations  of  piracy,  and  compelled  to  purchase  their 
ransom  from  imprisonment  by  enormous  fines  ;  bribes  were  accepted  from 
real  felons  to  favor  their  escape  from  justice  ;  and  the  property  of  unoffend- 
ing individuals  was  seized  and  confiscated  on  the  most  groundless  and  ty- 
rannical pretences.  The  proprietaries,  hearing  with  astonishment  of  these 
outrageous  proceedings,  transmitted  letters  of  recall  to  Sothel  [1692],  and 
threatened,  in  case  of  his  disobedience,  to  procure  a  mandamus  from  the 
king  to  compel  his  appearance  in  England  ;  and  their  orders  being  now  cor- 
dially seconded  by  the  desire  of  the  people,  the  usurper  was  constrained  to 
vacate  his  functions  and  abandon  the  province.  He  retired,  however,  no 
farther  than  to  North  Carolina,  where  he  died  in  the  year  1694.' 

The  revolution  of  the  British  government  excited  very  little  attention  in 
either  of  the  provincial  communities  of  Carolina,  which  were  too  remotely 
connected  with  the  higher  institutions  of  the  empire  to  be  sensibly  affected 
by  the  changes  they  underwent.  It  was  from  the  proprietaries  alone  that 
they  could  expect  the  interposition  of  a  superior  power  to  arrest  or  repair 
the  misrule,  contention,  and  other  afflictions,  that  had  so  long  composed 
the  chief  part  of  the  history  both  of  the  northern  and  the  southern  settle- 
ments. In  the  hope  of  accomplishing  this  desirable  object,  the  proprieta- 
ries, on  the  deposition  of  Sothel,  intrusted  the  government  of  the  whole  of 
their  domains  to  Colonel  Philij)  Ludwell,  a  person  totally  unconnected  with 
the  province  and  the  factions  tliat  prevailed  in  it,  and  who  had  been  deputed 
by  his  countrymen  in  Virginia  to  present  to  the  English  government  their 
complaints  against  Lord  Effingham.'  The  proprietaries  directed  their  new 
i  HewTtT~ChBlmeriir^iliriims^^  ^HookTl.,  Cimp.  iii.,  ante. 


CHAP.  II.] 


JEALOUSY  IN  REGARD  TO  THE  HUGUENOTS. 


383 


Chu|j.  in.,  anU. 


u.  themselves  ,he  ^^'s.Jh^ISMPT^J.'^ZZT.'r'''''  f'°^" 
der  and  restore  happiness    Hp  ,^a.      •'  ^      •    .  calculated  to  preserve  or- 

who  had  been  gove^Sof  the  WaTdT^T'^-'^^'u®''- ^^^'^^^''^  J-h"«on, 
who,  having  not  embraced  the  deignS^  T'''^"^  ^^'^n,  and 

a  cacique  of  the  province  and  a  member  of  fh'  °^?''  T'  ^PPo^nted 

was  a  man  of  sense  and  humanity  and  nLf  !  ''°"".'''^-  ^"^^^«"'  ^vhr 
of  colonial  affairs,  commenlird  KralSS  Tf '''''''  T^"-- 
general  satislaclion,  and  seemed  tn  h^f         ^     ,    *  "tanner  that  gave 

and  distractions  of  the  provT„cTaIcomm»nL«P'''K^  '"^>^"^  ^he  ferments 
was  of  short  duration  ;  rmrndro7meThnH  k' '^'' ^T'^'^S  appearance 
lently  agitated  to  reW  at  Tee  in  oT«  Jf /^'"  '''^  ^°"S  ^"d  too  vio- 
stance  which  truly  betSkLed  the  i---  '^  composure  ;  and  a  circum- 
ince  proved  the  i^medfate  oeeto-^^^^^^^  ^'  ''^  P-- 

In  the  year  1690,  a  great  number  of  FrLo^P  P"^^'''  discontents. 
in  England,  whenci  a  large  portTon  of  th"  '■°'''''"'  ^'''^^'  '°«^  •'^^e 
penseof  the  British  goverfmeT to  the  .nP 'T,."°^^^^"^'  ^'  ^^e  el- 
were  less  indigent,  purchased  ?nds  n  SourclT'^'r'  u^'^'^'^  ^^o 
already  remarked  a  previous  m  eration  of  «oi^  /  v  "^  ^^°  "^^'^^^  we  have 
having  transported  'hemselveT  fnd  the^p  f IT  °^  '^'7-  ^^""t'-y^en) ,  and, 
a  valuable  aLssion  to  the  numeric  ^^ 

and  respectability  of  its  people  Th«  p^"Sin  as  well  as  to  the  industry 
of  allegiance  to  the  l^h^rand  Pr^^fsed 'fiXrt ''f ^''^  ^'^  ''^''^  ^^e  oath 
were  disposed  to  regard  the  coEslhn-l^  -  '-  proprietaries,  and 
pect  of  brethren  and  fellow-cit'zens  Rnt  V^^^  J?'"«^,  '"  ^^e  friendly  as- 
were  very  far  from  regardh^l  th^ir  n.  '  ""'^'PP'^^^'  '^^'^  older  colonists 
fidence  and  good-will  ThenunTh-^r  ff  °''''''  ^"^  reciprocal  con- 
wealth  which  fome  of  hem  t  ere  rtuted°'  «^^«"S«r«^  and  the  superior 
ousy,  and  national  antipatS^  n  the  m  nds  of  Z7''vT^'''l^  ^"^^'>«'- 
well,  in  compliance  wiOi  the  instruXns  of  t  ^^''- *" '  .'"*^  ^'^^^  ^"d" 
admit  the  refugees  to  a  narfirinl.^^  •  .,  u  f  °P"etaries,  proposed  to 
of  the  other  planters,  the  Kish  arn^?  ^"  ^^.^"'^hises  and' immunities, 

in  this  measu're,  and^L^olt^ ^"oseTh:  ^tttioT  "TTe'  '^  '7^'^ 
It  was  contrary  to  the  laws  of  England  2/fu  r  v.^^^1  '"''"^^^  *hat 
tence  of  the  proprietaries  who  Setwetttnl'''  V^°"^  '^'  ^"'"P^" 
power  but  that  of  the  Encrlirh  paTltnPnt -"  .^  ^^'''^  '^'^'  '  ^"^  ^''^^  "» 
billiy  of  ahens  to  purclmsf  land  Sin  th^  "^''P'"'"  ^''^'l  *''«  ^^S«'  '"^- 
them  into  the  nat  onal  cTmZii  v  W  i  TP""^'  ^^  ^""'^  incorporate 
and  privileges  of  nal^Er Sig  i"shmen  %TevT'''''''  °'  ^-'^  ''^hts 
the  marriages  of  the  refugees  perfonnpnT  .'i,  i  ^  ^"^^^  maintained  that 
.hem,  were  unlawful,  as  IS/relelltdV'''  •  ''^^'"'"  ^"^°  accompanied 
episcopal  ordination  -and  for  t^  1  J^ '"'"'sters  not  consecrated  by 
brook  ^the  thoug  t  of  shl'  in  tl''"''  '^'^  ^'S'''^.  '^''  '^^Y  could  no^ 
English  nation,  o  of  rece  l"L  laws  frn^F  ""T^^^  ""l'^  '^'  ^'^^^^  "^  ^^e 
of  slavery  and'arbitrarrgo^rnmrnt  ^''^"^'>"^«"'  ^^e  pupils  of  a  system 

pi-dX^is^?rxss°:^ 

;5r  f^ird^fio^         a^nsripK  r= 

inHppic;.,.  p,  u'rections.     Ihe  proprietaries  returned  a  concilintorv  but 

•   ""'''''  '"  ^^'^  application  of  the  refugees,  who  continued'' in  a 


384 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


state  of  anxious  solicitude  and  entire  privaUon  of  civil  rights  for  several 
vears  after  • '  when,  at  length,  their  mild  and  patient  demeanour  overcame 
fhe  antipathy  of  their  former  adversaries,  who  then  cordially  sanctioned  the 
nietensions  they  had  so  stoutly  resisted,  and  passed  a  law  of  naturalization 
fn  favor  of  the  aliens,  without  being  disturbed  by  any  scruples  about  invading 
the  functions  of  the  British  parliament.     Meanwhile  the  dispute  that  had. 
arisen  on  th.s  subject  spread  a  great  deal  of  irritation  through  the  province 
wWch  was  increased  by  the  arrival  of  a  crew  of  pirates,  whom  Ludwell 
caused  to  be  apprehended  and  brought  to  trial  for  their  crimes.     1  he  peo- 
nle  exclaimed  against  the  severity  of  this  proceeding,  and  interested  tliem- 
selves  so  effectually  in  behalf  of  the  pirates,  who,  previous  to  their  appre- 
hension,  had  spent  a  great  deal  of  money  very  freely  m  the  province,  that 
on  their  trials  they  were  all  acquitted,  and  the  government  was  even  com- 
pelled   to  indemnify  them  for  the  expenses  and  molestation  .they    ^^d  >n. 
burred      It  was  not  till  more  than  twenty  years  after  this  period  that  Car- 
olina  was  finally  delivered  from  the  resort  of  pirates,    larther  dispu  es  now 
a  ose  between  the  government  and  the  people  about  the  arrears  of  the  quit- 
Jents  that  were  due  to  the  proprietaries,  who  at  length  becoming  impatient 
of  this  untoward  issue  of  Ludwell's  admimslration,  and  suspecting  hnn  of 
bending  too  readily  to  the  popular  will,  deprived  him  of  his  office,  and  con- 
ferred  it,  together  with  the  dignity  of  landgrave,  upon  Thomas  Smith,  a 
wealthy  planter,  and  a  prudent,  upright,  and  popular  man. 

I  was  in  the  midst  of  these  disputes,  and  with  the  hope  of  appeasing 
them,  that  the  proprietaries  surrendered  to  the  general  dislike  of  the  people 
T^Fundamental  Constitutions,  which  had  been  originally  declared  sacre 
and  changeless,  but  which  an  experience  of  twenty-three  years  had  proved 
to  be  utterly  absurd  and  impracticable.  [1693.]     Apprized  of  the  incurab  e 
aversion  wilh  which  this  instrument  was  now  regarded  by  all  classes  of  the 
colonists,  and  despairing  of  ever  establishing  a  sohd  or  respected  frame  of 
^overnm^nt  among  them  without  making  some  considerable  sacrifice  to 
S  inclinations,  Uie  proprietaries  with  this  view  embraced  and  pubhshe 
Se  fdlowing  resolution  :  "  That,  as  the  people  have  declared  they  woul 
^ther  be  governed  by  the  powers  granted  by  the  charter,  w.thom  regard 
lo  the  Fundamental  Constitutions,  \i  will  be  for  their  quiet,  and  the  protec- 
Lon  of  the  well-disposed,  to  grant  their  request."  =»     Thus  expired  the  po- 
Udcal  system  devised  by  John  Locke.    Its  fate  was  unregretted  by  any  par- 
V     for  i    bad  neither  procured  respect  to  the  government,  nor  afiorded 
Lp^^ess  to  the  people.     What  is  still  more  singular,  it  seems  to  hav 
Terished  uiheeded  •,    its  abolition  exciting  no  emotion  whatever,  and  no 
E  even  noticed  in  any  public  act  or  order  withm  the  province      Ih,: 
conv^ocalions  that  were  formerly  termed  parliaments  were   now  called  as- 
sembUes^^  and  this  was  all   the  visible   change  that  took  place,     ho  per- 
ecUv  inappropriate  and  inapplicable  had  these  celebrated  ConsUtut.ons  been 

tion  whirh  it  provoked.     SmoUntt.  ,,,.,,. 

*.Xrrhdale.%)ldmixon.    Cl.almcr..    Hew.t.    W.ll.amBon.      ,  ^.„.^^^„ 

»  Chalmew.     Williamson  .trikin-lv  ox^mnlifv  the  ot)8ervation  of  a«  em- 

*  -J-iiu  oi>.;ratir.n  and  latc  of  Locke  R  "J^"^^'"  "V  „j  ruv.  „,:„pinlM  ot'  liberty  n"d  1  -r  "«»« 
iBcnt  American  Btatesman,  that  "a  man  may  defend  the  principles  ot  \mnj  * 


CHAP.  II.] 


ARCHDALE  APPOINTED  GOVERNOR. 


385 


This  important  measure,  which  had  been  deferred  till  the  Constitutions 
r^'tnS"        """'"   practically  abrogated  hy  their  own  inefficiency 
fa.  ed  to  produce  any  sensible  effect  in  tranquillizing  or  conciliating  the  ml 
habitants  of  Carohna.     Governor  Smith,  though  he  exerted  himself  with 
a  zeal  and  prudence  that  have  not  been  impeached  by  any  party,  to  pfo- 
mote  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  the  settlements  intrusted  to  llis  cale,  found 
h.8  endeavours  so  fruitless,  and  his  situation  so  irksome,  that  he  was  con- 
strained to  sohcit  his  own  dismission  from  the  proprietaries  [1694],  whom 
he  strongly  urged,  as  the  only  means  of  restoring  order  and  tranqui  lity,  to 
depute  as  governor  one  of  their  own  number,  invested  with  plenary  poier 
,0  hear  and  finally  determine  on  the  spot  the  complaints  and  controversies 
hy  which  the  province  was  distracted.     The  short  administration  of  S 
nevertheless,  was  signalized   by  an  occurrence  that  produced  lasting  and 
extensive  effects  on  the  prosperity  of  Carolina.     A   vessel  from  Mada- 
gascar, on  her  homeward  voyage  to  Britain,  happening  to  touch  at  Charles- 
ton, the  captain,  in  acknowledgment  of  the  hospitable  civUities  which  he 
received  from  Smith,  presented  him  with  a  bag  of  seed-rice,  which  (he  said) 
he  had  seen  growing  in  Eastern  countries,  wheje  it  was  deemed  exceliem 
food,  and  yielded  a  prodigious  increase.     The  governor  divided  it  between 
several  of  his  friends,  who  agreed  to  attempt  the  experiment  of  its  culture  • 
and  planting  their  parcels  m  different  soils,  found  the  result  to  exceed  their 
most  sanguine  expectations.     From  this  casual  occurrence  Carolina  derived 
her  staple  commodity,  the  chief  support  of  her  people,  and  the  mam  source 
of  her  opulence.* 

The  proprietaries,  disappointed  in  so  many  attempts  to  obtain  a  satisfac- 
tory administration  of  their  authority  in  tlie  province,  determined  the  more 
readily  o  adopt  the  suggestion  of  Smith.     Their  first  choice  for  this  pur- 
pose fell  upon  Lord  AsBley,  grandson  of  the  notorious  Shaftesbury,  and  af- 
terwards author  of  The  Characteristics.     It  was  supposed  that  his  talents 
(of  which  the  repute  far  exceeded  the  reality),  his  agreeable  manners,  and 
elevated  rank,  would  promote  the  efficacy  of  his  endeavours  for  the  pacifi- 
cation of  the  colony.    Happily,  however,  for  all  parties,  his  Lordship,  either 
having  httle  inclination  for  the  voyage,  or  being  detained,  as  he  alleged,  by 
the  state  of  his  private  affairs  m  England,  declined  the  appointment;  which 
was  then  conferred  on  a  far  more  estimable  person,  John  Archdale,  another 
of  the  proprietaries   a  Quaker,  and  a  man  of  great  prudence  and  sagacity, 
united  with  admirable  patience  and  command  of  temper.     Accepting  the 
office,  he  was  invested  with  authority  so  absolute  and  extensive,  that  the  pro- 
prietaries  thought  fit  to  record  in  his  commission  [August,  16961,  that  such 
powers  were  not  to  be  claimed,  in  virtue  of  this  precedent  by  future  govern- 
Archdale  proved  himself  worthy  of  the  distinguished  trust  that  was  re- 
posed  in  bmi.     He  arrived  first  in  South  Carolina,  where  he  formed  a  new 
council  of  sensible  and  moderate  men  ;  and  in  a  short  time,  by  remitting 
some  arrears  of  rent,  and  by  other  conciliatory  measures,  aided  by  a  firm- 
ness and  mild  composure  that  were  neither  to  be  disturbed  nor  overcome, 
he  prevailed  so  far  in  appeasing  the  public  discontents,  as  to  feel  encour- 
aged to  call  a  meetmg  of  the  representative  assembly. 
_^n^ddres3^f  grateful  thanks  voted  by  this  body  to  the  proprietaries 

■  ArchdaJe.    Oidmixoa.    Hewit. 


■ 


386 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


rthe  first  expression   of  such  sentiments   ever  uttered  in  Carolina)  attests 
he  wisdom  and  benignity  of  Archdale's  admmistrat.on    and  Justifies  the 
opinbn  thTt,  notwithstlmding  the  inflammable  matenals  of  wh.ch  the  proy.n- 
cfal  soc  ety  was  composed,  only  a  good  domestic  government  had  been 
firto  wLing  to  render  the  colony  flourishmg  and  happy.     Moreton, 
Ludwell,  and  Smith  were,  unquestionably,  meritorious  governors  ;  but  they 
had  been  denied  the  power  that  was  requisite  to  give  efficacy  to  the,r 
wisdom,  and  could  never  grant  the  slightest  indulgence  to  the  people  w.th- 
Tu    Sming  the  dangerous  liberty  of  transgressmg  their  own  commissions 
or  abTd'ng  thi  tedious  fntervention  of  correspondence  with  England.    1  houg 
Archda?e  was  a  Quaker,  and  therefore  opposed  to  military  operations  and 
it  sheddbgof  blood,  yet  he  adapted  his  pubHc  policy  to  the  sentiments 
of  the  people  whom  he  had  undertaken  to  govern  ;  ^"^  considering  that 
a  small  colony,  surrounded  by  savage  enemies,  and  exposed  to  the  attacks 
of  The  Spania  ds,  should  maintain  a  constant  state  of  defensive  preparation, 
he  promoted  a  riilitia  law  [1695],  which,  however,  exempted  all  persons 
holding  the  same  religious  principles  with  h  mself  from  bearing  arms.^  Wh.le 
he  tlms  adopted  measures  ^for  insuring  safety,  he  was  far  from  neglecting 
Vhe  humane^r  means  of  preserving  peace  ;    and    for  this  purpose  exerted 
himself  so  successfully,  by  the  exercise  of  courtesy  and  liberality,  to  culti- 
vaTe  the  gord-wUl  botii'of^^    civilized  and  savage  neighbours  of  the  prov- 
[nee  thaUhe  Spaniards  at  St.  Augustine  expressed  for  the  first  .me  a  .les.re 
r  maintain  friendly  relations  with  the  English;  and  various  tribes  of  In- 
dlnTHted  their  alliance,  and  placed  themselves  under  the  protection  of 
trgovernm^^  of  Carolina!     The  Indians  around  Cape  Fear  m  particular 
whoTdZg  pursued  the  practice  of  plundering  shipwrecked  vessels  «  and 
murdering  thefr  crews,  renounced  this  inhumanity,  and  demonstrated  the 
fevorableMge  of  their  disposition  by  mitigating,  with  charitable  relief, 
trenumeros  disasters  by  which  the  navigation  o?  that  coast  was  thenira- 
happTS^^^        Yet  how  inferior  the  worldly  renown  of  Archdale,  the 
insEenf  of  so  much  good,  to  the  more  cherished  fame  o^^^^^^^^  less  e^^ 
cient  and  far  less  disinterested  contemporary  and  fellow-sectary,  William 

^7n  North  Carolina,  the  administration  of  Archdale  Avas  attended  with 
equal  success   and  conducted  with  greater  facility  from  the  cooperation  o 
^number  of  Quakers  whojnhabit^^ 

TTh^fbU^^^iii^h^bT^^                                                                 ^£Z 
at  Arehdale  enjoyed  with  the  colonists.     "  Ana  wnnreas  me  _      ^  ^ 


that  Arrhdale  enjoyed  with  the  colonists.        ^'"   ""y'j-j^'     ^^^not  bear  arms,  and  be 

died  Uuakers,  who,  upon  a  oonsc.entious  P"'«''P'°  ?J^'^^^^^^^^ 

oause  in  all  other  civil  ^J^i:^;::^^^^ ^SS^r.  'onac.nd,,...  I 

governor,  John  Archdarlo,  1 
18  principle  of  religion  on4y 
cused."     Archdalc'8  Prrface.     Williamson. 


•v.,v.., , '"y 

S,Xt'inV"BeTt  theVciroro  onactfid.tlint  all 

such,  whom  the  present  governor,  John  Archd«^o^  h«r 
arms  on  a  conwsientious  nrinciole  of  religion  on4y,  eh 


.,  shall  judge  that  they  refuse  to  btar 
lall,  by  a  cerlificnto  fron%  him,  be  ex- 


sed."     Archdalc'8  Prr/Vice.     Williamson.  ^.  i-ieg  ^hen  (after  his  return 


senled  by  the  frequency  of  shipwreck 
llie  plunder  of  a  wreck  by  the  colonists 


iSde!::d7r:mTe;;h7;;.Wua  of  North  America,  L  from  the.  inhabitants  _o.j,.e  pai.t 


indeed,  from  the  other  colonisU of  North  ^'^^'l'''^^'"ZtoycdTm^^^^ 

rtate.ik  which  this  inhumanity  obtained  ««  '«"8  «»^,,nKment'^of  "a  ciliU  of  sober 

«^lAAlo  of  the  eiehtcenth  century.  Pope  represents  ".'e  enricjime  u 

(too -'a.  origioating  in  two  rich  shipwreckn  uu  m  WOb  «  x>«ur,a.S. 


his  quarter,  and  with 


CHAP.  II.]         ARCIIDALES  SUCCESSFUL  ADMINISTRATION.  ggy 

whom  he  eryoyed  a  large  share  of  personal  or  sectarian  influence.  The 
esteem  m  which  he  was  he  d  bj.  all  ranks  of  men  may  be  inferred  from  the 
elauon  with  winch  the  historian  of  North  Carolina  has  recorded,  as  a 
cjrcumstance  redounding  to  the  honor  of  this  province,  that  Archdal^  pur- 
chased an  estate  at  Albemarle,  and  gave  one  of  his  daughters  in  mar  ia^to 
a  planter  at  Pasquetanke.  But  it  was  not  his  design  t  remain  Sr  n 
Carolina  than  was  necessary  for  the  adjustment  of  §L  ex  Zgconlver- 
sies ;  and  having  accomplished  this  object  to  an  extent  that  surnasserthe 

?.lfTT/-^u  f ''•'''  i'  '''*"^"^d  »°  England  in  the  close  o^f  he  year 
1696,  loaded  vvith  the  grateful  benedictions  of  a  people  to  whoL  peace  and 
prosperity  he  had  been  so  highly  instrumental.^  The  only  portion  of  Ae 
inhabitants  to  whom  he  was  unable  to  give  complete  sa^SaSon  vvere  the 
French  refugees  against  vvhom  the  jealous  antipathy  of  the  EnX^^^^^^^^^^^ 
had  no  yet  subsided.  But  while  he  soothed  Uie  public  jealousy  by  de 
clmmg  to  advocate  the  political  enfranchisement  of  the  reLees,  he  Awak- 
ened pubhc  generosity  by  an  impressive  recommendation  of^tlSe  unfortu- 
nate s  rangers  to  the  hosp.tahty  and  compassion  of  his  countrymen  ;  and  "o 

vtuef  S  tendtT  ''  recommended  a  patient  perseveL" 'in  tho  : 
vir  ues  that  tend  to  disarm  human  enmity,  and  by  the  actual  exercise  of 
which  they  were  enabled  shortly  after  to  i;ercome  the  ave  s  onTand  ^ven 
conciliate  the  friendly  regards,  of  their  fellow-colonists. i 

It  was  m  this  j^ear  that  a  regular  administration  of  the  ordinances  of 
religion  was  first  introduced  into  South  Carolina,  by  the  assistance  of  thl 
colonists  of  New  England.  Intelligence  of  the  d^stLte  sLH  he  proy! 
mce  in  his  respect,  seconded  by  the  earnest  applications  of  some  pious 
individuals  among  the  planters,  had  induced  the  New  Englanders,  iHhe 
preceding  year,  to  form  an  association  at  Dorchester,  in  ^^assachusetts 
which  was  designed  to  be  removed  to  Carolina,  "to  encourage  the  settle 

S''  tZ  ''  '"^*'^'  P''^"?"''""  °^  '•^^'S'""  >"  the  southern  plan  a- 
tions.  The  persons  thus  associated,  having  placed  at  their  head  a  distin- 
guished  minister  of  the  New  England  churches,  arrived  in  the  beginning  of 
his  year  ,n  feouth  Carolina,  which  now  for  the  first  time  was  honored 
by  the  celebration  of  the  rite  of  the  Lord's  supper.  Proceeding  to  a  snot 
onthe  northeast  bank  of  Ashley  River,  about  eighteen  riesfronVchaiC 
ton,  the  pious  emigrants  founded  there  a  settlement,  to  which,  in  commemo- 
ration of  the  place  they  had  left,  they  gave  the  name  of  Dorchester. 

Among  other  extraordinary  privileges,  there  was  granted  to  Archdale  the 
power  of  nominating  his  successor;  and  in  the  exercise  of  this  power  he 
propagated  the  benefit  of  his  own  administration,  by  delegating  the  office  of 
governor  to  Joseph  Blake  (nephew  of  the  English  admiral),  a  man  of 
probity,  prudence,  and  moderation,  acceptable  to  the  people  and  a  pro- 
prietary of  the  province.  Blake  governed  the  colony  wisely  and  happil/for 
rf  "°u  a[  ^T  ^?'''  ^^""'"^y  ^''"'^^  his  elevation  to  office,  the?e^vas 
hv  r  F?  r  ?r^'u  "'''  '",^'  ""/  fundamental  constitutions  subscribed 
L  nil  K  f:  ^^'  '^^  ^^'"''^  P''^t'"«'  «"^  hy  the  other  proprietaries  in 
hi?    niU  Ta  T^'  ^''''T^.^  °'  recognized  by  the  provincid  nssem- 

bly.     Blake^exerted^the  mo^t  laudable^endeavours  to  promote  the  religious 

t  -.-re.    — rs  .^s,.,  ,„e  jjviiuoimi  provaiica  over  Uw  (iuakur. 


S88 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


instruction  of  the  people,  and  to  facilitate  the  exercise  of  divine  worship  to 
ail  denominations  of  Christian  professors.  In  the  year  1698,  he  had  the 
satisfaction  to  see  John  Cotton,  a  son  of  tho  celebrated  minister  of  Boston, 
remove  from  Plymouth,  in  New  England,  to  Charleston,  in  South  Carolina, 
where  he  gathered  a  church,  and  enjoyed  a  short,  but  happy  and  success- 
ful, ministry.  Though  Blake  was  himself  a  Dissenter,  yet,  from  regard  to 
the  wishes  and  the  spiritual  interests  of  the  Episcopalian  portion  of  the  in- 
habitants of  Charleston,  he  caused  a  bill  to  be  introduced  mto  the  assembly 
for  settling  a  perpetual  provision  of  one  hundred  and  fiftjr  pounds  a  year, 
with  a  house  and  other  advantages,  on  the  Episcopal  minister  of  that  city. 
Marshall,  the  person  who  then  enjoyed  this  pastoral  function,  had  gained  uni- 
versal esteem  by  his  piety  and  prudence  ;  and  the  Dissenters  in  the  house 
of  assembly  acquiescing  in  the  measure,  from  regard  to  this  individual,  the  bill 
was  passed  into  a  law.^  [1698.]  Those  who  may  be  disposed  to  think  tliat 
tlie  Dissenters  acted  amiss,  and  stretched  their  liberality  beyond  the  proper 
limits  of  this  virtue,  in  promoting  the  national  establishment  of  a  church 
from  which  they  had  themselves  conscientiously  withdrawn,  may  regard  the 
persecution  they  soon  after  sustained  from  the  Episcopal  party  as  a  merited 
retribution  for  their  practical  negation  of  dissenting  principles.  Those  who 
judge  more  leniently  an  error  which  there  is  little  reason  to  suppose  will 
be  ever  frequent  in  the  world,  must  regret  and  condemn  the  ungrateful  return 
which  the  Dissenters  experienced  from  a  party  for  whose  advantage  they 
had  incurred  so  considerable  a  sacrifice. 

With  the  administration  of  Blake,  who  died  in  the  year  1700,  ended 
the  short  interval  of  tranquillity  which  originated  with  the  government  of 
Archdalc.  Under  the  rule  of  his  immediate  successors,  James  Moore  and 
Sir  Nathaniel  Johnson,  the  colony  was  harassed  with  Indian  wars,  involved 
in  a  heavy  debt  by  an  ill-conducted  and  fruitless  expedition  against  the  Span- 
iards at  St.  Augustine,  and  agitated  by  religious  disputes  engendered  by  a 
series  of  persecutmg  laws  against  the  Dissenters.  Henceforward  the  propri- 
etary government  continued  (with  the  exception  of  one  returning  gleam  of 
success  and  popularity,  which  it  derived  from  the  administration  of  Charles 
Craven,  in  1712)  to  afflict  the  province  with  a  vile  and  pernicious  misrule, 
and  to  fluctuate  between  the  aversion  and  contempt  of  its  subjects,  till  they 
were  relieved  by  its  dissolution  in  the  year  1729,  when  the  chartered  inter- 
ests were  sold  to  the  crown. 

The  first  Indian  war  by  which  this  period  was  signalized  broke  out  in 
the  year  1703,  and  was  occasioned  by  the  influence  of  the  Spaniards  over 
the  tribes  that  inhabited  the  region  of  Apalachia.  llesenting  with  cruel  and 
disproportioned  rage  the  affronts  which  these  savages  were  instigated  by 
the  Spaniards  to  commit.  Governor  Moore  determined  by  one  vigorous  efTort 
to  break  their  power,  and  by  a  sanguinary  example  to  impress  on  all  the 
Indian  race  a  dread  of  tho  English  name.  At  the  head  of  a  strong  detach- 
ment of  the  provincial  militia,  reinforced  by  a  troop  of  Indian  allies,  he 
marched  into  the  hostile  settlements;  defeated  the  enemy  with  a  loss  of 
eight  hundred  of  their  number,  who  were  either  killed  or  taken  prisoners ; 
laid  waste  all  the  Indian  towns  between  the  rivers  Alatamaba  and  Savannah; 
and  reduced  the  whole  district  of  Apalachia  to  submission.  To  improve 
bis  conquest,  he  transported  fourteen  hundred  of  the  Apalachian  Indians  to 
the  territory  which  was  afterwards  dcnomhiated  Georgia,  where  jJi>ey^wcrc 

'*  Uidiuixun.    VVyiuie.    Iluvvil.    CtdUOuasythexsssac^smsHaiafkaiSsticiy.    HoSraes, 


ariati  S;i."i'cig.    IiO'nicS. 


CHAF.II]  NEGLECT  OF  RELIGION  AND  EDUCATION.  qqq 

C^o£^  *°  ^'''^^  '"  ^  '^^^^  °^  dependence  on  the  government  of  South 

When  the  proprietaries  of  Carolina  first  embraced  the  project  of  a  colo- 
nial  plantation,  they  solemnly  declared,  and  caused  it  to  be  recorded  t 
U,e.r  charte-s,  that  they  were  moved  to  embrace  this  great  design  by  zea" 
for  the  diffusion  of  the  Christian  faith,  and  especially  for  its  DronaLtion 
among  the  Indian  tribes  of  America.     Yet  a  geLral  ^v Lion  LK  of 

f  ,n'n;«rrnn'?w'^  P'''"j"^^^  *°  '" '««  ^«  ^"  article  of  the  F^- 

daniental  Constitutions,  and  which  they  fraudfully  or  insolently  nullified  bv 
another  article  adjected  to  the  same  instrument  by  themselves  constituted 
the  whole  amount  of  their  ecclesiastical  operations  d^uring  the  firs't  ?orty  years 
of  the  proprietary  government.  They  never  made  the  slightest  attemnt  to 
execute  their  pretended  purpose  of  communicating  instructK  the  nSs 
and  this  important  field  of  Christian  labor  was  quite  unoccupied  tHl  the  be- 

T^L  h^  ' -^  ;'''"'^  """'"'>>  ^^^^"  ^  ^^^  missionaries  were  sent  to  Car- 
olina  by  the  society  incorporated  in  England  for  the  propagation  of  the  gos- 
pel m  foreign  countries.  No  cognizable  fruits  or  vestlges^f  the  labors  of 
these  missionaries  have  ever  been  mentioned.  Prior  to  this  enterprise,  the 
only  European  instructions  that  the  Indians  received,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  proprietary  government,  were  communicated  by  a  French  dancine- 
master,  who  setUed  in  Craven  county,  and  acquired  a  large  estate  by 
teaching  the  savages  to  dance  and  play  on  the  flute.^ 

At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  were  only  three  edifices 
for  divine  worship  erected  withb  the  southern  province  :    pertaining  re- 
spectiyely  to  an  Episcopal    a  Presbyterian,  and  a  Quaker  congregation; 
and  all  of  them  situated  withm  the  walls  of  Charleston.    In  no  other  quartet 
of  the  province  were  there  either  temples  of  public  worship  or  schools  for 
education,      rhe  first  attempts  that  were  made  to  supply  these  defects  pro- 
ceeded not  from  the  proprietaries,  but  from  Tennison,  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  Thomas  Bray,  an  active  n^nister  of 
the  church  of  England,  and  the  society  established  in  England  for  the  prop- 
agation  of  the  gospel ;  but  as,  in  most  of  these  attempts,  the  paramount 
object  was  plainly  to  multiply  adherents  to  the  established  church  of  the 
narent  state,  they  were  the  less  successful  among  a  people,  of  whom  many 
had  personally  experienced  the  persecution  of  this  church,  and  more  enter- 
tamed  a  hereditary  dislike  to  it.     In  the  year  1707,  the  society  for  propa- 
gation  of  the  gospel  maintained  six  Episcopal  ministers  in  South  Carolina, 
and  had  sent  two  thousand  volumes  of  books  to  be  distributed  gratuilously 
among  the  people.     In  the  northern  province,  which  was  thinly  peopled  by 
colonists  professing  a  great  diversity  of  religious  opinions,  no  visible  insti- 
tution ot  divme  government  was  yet  established,  no  religious  worship  rec 
ognized  the  providence  of  the  Deity  or  besought  his  grace,  and  human  life 
commencpd  and  concluded  without  any  solemnity  expressive  of  its  celestial 
ong.n  and  immortal  renovation.    An  act  was  passed  by  the  assembly  of  this 
province,  m  the  year  1702,  imposing  an  assessment  of  thirty  pounds  per  An- 
num on  every  precinct,  for  the  maintenance  of  a  minister ;  and  in  1705  and 
1706,  the  first  two  religious  edifices  of  North  Carolina  were  erected.     In 
--y^^JLLl^J_!!^l_P^Z^"^"  ^^'^^  divided  by  an  act  of  its  domestic  legisla- 

firl  1nundJnn''7nf  "'1T>-     "u'^i^     ^"  "'^  y*"  ^^O'^'  Charleston  was  attacked  at  once  by 
.na'ZJ^T"Ll".lP!'!'''?!!''"-,!  ^^^°^  despair  sat  on  every  countenance. 

—-..!_!.....„„.„..,, „„,g  ijiougiijuj  aoandoning  tne  couiUry."     Holmes. 


GG 


390 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV 


ture  into  nine  parishes  ;  in  each  of  which  a  parochial  vestry  was  established, 
and  a  ministerial  stipend  provided.  This  northern  province  had  for  many 
years  received  from  the  proprietaries  the  appellation  of  the  county  of  Jllht. 
marie  in  Carolina,  and  was  sometimes,  but  not  always,  included  in  the 
commission  of  the  governor  of  the  southern  settlement.  It  now  cpme  to  be 
termed  North  Carolina ;  and  at  the  dissolution  of  the  proprietary  govern- 
ment, was  made  a  separate  province  with  a  distinct  jurisdiction.' 

After  having  for  a  long  period  disregarded  entirely  the  ecclesiastical  con- 
cerns of  Carolina,  the  proprietaries,  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, turned  their  attention  to  this  subject  with  a  spirit  that  caused  the  ces- 
sation of  their  previous  indifference  to  be  greatly  lamented  ;  and  made  a 
first  and  last  attempt  to  signalize  their  boasted  zeal  for  Christianity,  by  the 
demonstration  of  a  temper  and  the  adoption  of  measures  the  most  insolent, 
unchristian,  and  tyrannical.     The  office  of  palatine  had  now  devolved  on 
Lord  Granville,  who  entertained  the  utmost  aversion  and  contempt  for  Dis- 
senters  of  all  descriptions,  and  who  had  already  signalized  his  bigotry  to 
the  church  of  England  by  the  vehement  zeal  with  which  he  supported  in 
parliament  the  bill  against  occasional  conformity.^     His  accession  to  the 
dignity  of  palatine  presented  him  with  an  opportunity  of  indulging  his  fa- 
vorite sentiments  in  the  regulation  of  the  ecclesiastical  polity  of  Carolina. 
Contemning  the  remonstrances  and  overruling  the  opposition  of  Archdale, 
he  eagerly  laid  hold  of  so  fair  an  occasion  of  exerting  his  bigotry  ;  aud  in 
Moore  and  Johnson,  on  whom  he  successively  bestowed  the  government 
of  the  province,  he  found  able  and  willing  instruments  of  the  execution  of 
his  arbitrary  designs.     These  men,  notwithstanding  the  great  numerical  su- 
periority of  the  Dissenters,  by  a  series  of  illegal  and  violent  proceedings,  ac- 
quired for  themselves  and  a  party  of  the  Episcopalian  persuasion  a  complete 
ascendency  over  the  provincial  assemblies,  which  they  exercised  in  the  for- 
mation of  laws  for  the  advancement  of  the  church  of  England,  and  the 
depression  of  every  other  model  of  Christianity.     After  various  preparatory 
measures,  which,  under  the  impudent  pretence  of  promoting  the  glory  of 
God,  effectually  banished  every  trace  of  peace  and  good-will  from  a  numer- 
ous society  of  his  rational  creatures,  the  Episcopal  faction  at  length,  in  the 
year  1704,  enacted  two  laws,  by  one  of  which  Dissenters  were  deprived  of 
all  civil  rights,  and  by  the  other  an  arbitrary  court  of  high  commission  (a  name 
of  evil  import  to  Englishmen)  was  erected  for  the  trial  of  ecclesiastical  causes 
and  the  preservation  of  religious  uniformity  in  Carolina.     At  the  time  when 
these  laws  were  framed,  not  only  the  most  wealthy  and  respectable  inhabit- 
ants, but  at  least  two  thirds  of  the  whole  population  of  the  province,  were 

Dissenters.  ^        ^        ,  •  ■     • 

The  English  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  on  receiving  in- 
telligence of  the  latter  of  those  ordinances,  declared  their  resolution  to  send 
no  more  missionaries  to  Carolina  till  it  should  be  repealed.  Both  the  edicts, 
however,  having  been  ratified  by  the  proprietaries,  and  the  complaints  of  the 
Dissenters  treated  with  derision,  tliese  oppressed  and  insulted  men  were 
advised  by  the  merchants  of  London,  who  traded  to  the  province,  to  seek 
redress  of  their  grievances  from  the  supreme  power  of  the  realm.  A  petition 
for  this  purpose  was  accordingly  presented  to  the  House  of  Lords,  who 

'  '  Olflmixon.     Hewit.     Williamson.     Holmes.  ,      ,      .  r        jr. 

*  Thig  was  a  bill  imposing  severe  jienalties  on  any  person,  who,  having  conformed  so  far  to 
tho  churcii  of  Eiiniand  as  lo  uiititic  liiui  to  faoid  a  municipal  office,  should  v\'ti  aiier  attend  5 
diraenting  place  of  worship. 


CHAP.  II.]      LAWS  AGAINST  DISSENTERS  DECLARED  NULL. 


dai 


B  province,  were 


Iff  conformed  so  far  M 
iid  vvvr  ttitor  attend  s 


were  struck  with   surprise  and  indignation  at  the  tyrannical  insolence  of 
tjiose  despotic  proprietaries  and  their  provincial   officers;    and    forthwith 
voted  an  address  to  Queen  Anne,  praying  lier  royal  repeal  of  the  obnoxious 
laws,  and  recommending  that  the  authors  of  them  should  bo  brought  to  con- 
dign punishment.    The  Commissioners  of  Trade,  to  whom  the  matter  was 
relerred  by  tlie  queen,  reported,  "  Uiat  the  making  such  laws  was  an  abuse 
of  tlie  powers  granted  by  the  charter,  and  inferred  a  forfeiture  of  the  same"  ; 
subjoining  their  advice  that  judicial  steps  should  be  adopted  for  having  the 
forleiture  legally  ascertained,  and  the  government  of  the  province  resumed 
by  the  crown.'     The  queen,  thereupon,  issued  an  order,  declaring  the  laws 
complained  of  null  and  void,  and  promised  to  institute  a  process  o*"  quo  war- 
ranto against  the  provincial  charter  ;  but  tliis  promise  was  never  hilfilled." 
It  was  alleged  that  the  forfeiture  of  the  cliarter  was  obstructed  by  legal 
difficulties  arisnig  from  the  nonage  of  some  of  the  proprietaries,  who  could 
not  justly  be  held  responsible  for  the  acts  of  the  rest ;  — as  if  the  inabiUty 
of  these  hereditary  rulers  of  mankind  to  afford  protection  to  their  subjects 
had  not  itself  furnished  the  strongest  reason  why  they  should  be  dispossessed 
of  the  power  of  exacting  obedience  from  them.     While  incessant  attempts 
were  made  by  the  British  government  to  bereave  the  New  England  States 
of  the  charters  by  which  popular  liberty  was  guarded,  this  fair  and  legitimate 
occasion  was  neglected,  of  emancipating  the  people  of  Carolina  from  a 
patent  which  had  confessedly  been  made  subservient  to  the  most  odious  op- 
pression and  intolerance  ;  and  even  after  the  proprietaries  had  publicly  de- 
clared (as  they  were  soon  after  constrained  to  do)  that  it  was  not  in  their 
power  to  defend  the  province  against  the  Indians,  by  whose  attacks  it  was 
menaced,  the  proprietary  government  was  sufiered  to  endure  until  it  sunk 
under  its  own  weakness  and  incapacity.     It  was  in  the  year  1706,  that  the 
intolerant  policy  of  Lord  Granville  received  this  signal  check  ;   and  from 
that  period,  the  Dissenters  were  permitted  to  enjoy,  not  indeed  the  equality 
which  they  had  originally  been  encouraged  to  expect,  but  a  simple  tolera- 
tion.    In  the  following  year,  an  act  of  assembly  was  passed  in  South  Car- 
olina for  the^  establishment  of  religious  worship  according  to  the  forms  of  the 
church  of  England.     By  this  act  the  province  was  divided  into  ten  par- 
ishes ;  and  provision  was  made  for  building  a  church  in  each  parish,  and 
for  tiie  endowment  of  its  minister.     The  churches  were   soon  after  built, 
and  supplied  with  ministers  by  the  English  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel.^ 

The  progress  of  population,  if  not  the  most  certain,  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  tests  of  the  prosperity  of  a  commonwealth  ;  but  it  is  a  test  not 
easily  applicable  to  societies  subject,  like  all  the  American  States,  to  a  con- 
tinual, but  irregular,  influx  and  efflux  of  people.  The  population  of  North 
Carolina  appears  to  have  sustained  a  considerable  check  from  the  troubles 
and  confusions  that  attended  Culpepper's  insurrection  and  Sothel's  tyranny  ; 
insomuch  that,  in  the  year  1694,  the  list  of  taxable  hihabitants  was  found  to 
contain  only  seven  hundred  and  eighty-seven  names,  —  about  half  the  num- 
ber  that  the  colony  had  possessed  at  the  commencement  of  Miller's  admin- 

'  This  report,  among  otiier  signatures,  has  that  of  Prior,  the  poet,  who  was  one  of  tlic  Com- 
miBsioners  of  Trade  at  the  time. 

'  Oldmixon.  Ilewit.  Preparatory  to  their  address  to  the  queen,  the  House  of  Lords  passed 
a  resolution  containing  these  remaritablo  expressions  :  —  that  the  law  for  enforcing  ronformity 
I/)  the  church  of  England  in  Carolina  "  is  an  encouragement  to  atheism  and  irreligion,  de 

-•— - ir..:...,  .,,1,,  iPiiti-  iCf  tiir  lum  Biiu  utjpoptiiation  oi  tiic  province. 

Humphrey's  Historical  Account  of  the  Society  for  propagating  the  Gospel. 


392 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  It. 


tstration.'  Frequent  emigrations  were  mndc  from  the  northern  to  the  south- 
ern province  ; "  and  we  may  conchuio  that  the  dinunulion  of  inhabitants, 
ascertained  in  1694,  was  occasioned,  partly  at  least,  in  this  manner,  —  since, 
prior  to  the  your  1708,  only  two  persons  (a  Turk  for  murder,  and  an  old 
woman  for  witchcraft)  perished  on  the  scaflbld  in  North  Carolina,^ —  a  fact, 
w^iich,  considering  the  violent  convulsions  that  the  province  had  undergone, 
appears  highly  creditable  to  the  humanity  of  the  people.  In  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  North  Carolina  received  an  accession  to  its  in- 
habitants,  first  from  a  number  of  French  refugees,  who  removed  to  it  from 
Virginia  ;  and  afterwards  from  a  troop  of  (Jermans,  who,  many  years  before, 
were  expelled  from  their  homes  by  the  desolation  of  the  palatinate,  and  had 
since  experienced  a  great  variety  of  wretchedness  and  exile.''  In  the  year 
1710,  its  whole  population  amounted  to  six  thousand  persons  ;  ^  but  of  these 
not  two  thousand  were  taxables.  There  was  no  court-house  in  North  Car- 
olina before  the  year  1722  ;  the  asseniblies  and  general  courts  till  then  be- 
ing  convened  in  private  dwelling-houses.  Debts  and  rents  were  generally 
paid  in  hides,  tallow,  furs,  or  other  productions  of  the  country.  In  the 
year  1705,  it  was  appointed  by  law  that  marriages  should  be  celebrated  by 
the  ministers  of  religion  ;  but  magistrates  were  permitted  to  perform  this 
function  in  parishes  unprovided  with  ministers.  The  executive  power 
within  the  province  was  feeble  and  inefficient ;  prtly  in  consequence  of  the 
state  of  dispersion  in  which  the  bulk  of  the  mhabitants  lived,  and  partly 
from  the  corrupt  dispositions  or  despicable  characters  of  many  of  the  exec- 
utive officers.*  In  the  year  1709,  Cary,  the  collector  of  the  proprietary 
quitrents,  resolving  to  appropriate,  or  at  least  refusing  to  account  for,  the 
produce  of  his  collections,  found  it  easy,  with  the  aid  of  a  few  idle  and  dis- 
solute partisans,  to  maintain  himself  in  a  state  of  resistance  to  the  proprie- 
tary government,  and  suspend  the  operations  of  justice.  The  people, 
though  they  neither  approved  nor  abetted  his  fraudulent  and  rebellious  con- 
duct, made  no  opposition  to  it  ;  and  the  governor,  unable  to  reduce  him 
to  obedience,  applied  for  assistance  to  Virginia,  where  some  regular  troops 
were  quartered  at  the  time.  On  the  approach  of  a  small  party  of  these 
forces,  Cary  fled  the  colony,  and  his  partisans  dispersed.' 

The  population  of  South  Carolina,  in  the  year  1700,  is  said  to  have 
amounted  to  no  more  than  five  thousand  five  hundred  persons,^  —  a  com- 
putation probably  short  of  the  truth.  For  several  years  after  the  first  col- 
onization of  the  territory,  there  were  very  few  negro  slaves  in  Carolina ; 
but  the  demand  for  them  was  increased  by  the  increasing  cultivation  of  rice, 
which  was  reckoned  too  unhealthy  and  laborious  for  European  constitu- 
tions ;'  and  the  slave-ships  of  Great  Britain  promoted  the  demand  by  the 
readiness  with  which  they  anticipated  and  supplied  it.  At  the  close  of  the 
seventeentli  century,  Charleston  was   already  a  flourishing  city,  containing 

•  Williamsun.  *  LawsoiTrZ/wfon/'of  Carolina.  »  Wifiiamson.  *  Ibid. 
»  Warden.    In  the  year  1717,  the  taxubles  amounted  to  two  thousand.    Williamson. 

•  In  1701,  Porter  indicted  a  man  for  calling  him  "  a  cheating  rogue."  The  defendant  jusli- 
fied  the  words,  and,  proving  that  they  were  properly  applied,  was  acquitted,  and  bIIowk]  his 
cost*  from  the  prosecutor.  Yet  a  few  years  after,  I'orter  wa«  appointed  a  proprietary  dfiniity 
and  member  of  council.  Williamson.  In  1726,  Burrington,  who  had  previously  held  liie 
office  of  governor,  and  afterwards  held  it  again,  was  indicted  for  defamation,  in  saying  of  the 
existing  governor,  Sir  Richard  Evcrard,  that  "  he  was  no  more  fit  for  a  governor  than  Sancho 
Panza,  and  for  riotously  threatening  to  scalp  "  his  d — d  thick  skull."  lb.  Two  years  after, 
the  grand  jury  prttent  Sir  Richard,  the  gotemor,  for  having  with  his  tane  twice  or  thrice 
struck  Oo^rse  Ajlnn.     lli; 

•  Williainson.  •  Warden.  *  llewit. 


ClIAP.  II  ]  CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  CAROLINA. 


8dS 


geveral  handsome  edifices,  a  public  library,  and  a  population  of  tliree 
thousand  souls.*  No  printing  press  was  established  in  Carolina  till  thirty 
years  alter  ;  and  tdl  then  the  provincial  laws  were  promulgated  by  oral 
proclamation.  r  o  / 

There  prevailed  in  this  province,  from  the  period  when  the  Fundamental 
Constitutions  vyero  enacted,  a  method  of  empanelline  juries,  which  micht 
have  been  copied  with  advantage  both  by  the  other  colonies  and  the  parent 
state.  1  he  names  of  all  persons  qualified  to  servo  as  jurymen  were  put 
mto  a  ballot-box,  from  which  a  child  drew  out  as  many  as  were  requisite  to 
omi  four  severa  juries  ;  and  these  having  been  put  into  a  second  ballot- 
box,  another  child  drew  forth  the  names  that  were  to  compose  end.  re- 
spective  petty  jury.  In  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  this  vahi- 
able  regulation  was  abolished  by  the  palatine ;  but  the  remonstrances  of  the 
people,  aided  by  the  zea  ous  interposition  of  the  agent  at  the  court  of  Lon- 
don  or  the  Nevy  Kngland  States,  compelled  him  soon  after  to  restore  it.» 

When  the  difficulties  attending  the  establishment  of  the  first  settlers  in 
Carolina  were  in  some  degree  overcome,  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  the  cheap- 
„ess  ol  lood,  and  the  agreeableness  and  general  salubrity  of  the  climate 
artorded  a  powerful  encouragement  to  national  increase.  Families  of  ten 
and  twelve  children  were  frequently  seen  in  the  houses  of  the  colonists  at 
the  close  ot  the  seventeenth  century  ;  ^  and  though  some  parts  of  both  the 
provinces  were  for  a  time  infected  with  severe  epidemical  diseases,  and 
others  still  continue  to  be  unfavorable  to  health  at  particular  seasons,  yet 
the  statistical  accounts  and  the  registers  of  mortality  sufficientlif  demonstrate 
that  the  climate  of  the  whole  region  is  in  the  main  conducive  to  the  preser- 
vation as  well  as  to  the  production  of  life.  The  salubrity  of  these,  as  well 
as  of  the  other  provinces  of  North  America,  has  been  greatly  promoted  by 
the  progress  of  industry  in  opening  the  woods,  draining  the  marshes,  and 
confining  the  streams  within  definite  channels.  Yet  the  influence  of  cultiva- 
tion has  not  been  uniformly  favorable  to  health  in  the  Carolinas  ;  and  much 
of  the  disease  with  which  these  regions  are  aflflicted  at  certain  seasons  is 
ascribed  to  the  periodical  inundations  which  the  culture  of  the  rice  lands 
requires.* 

During  the  infant  state  of  the  colony,  the  proprietaries  sold  the  land  at 
twenty  shillings  for  every  hundred  acres,  and  sixpence  of  quitrent.  They 
raised  the  price  in  the  year  1694  to  thirty  shillings  ;  and  in  1711,  to  forty 
shillings  for  every  hundred  acres,  and  one  shilling  of  quitrent.*  Lawson 
u ho  travelled  through  Carolina  in  the  year  1700,  celebrates  the  courtesy 
and  hospitality  of  the  planters  ;  but  represents  an  aversion  to  labor,  and 
a  negligent  contentment  with  immediate  gratification,  as  qualities  very  prev- 
alent among  them.  Fruit,  he  says,  was  so  plentiful  that  the  hogs  were  fed 
with  peaches. «  The  Carolinians  have  always  been  characterized  by  a 
strong  predilection  for  the  sports  of  the  field.  The  disposition  that  was 
evinced,  at  an  early  period  of  the  history  of  these  provinces,  to  treat  in- 
solvent  debtors  with  extreme  indulgence,  has  continued  ever  since  to  be  a 

|Oldmixon  ~  »  Oldmixon  (aTidiiy  '  Oldmixon. 

vvaruon.     IJr.  Willminson  has  dcmonstriifcd  tlint  Ihn  immediate  eflects  of  the  extirpation 
01  wood  in  Caroina  have  always  been  unfriondiy  to  health,  from  the  exposure  to  the  gun  of  a 
I  ,.?,';!  ■'■•"'''  ''"•'^  covered  with  vegetable  produce  in  a  state  of  dccavf 
'  WiJhauison.  ' 

..,*.  ''".V"*?";    ^'■'■'''^'•'o  spo'i***  ,'"  nearly  the  same  terms  of  the  fertility  of  Carolina.    Blomo 
Biaitts  that  the   nrnvim-iv  in  1(>>U>   «ni>i.i:>.<wl  ...»i. „-!.u.. i  •:    ■     <  ■      -.  . 

« Btiite  of  indigence.  """' ' '    '"'"  ""    ^"'  *'"'"""'  "''"  rcpairoa  to  it  ir 

VOL.  I.  50 


394 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


pronnnent  feature  in  their  legislation,  and  has  doubtless  encouraged  a  loose 
and  improvident  readiness  to  contract  debts.^     The  most  serious  evils  witli 
which  the  two  provinces  have  been  afflicted  have  arisen  from  the  abuse  of 
spirituous  liquors,  the  neglect  of  education,  and  the  subsistence  of  negro 
slavery      It  was  long  before  institutions  for  the  education  of  youth  were 
eeneraliy  established  in  Carolina  ;  the  benefits  of  knowledge  were  confined 
entirely  to  the  children  of  wealthy  planters,  who  were  sent  to  the  colleges 
of  Europe  or  to  the  seminaries  in  the  Northern  States  ;  and  the  consequent 
ignorance  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  people,  together  with  the  influence  of  a 
warm  climate  and  the  prevalent  aversion  to  industry  (increased  by  the  pride 
which  the  possession  of  slaves  inspires,  and  the  discredit  which  slavery 
brings  on  labor),  promoted  an  intemperate  use  of  ardent  spirits,  winch  con- 
tributed  additionally  to  deprave  their  sentiments,  habits,  and  manners.    It 
was  an  unfortunate  supposition  (whether  well  or  ill  founded)  that  was  at 
one  time  entertained,  that  the  water  found  in  this  part  of  America  pos- 
sessed  deleterious  qualities,  which  an  infusion  of  rum  was   necessary  to 
counteract.     The  various  evils  which  we  have  enumerated  (except  those 
arising  from  negro  slavery,  which  are  more  pernicious,  perhaps,  than  all 
the  rest)  prevailed  longest  and  most  extensively  in  North  Carolina.     The 
improvement  that  after  times  have  witnessed  in  all  these  respects  has  been 
considerable  in  both  the  provinces  ;   and  the  inhabitants  of  bouth  Caro- 
Una,  in  particular,  have  long  been  distinguished  for  the  cultivation  of  htera- 
ture,  the  elegance  of  their  manners,  and  their  polite  hospitahty. 

In  every  community  where  slavery  exists,  the  treatment  experienced  by 
the  slaves  depends  very  much  on  the  proportion  which  they  bear  to  the 
number  of  free  men,  and  the  consequent  apprehensions  which  they  are  ca- 
pable  of  inspiring.'  No  passion  has  a  more  insatiable  appetite,  or  prompts 
to  more  unrelenting  hatred  and  cruelty,  than  fear  ;  and  no  terror  can  be 
more  selfish  or  more  provocative  of  inhumanity  than  that  which  is  inspired 
in  men's  bosoms  by  the  danger  of  retaliation  of  the  injustice  which  they 
have  inflicted  and  are  still  continuing  to  inflict.  In  South  Carolina,  for  a 
very  considerable  period,  the  number  of  slaves  bore  a  greater  proportion  to 
that  of  the  whole  population  than  in  any  other  of  the  North  American  colo- 
nies. The  consequence  of  this  state  of  things  was,  that  the  slaves  of  the 
South  Carolina  planters  were  treated  with  extreme  severity  ;  and  conspira- 
cies were  repeatedly  formed  by  them  for  a  general  massacre  of  their  mas- 
ters. Their  discontent  was  inflamed  by  the  intrigues,  and  rendered  the  more 
dangerous  from  the  vicinity,  of  the  Spaniards.^  Neither  m  this  nor  any 
other  country,  of  which  the  history  has  j^et  been  written,  have  the  Protestant 
cler'^y  of  the  Episcopal  persuasion  distinguished  themselves  by  exeruons  to 
mitigate  the  evils  of  slavery.  Wherever  a  Protestant  Episcopal  church  has 
been  estabhshed  by  law,  the  only  ministers  of  the  gospel,  whose  precepts 
have  asserted  and  whose  example  has  recognized  the  entire  participation  of 
negroes  in  the  rights  of  human  nature,  have  been  Methodists,  Moravians, 
or  Dissenters  of  some  other  denomination.  More  practical  Christianity  and 
more  humane  enterprise,  in  this  respect,  have  been  evinced  by  the  state 


'  Warden. 


»  Ibid. 


Tirucydi'dcB  (Book  VIII.)  ascribes  the  pcoulinr  cruelty  with  which  slaves  were  trentpd  by 
■    ■     "■  ■         -     -L     linrly  In 

..     ^ -,„„„„  .„  .-„. „,i.ripn  hn«  boon  the  hatred  awakened  mthe 

liu:  iiicrcasr  tri    tirr-  "-•  •••   —'.*-— *•• 


.....  ...-, „...  _ -       ,        inriy  large  nroportion,  which,  in  thc«o  Htntcs  the 

i.umber  of  tho  slaves  bore  to  the  total  nopulation  of  tl.o  commonwenith.    In  jiroportion  to 


breaots  of  the  w'  ite  Americans  agoinst  tho  whole  nejjro  race. 
♦  Wvnne.    Hewit.    Warden. 


CHAP.  II.]         CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  CAROLINA. 


396 


clergy  in  countries  where  the  Catholic  church  has  prevailed.  The  priests  of 
this  persuasion  have  generally  constituted  themselves  the  defenders  and  pa- 
trons of  Indian  savages  and  negro  slaves.'  Perhaps  tliis  has  arisen  in  part 
from  the  strong  peculiarities  of  moral  and  social  position  by  which  the 
Catholic  priests  are  separated  from  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  which  may 
lessen  in  their  estimation  the  differences  of  temporal  condition  by  which 
the  several  classes  of  the  laity  are  distinguished.  The  Cathohc  church,  it 
must  likewise  be  considered,  exercises  more  temporal  power  than  any  Prot- 
estant church  over  its  votaries  ;  and  it  has  been  very  generally  associated 
ffilh  despotic  government,  under  which  the  rights  enjoyed  by  individuals, 
whether  m  their  slaves  or  in  any  other  description  of  property,  are  more 
subjected  to  magisterial  superintendence  and  control,  than  in  states  where 
the  government  is  of  a  more  popular  description. 

The  earljr  annals  of  Carohna  have  not  transmitted  to  us  any  account  of 
the  manner  m  which  the  provincial  assembhes  were  constituted,  or  of  tlie 
extent  of  property  to  which  political  franchises  were  attached.  All  the 
executivp  officers  were  nominated  by  the  proprietaries,  who  specified  the 
amount  of  the  official  salaries  in  the  warrants  of  appointment.  So  great  was 
the  difficulty  of  collecting  money,  or  even  agricultural  produce,  especially  in 
the  northern  colony,  that  the  proprietaries  were  frequently  obliged  to  grant 
assignations  of  lands  or  quitrents  to  their  officers  in  order  to  secure  the 
performance  of  their  duties.  Sir  Nathaniel  Johnson,  who  was  appointed 
governor  of  Carolina  in  the  year  1702,  received  a  warrant  for  a  salary  of 
two  hundred  pounds  a  year.  The  other  contemporary  officers  had  sala- 
ries, of  which  the  highest  was  sixty  pounds  and  the  lowest  forty  pounds  a 
year.     The  governor's  salary  was  doubled  in  the  year  1717.^ 

Carolina,  by  its  amazing  fertility  in  animal  and  vegetable  produce,  was 
enabled,  from  an  early  period,  to  carry  on  a  considerable  trade  with 
Jamaica,  Barbadoes,  and  the  Leeward  Islands,  which,  at  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  are  said  to  have  depended  in  a  great  measure  on  that 
colony  for  the  means  of  subsistence."^  Its  staple  commodities  were  rice, 
tar,  and,  afterwards,  indigo.  Oldmixon,  whose  history  was  published  in  the 
/ear  1708,  observes  that  the  trade  of  the  colony  with  England  had  re- 
cently gained  a  considerable  increase  ;  "for  notwithstanding  all  the  discour- 
agements the  people  lie  under,"  he  adds,  "  seventeen  ships  came  last  year 
laden  from  Carolina  with  rice,  skins,  pitch,  and  tar,  in  the  Virginia  fleet, 
besides  straggling  ships."  * 

By  an  act  of  assembly,  passed  in  the  year  1715,'  every  planter  of  Carolina 
was  required  to  purchase  and  inclose  a  burial-ground  for  all  persons  dying 
on  his  estate  ;  and,  before  interment  of  any  corpse,  to  call  in  at  least  tliree 


'  '''''JL^'^Kf"-'  °j  ^i!*""^'  'i'  ''*/  ''?''"^^'''<"'i  '8  the  only  estabjished  church  in  which  negroes 
o  o««,«  fo.„.,j  tu„       I,  ^e         .u_-j      Several  Catholic  bishops  have  been  negroes  ;  and 


have  ever  obtained  the  rank  of  priesthood.    „ „.  ^„„.„„^  , 

one  negro,  at  least,  has  been  canonized  aa  a  saint  at  Rome.  See  Gregoire's  Treatise  i>e/rt 
MUssf  de  la  Peau.  One  instance  may,  however,  be  cited  of  the  ordination  of  a  negro  as  a 
priMt  of  the  church  of  England,  by  Keppel,  Bishop,  of  Exeter,  in  1765.  Mnual  Register  for 
rHxi.  It  mijht  movo  our  surprise  (if  any  inconsistency  in  an  American  slave-owner  were 
justly  surprising)  to  find  Roman  Catholics  in  Aniierica  deny  the  entire  rational  capacity  of  men 
whom  the  supposed  infallible  church  of  Rome  has  consecrated  as  bishops  and  canonized  as 
saints. 

•  Oldmixon.    Hewit.    Williamson.  s  Archdale. 

♦  Oldmixon.    The  materials  of  this  statement  seem  to  havo  been  obtained  from  Archdale. 
'  LnuM  of  Carolina. 

I  have  not  been  able  to  learn  either  the  prooise  date  or  nnv  other  oarticularg  of  the  ad- 
luinwuulioii  ol"  Major  Tynte,  who,  in  tiio'  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  for  a 
short  lime  governor  of  South  Carolina.    King,  the  English  poet  fwho  died  in  1712),  celebrated 


896 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  IV. 


or  four  of  his  neighbours  to  view  it,  for  the   purpose  of  insuring  further 
inquiry  in  case  of  any  suspicious^appearance. 

Tynte  in  «ome  Latin  stanzas,  whiih  he  afterwards  rendered  into  the  following  English  vT^ 

•^"  ■  ■"  «  Tynte  was  the  man  who  first  from  Britain's  shore 

Palladian  arts  to  Carolina  bore ; 
His  tuneful  harp  attending  Muses  strung, 
And  Phojbus'  skill  inspired  the  lays  he  sung. 
Strong  towers  and  palaces  their  rise  began, 
And  listening  stones  to  sacred  fabrics  ran  ; 
Just  laws  were  taught,  and  curious  arts  of  peace. 
And  trade's  brisk  current  flowed  with  wealth  s  increase. 
On  such  foundations  learned  Athens  rose  ; 
So  Dido's  thong  did  Carthage  first  inclose  ; 
So  Rome  was  taught  old  empires  to  subdue,  _ 
As  Tynte  creates  and  governs  now  tlie  new.' 


Uowing  English  ver> 


BOOK    V. 

NEW  YORK. 
CHAPTER    I. 

Hndson'8  Voyage  of  Discovery. -First  Settlement  of  the  Dutch  at  Albany.- The  Piovinoa 
granted  by  the  States  General  to  the  West  India  Company  of  HollandL-lThe  0010^001^ 
nm  extend  their  Set  lements  into  Connecticut.  -  Disputes  with  the  New  England  Colonts 
-Delaware  first  colonized  by  the  Swedes. -War ^between  the  Dutch  and  IndiaS."^ 
Farther  D.sputos  with  New  England  -Designs  of  Charles  the  Second.  -  Alarm  a^Eii, 
prtions  of  the  Dutch  Governor.  -  The  Province  granted  by  Charter  to  the  Dukoof  York  1 
mvaded  by  an  English  Fleet  -  surrenders.  -  Wise  Government  of  Colonel  Nichols. -Hoi- 
land  cedes  New  York  to  England- recaptures  it- finally  cedes  it  again. -New  Charter 
granted  to  the  Duke  of  York.  -  Arbitrary  Government  of  iVndros. -Biscoptent  of  tt"  cS- 
onists.  -  The  Duke  consents  to  give  New  York  a  Free  Constitution. 

New  York  is  distinguished  from  the  other  American  commonwealths 
whose  history  we  have  already  considered,  both  by  the  race  of  the  Euro- 
pean settlers  who  first  resorted  to  it,  and  by  the  mode  of  its  annexation  to 
the  dominion  of  Britain.  In  all  the  other  provinces,  the  first  colonists  were 
Englishmen  ;  and  the  several  occupations  of  American  territory,  and  corre^ 
spending  extensions  of  the  British  empire,  were  the  enterprises  of  Engli^ 
subjects,  impelled  by  the  spirit  of  commercial  adventure,  inflamed  with  re- 
ligious zeal,  or  allured  by  ambitious  expectation.  The  people  of  England 
derived,  m  all  these  instances,  an  increase  of  their  commercial  resources, 
and  the  crown  an  enlargement  of  its  dominion,  from  the  acts  of  private  in- 
dividuals, sanctioned  no  doubt  by  the  approbation  of  public  authority,  but 
unaided  by  the  treasure  or  troops  of  the  nation.  But  the  territory  of  New 
York  was  originally  colonized,  not  from  England,  but  from  Holland  ;  >nd 
the  incorporation  of  it  with  the  rest  of  the  British  dominions  was  accom- 
plished, not  by  settlement,  but  by  conquest,— -not  by  the  enterprise  of  in- 
dividuals, but  by  the  forces  of  the  state.  It  is  a  singularity  still  more 
worthy  of  remark,  and  illustrative  of  the  slender  influence  of  human  views 
and  purposes  in  the  preadjustment  and  connection  of  events,  that  this  mili- 
tary conquest  proved  the  means  of  establishing  a  colony  of  Quakers  in 
America  ;  and  the  sword  of  Charles  the  Second,  in  conquering  an  appanage 
for  his  bigot  brother,  prepared  a  tranquil  establishment,  in  New  .Jersey  and 
Pennsylvania,  for  the  votaries  of  peace,  toleration,  and  pliilanthropy. 

The  pretensions  of  the  Dutch  to  this  territory  were  certainly,  from  the 
first,  more  consistent  with  natural  justice  than  with  the  commonly  received 
law  of  nations,  and  the  privilege  which  this  law  attaches  to  priority  of 
discovery.  For  if,  on  the  one  hand,  the  voyage  of  Cabot,  and  his  general 
and  cursory  survey  of  the  North  American  continent,  preceded  by  more 
than  a  century  the  occurrence  from  which  the  Dutch  occupation  originated, 
ihjre  seems,  on  the  other  hand,  a  monstrous  disregard  of  the  general  rights 
of  mankind,  in  maintaining  that  a  privilege,  so  precariously  constituted,  could 
lubsBt  80  long  unexercised,  and  that  a  navigator,  by  equally  approachhia 
mui  America,  in  a  vain  and  erroneous  search  of  a  p^futage  to  tke  I<i)#«sV 

uu 


398 


HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


should  acquire  for  his  countrymen  a  right  to  prevent  the  whole  continent 
from  being  Inhabited  for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  It  is  the  dictate  of 
reason  that  the  title  accruing  from  discovery  may  be  waived  by  dereliction, 
and  extinguished  by  the  sounder  right  created  by  occupation. 

The  prior  right  of  England  (yet  unrecognized  by  the  rest  of  the  world) 
had  produced  no  other  permanent  occupation  than  a  feeble  settlement  on 
the  distant  shore  of  James  River,  in  Virginia,  which  had  now  subsisted  for 
two  years,  when  Henry  Hudson,  an  Englishman,  employed  by  the  East 
India  Company  of  Holland,  set  sail  from  the  Texel  for  the  discovery  of  a 
northwest  passage  to  India.     Having  attempted  in  vain  to  accomplish  the 
object  of  his  voyage  [March,  1609],  he  steered  for  Cape  Cod,  and  entered 
the  Bay  of  Chesapeake,  where  he  remarked  the  infant  settlement  of  the  En- 
glish.    He  afterwards  anchored  his  vessel  off  the  Delaware,  and  proceed- 
jng  thence  to  Long  Island,  sailed  up  the  river  Manhattan,  on  whose  banks 
the  chief  fruits  of  his  enterprise  were  destined  to  grow.    Some  authors  have 
asserted  that  he  sold  his  right  as  discoverer  of  this  territory  to  the  Dutch ; 
but  the  assertion  is  equally  unproved  and  improbable  ;  as  he  could  convey 
to  the  people  in  whose  service  he  was  engaged  no  right  which  the  voyage 
itself  did  not  vest  in  them  by  a  much  better  title.     Several  voyages  were 
afterwards  made  from  Holland  tr  the  river  Manhattan,  which,  at  first,  was 
called  the  North  River,  but,  in  process  of  time,  received  the  name  of  the 
able  and  enterprising  navigator,  by  whom,  if  not  originally  discovered,  it 
was  introduced  for  the  first  time  to  the  acquaintance  of  the  Dutch.    This 
people  now  conceived  that  they  had  acquired  a  sufficient  title  to  the  adja- 
cent territory,  which  they  distinguished  by  the  name  of  Nova  Belgia,  or  New 
Netherlands.!     The  depending  or  recent  conflicts  of  rival  provinces,  and 
even  rival  nations,  lent  at  one  time  to  all  the  circumstances  attending  the 
first  occupation  of  this  territory  an  interest  which  thej  nave  long  ceased 
to  possess,  except  in  the  estimation  of  antiquarians. 

The  favorable  report  that  Hudson  gave  of  the  country  having  been  con- 
firmed by  subsequent  voyagers,  an  association  of  Dutch  merchants  embraced 
tlie  resolution  of  establishing  a  trading  settlement  within  its  confines  [1614]; 
and  the  States  General  promoted  the  enterprise  by  granting  to  its  projectors 
a  monopoly  of  the  trade  of  Hudson's  River.     Encouraged  by  tins  act  of 
favor,  the  adventurers,  in  the  course  of  the  same  year,  appropriated  a  small 
portion  of  land  on  the  western  bank  of  the  river,  near  Albany,  where  they 
erected  a  fort,  and  intrusted  the  government  of  the  place  to  one  Henry 
Christiaens.     This  feeble  settlement  had  scarcely  been  established,  when  it 
was  invaded  by  a  Virginian  squadron,  commanded  by  Captain  Argal,  and 
returning  from  the  unjust  and  useless  conquest  of  the.  French  possessions 
in  the  Bay  of  Fundy.     Argal  claimed  the  territory  occupied  by  the  Dutch, 
as  appertaining  by  the  law  of  nations  to  the  British  dominion  in  America ; 
and  the  provincial  governor  was  compelled  to  obey  a  summons  of  surrender, 
and  to  stipulate  allegiance  to  England,  and  tribute  and  subordination  to  the 
Kovernment  of  Virginia.^     The  States  of  Holland  had  too  recently  estab- 
Sshed  an  independence,  promoted  by  the  aid  and  recognized  by  the  medi- 
ation of  Great  Britain,  to  suffer  them  to  make  this  outrage  the  cause  of 
quarrel  whh  a  powerful   ally,  whose   friendship   they  did   not  yet  deem 
Uiemselves  strong  enough  to  dispense  with.     They  forbore,  therefore,  to 

~"      Suth'i  KiV^nia.    Douglaw'i 


>  Purchaa.    Charlevoix,  Hiitory  oJJfeva  Fianct.    OWmixon. 
h'i  History  of  /" 
CImo.  U.,  anU 


tummary.    'imith'i  History  of  Aew  York. 


CHAP.  I.] 


DUTCH  WEST  INDIA  COMPANY. 


399 


'a  Virginia.    Douglaw'i 


take  any  notice  of  Argal's  hostile  encroachment ;  and  it  is  even  asserted  by 
some  writers,  that,  in  answer  to  a  complaint  by  the  British  court  of  their 
intrusion  into  America,  they  denied  that  the  settlement  was  established  by 
their  authority,  and  represented  it  as  the  private  enterprise  of  a  few  obscure 
individuals.  Ihe  same  writers  have  alleged,  that  the  Dutch,  while  they 
disavovved  every  pretension  that  could  infringe  on  the  claims  of  England, 
besought  the  English  monarch  to  permit  a  few  trading-houses  to  be  erected 
within  hts  territories  on  Hudson's  River  ;  and  that  a  permission  to  this  ex- 
tent was  actually  obtained.  Whatever  truth  or  falsehood  there  may  be  in 
these  statements,  it  is  certain,  that,  in  the  year  after  Argal's  invasion  [16151 
a  nevf  governor,  Jacob  Elkin,  having  arrived  at  the  fort  with  an  additional 
complement  of  setUers,  the  claim  of  the  English  to  the  stipulated  depend- 
ence was  forthwith  defied,  and  the  payment  of  tribute  successfully  resisted. 
For  the  better  security  of  their  resumed  independence  of  English  domi- 
nation, the  Dutch  colonists  now  erected  a  second  fort  on  the  southwest 
point  of  Long  Island  ;  and  afterwards  built  two  others  at  Good  Hope  on 
Connecticut  River,  and  at  Nassau,  on  the  east  side  of  Delaware  Bay 
They  continued  for  a  series  of  years,  in  unmolested  tranquillity,  to  mature 
their  settlement,  increase  their  numbers,  and,  by  the  exercise  of  their  pecu- 
liar national  virtues  of  patience  and  industry,  to  subdue  the  first  difficulties 
and  hardships  incident  to  an  infant  colony. ^ 

The  States  of  Holland,  finding  their  commerce  enlarge  with  the  duration 
of  pohlical  freedom  and  the  enjoyment  of  peace,  and  observing  that  their 
people  were  successful  m  preserving  the  footing  they  had  gained  on  Hud- 
son's River,  began  to  entertain  the  design  of  improving  this  settlement,  and 
rendering  it  the  basis  of  more  extended  colonization  in  America.  With 
this  purpose  was  combined  the  scheme  of  their  celebrated  West  India 
Company,  wh-ch  was  established  in  the  year  1620,  and  to  which,  m  pur- 
suance of  their  favorite  policy  of  colonizing  by  means  of  exclusive  compa- 
nies, It  was  determined  to  commit  the  administration  of  New  Netherlands. 
They  watched  with  a  jealous  eye  the  proceedings  of  the  English  Puritan  ex- 
iles at  L^den,2  and  viewed  with  alarm  their  projected  migration  to  the 
banks  of  Hudson's  River.  Unable  or  unwilling  to  obstruct  the  design  by 
an  opposition  which  would  have  involved  an  immediate  collision  with  the 
pretensions  of  Britain,  they  defeated  it  by  bribing  tlte  Dutch  captain,  with 
whom  the  emigrants  sailed,^  to  convey  them  so  far  to  the  northward,  that 
their  plantation  was  eventually  formed  in  the  territory  of  Massachusetts. 
This  fraudful  proceeding  of  the  Dutch,  though  it  prevented  a  rival  settlement 
from  hemg  established  on  Hudson's  River,  discredited  their  own  title  to  this 
territory,  and  proportionally  ratified  the  claim  of  Great  Britain,  which,  in 
the  same  year,  was  again  distinctly  asserted  and  exercised  by  the  publication 
of  Kmg  James's  patent  in  favor  of  the  Grand  Council  of  Plymouth.  The 
Plymouth  patent,  however,  which  was  declared  void  in  the  following  year 
[November,  1621]  by  the  English  House  of  Commons,  and  surrendered  a 
few  years  after  by  the  patentees,  seemed  as  little  entitled  to  respect  abroad 
as  to  favor  at  home ;  for,  even  if  its  disregard  of  the  Dutch  occupation 
should  not  be  supposed  to  infringe  the  law  of  nations,  it  unquestionablv 
'!!!"iil_'^  reproach  by  appropriating  territories  where  the  French,  in  virtue 

'Oldmixon.    Sthh.     Wvnne.     Smith.    |„  the  year  1624,  the  exports  from  New  Nether- 

ifivfln  hiinHr«.i  ^M«,»>  gkins,  estimated  at  27,150 


- Wynne. 

lands  were  "  four  thousand  beavers'  and  seven"  hundred '^ttVrs 


guilders."    Hazard. 
'  See  uuok  ii.>  Chap.  I.,  am«. 


'  Mather.    Neal.    Hutchinson.    Uldmuoo 


400 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


of  previous  charters  from  their  sovereign,  had  already  ertablished  the 
settlements  of  Acadia  and  Canada,  ^^he  nullity  of  ^he  P»/™°"V'?"'' 
i/i  this  last  particular,  was  taciUy  acknowledged  by  Charles  the  First,  m 
1630  when,  by  the  Ueaty  of  St.  Germain,  he  restored  the  French  provmces 
S  his  aims  had  conquered  in  the  preceding  year.  Whether  the  States 
of  HoUand  considered  the  patent  equally  unavadmg  agamst  their  pretensions, 
or  not,  they  made  a  grant  of  the  country  which  was  now  called  New 
Netherlands  to  their  West  India  Company,  m  the  very  year  m  which  the 
Enelish  House  of  Commons  protested  against  a  similar  patent  ot  the  same 
territory  by  their  own  monarch  [1621],  as  inconsistent  with  Uje  general 
riehts  of  their  countrymen  and  Uie  true  interests  of  tiade.  It  the  States 
General,  or  their  subjects  on  the  banks  of  Hudson's  River,  Avere  acqijainted 
with  this  parhamentary  transaction,  they  made  more  account  of  the  bene6t 
that  mieht  accrue  from  it  to  their  territorial  claim,  than  of  the  rebuke  it 
conveyed  to  their  commercial  policy.  Under  the  management  of  the  West 
India  Company,  the  new  settlement  was  soon  both  consohdated  and  ex- 
tended.  The  city  of  New  Amsterdam,  afterwards  called  New  York,  was 
built  on  York  Island,  then  known  by  the  name  of  Manhattan  ;  and  at  the 
distance  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  higher  up  die  Hudson,  were  laid  the 
foundations  of  the  city  of  Albany.*  ,  ,      ,     -n.     ,  u    j  , 

The  precise  extent  of  territory  claimed  by  the  Dutch,  as  comprehended 
within  tLir  colony  of  New  Netherlands,  has  been  differently  represented 
^en  by  their  own  writers,  of  whom  some  have  explicitly  deckled  that 
it  embraced  aU  the  country  lying  between  Virgmia  and  Canada.     Whatever 
writs  titular  extent,  wlilch  was  probably  unknown  to  the  planters  them- 
selves, they  hastened  to  eularge  their  appropriation  far  be^jond  their  im- 
media  e  use  ;  and,  by  intrusion  into  the  Connecticut  and  Delaware   err.. 
tories,  laid  the  foundaUon  of  their  subsequent  disputes  with  the  colonists  of 
New  England.   While  these  powerful  neighbours  as  yet  possessed  no  other 
establishment  but  the  small  settlement  of  Plymouth,  to  which  the  artifice 
of  the  Dutch  had  consigned  the  English  emigrants  from  Leyden,  he  pro- 
vincial  authorities  at  New  Amsterdam  attempted  to  cultiva  e  a  friendly,  or  at 
Last  a  commercial,  correspondence  with  the  EngUsh  colony  ;  and  for  this 
purpose  despatched  their  secretary,  Razier,  with  a  congratulatory  coinnuini- 
S  to  tl^  governor  of  Plymouth.  [1627.]     The  English,  from  whose 
memory  the  f.aud  that  deprived  them  of  a  settlement  on  the  river  Hudson 
hTd  not  banished  the  recollection  of  Dutch  hospitably  at  Leyden  received 
wl  much  courtesy  the  felicitations  of  their  successful  rivals  on  tne  cour- 
3us  struggle  they  had  maintained  with  the  d.fficulues  of  theur  situation ;« 
Td  a^  somfyears  had  vet  to  elapse  before  Massachusetts  became  popu- 
bus,  and  before  the  English  establishments  in  Connect.cu  were  for«ned>  the 
Dutch  colonists  were  enabled  to  Hatter  themselves  with  the  hope  that  to 
stratagem  would,  not  be  resented,  nor  their  settlement  disturbed     They 
vSrav^arrof  die  reluctance  of  their  government  to  exhibit  publicly  a  tit^ 
dwiatorto  the  pretensic.^  of  Britain,  and  endeavoured  to  counteract  Oie 
cSSt  which  this  policy  might  impose  on  their  future  acquisitions  by  the 

ZXrSieir  immediate  occupation.     Their  fi'«\^«"»7«»V:nZS 
aDParently,  without  any  equiuble  remuneration  to  the  Indian  proprietors  of 
r  Stand  hence!  perhaps,  arose  those  dissensions  vvuh  the  I«d.ns 
which  afterwards  produced^  groat_deal^iL^^^'i'i**—i^^^ 
"n  ^"iJ^  E^S  ColUcions  of  the  Mas,acAusm  HiMUnUMi  SpcWy 


CHAP.  1] 


ENGLISH  SETTLEMENTS  IN  CONNECTICUT. 


401 


extended  their  appropriations  to  Connecticut  and  Delaware,  they  were 
careful  to  facilitate  their  admission  by  purchasing  the  territory  from  its 
savage  owners. ^  If  their  pohcy  really  was  (as  we  may  reasonably  suppose, 
though  we  cannot  positively  affirm)  to  supply  a  defective,  or  at  Jeast  non- 
apparent  title,  by  largeness  and  priority  of  appropriation,  it  was  completely 
disappointed  by  the  result ;  and  when  New  England  and  Maryland  began 
to  be  filled  with  inhabitants,  the  Dutch  had  the  mortification  of  discovering 
that  the  early  and  immoderate  extent  of  their  occupation  only  served  to 
bring  their  claims  the  sooner  into  collision  with  the  pretensions  of  neigh- 
bours more  powerful  than  they  ;  and  to  direct  a  severer  scrutiny  into  a  title 
which  they  were  unable  to  produce,  which  their  detected  stratagem  had 
contributed  to  discredit,  and  which  the  length  of  their  possession  was  yet 
unable  to  supply.  These  disagreeable  results  were  not  experienced  till  af- 
ter the  lapse  of  several  years  of  uninterrupted  peace  ;  and  during  the  ad- 
ministration of  Wouter  Van  Twiller  [1629],  who  arrived  at  Fort  Amster- 
dam as  the  first  governor  appointed  by  the  West  India  Company,  the 
Putch  colonists  enjoyed  a  state  of  calm  and  monotonous  ease,  undisturbed 
by  the  commercial  delirium  that  prevailed  for  several  years  in  their  parent 
state,  and  dissipated  so  many  fortunes  in  the  rumous  and  ridiculous  specula- 
tions of  the  tulip  trade.  This  period  affords  no  materials  for  history,  and 
it  served  but  indifferently  to  prepare  the  colonists  for  their  impending  con- 
tentions with  men  whose  frames  and  spirits  had  been  braced  by  the  disci- 
pline of  those  severe  trials  that  befell  the  first  planters  of  New  England.** 

It  was  near  the  close  of  Van  Twiller's  administration,  that  the  English 
colonists  extended  their  settlements  beyond  the  boundaries  of  Massachu- 
setts into  the  territory  of  Connecticut  [1636]  ;  an  intrusion  which  the 
Dutch  governor  resented  no  farther  than  by  causing  his  commissary.  Van 
Curlet,  to  intimate  a  harmless  protest  against  it.  He  was  succeeded  in  the 
following  year  by  Will'am  Kieit  [1637],  a  man  of  enterprise  and  ability,  but 
choleric  and  imperious  in  temper,  unfortunate  in  conduct,  and  more  fitted 
to  encounter  with  spirit  than  to  stem  with  prudence  '.he  sea  of  troubles  that 
began  on  all  sides  to  invade  the  possessions  of  the  Dutch.  These  colo- 
nists now  experienced  a  total  change  in  the  complexion  of  their  fortune  ; 
and  their  history  for  many  subsequent  years  is  little  else  than  a  chronicle  of 
their  struggles  and  contentions  with  the  English,  the  Swedes,  and  the  In- 
dians. Kieft's  administration  commenced  [1638],  as  his  predecessor's  had 
concluded,  with  a  protest  against  the  advancing  settlements  of  Connecticut 
and  New  Haven,  accompanied  by  a  prohibition  of  the  trade  which  the  Eng- 
lish conducted  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  fort  of  Good  Hope.  His 
reputation  for  ability,  and  the  sharpness  of  his  remonstrance,  excited  at  first 
some  alarm  among  the  English  inhabitants  of  Connecticut,  who  had  orig- 
inally made  t?ieir  advances  into  this  territory  in  equal  ignorance  of  the  prox- 
imity and  tlie  pretensions  of  the  Dutch  ;  but  soon  suspecting  that  their  im- 
perious rival  had  no  title  to  the  country  from  which  he  pnoposed  to  ex- 
clude them,  and  encouraged  by  promises  of  assistance  from  the  other  New 
England  Stales,  they  disregarded  his  remonstrance,  and  not  only  retained 
their  settlements,  but,  two  years  after  [1640],  compelled  the  Dutch  garri- 
son to  evacuate  the  fort  at  Good  Hope,  and  appropriated  the  adjacent  plan- 
tation to  themselves.    This  aggression,  though  passively  endured,  was  loudly 


■  Smith, 


ttvrital  SocMiy. 


VftT. 


51 


See  Note  XVII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


IIH 


40^ 


HISTOHY  Of  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


lamented  by  the  Dutch,'  who,  notwithstanding  the  increase  of  their  numbars, 
and  the  spirit  of  their  govenior,  displayed  a  helplessness  in  their  conten- 
tions with  the  English,  which,  if  partly  occasioned  by  the  enervating  influ- 
ence  of  a  long  space  of  tranquillity,  seems  also  to  have  been  promoted 
by  secret  distrust  of  the  validity  of  their  claim  to  the  territories  they  had 
most  recently  occupied.     It  is  certain,  at  least,  that  the  Dutch' were  not 
always  so  forbearing  ;  and  an  encroachment  which  their  title  enabled  them 
more  conscientiously  to  resist,  was  soon  after  repelled  by  Kieft,  with  a  prac- 
tical  vigor  and  success  very  remote  from  the  general  strain  of  his  conduct 
and  fortune.     Lord  Stirling,  who  had  obtained  a  grant  of  Long  Island  from 
the  Plymouth  Company,  transferred  a  portion  of  it  to  certain  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  New  England,  who  removed  to  their  new  acquisition  in  the  year 
1639,  and,  unmolested  by  the  Dutch,  whose  settlements  were  confined  to 
the  opposite  quarter,  these  New  Englanders  peaceably  inhabited  the  eastern 
part  of  the  island.     Receiving  a  considerable  accession  to  their  numbers, 
they  ventured  to  take  possession  of  the  western  quarter  ;  but  from  this  sta- 
tion they  were  promptly  dislodged  by  Kieft,  who  drove  them  back  to  the 
other  end  of  the  island,  where  they  built  the  town  of  Southampton  [1642], 
and  subsisted  as  a  dependency  of  Connecticut,  till  they  were  united  to  the 
State  of  New  York,  on  the  fall  of  the  Dutch  dominion  in  North  America.* 
Kieft,  in  the  same  year,  equipped  two  sloops,  which  he  despatched 
on  an  expedition  against  a  body  of  English,  who,  advancing  beyond  ^he  first 
settlements  of  their  countrymen  in  Maryland,  had  penetrated  mio  Dela- 
^vare,— a  territory  which  was  claimed  by  the  Dutch,  but  had,  neverthe- 
less, been  included  in  the  charter  obtained  by  Lord  Baltimore  from  Charles 
the  First.     As  the  number  of  these  emigrants  from  Maryland  was  mconsid- 
erable,  and  they  were  quite  unprepared  to  defend  their  possession  against 
this  unexpected  attack,  they  were  easily  dislodged  by  the  forces  of  Kieft. 
But  there  still  remained  in  another  quarter  of  Delaware  a  different  race 
of  settlers,  who,  without  any  legal  claim  to  the  soil  which  they  occupied, 
possessed  a  force  that  proved  of  more  avail  to  them  than  the  formal  title  of 
the  English.     This  was  a  colony  of  Swedes,  of  whose  transplantation  to 
North  America  very  few  particulars  have  been  recorded.     Their  migratorj' 
enterprise  was  suggested  in  the  year  1626,  when  Gustavus  Adolphus,  king 
^f  Sweden,  having  received  a  flattering  description  of  the  country  adjacent 
to  the  Dutch  settlement  of  New  Netheriands,  issued  a  proclamation  exhort- 
ing his  subjects  to  associate  for  the  establishment  of  an  American  colony. 
In  conformity  with  the  royal  counsel,  a  large  sum  of  money  was  collected 
by  voluntary  contribution  ;  and  a  number  of  Swedes  and  Fins  emigrated, 
in  the  year  1627,  to  America.     They  first  landed  at  Cape  Henlopen,  at 
the  entrance  of  Delaware  Bay,  and  were  so  much  charmed  with  its  aspect 
that  they  gave  it  the  name  of  Paradise  Point.     Some  time  after,  they  pur- 
«  The  Dutch  preserved,  for  a  series  of  years,  a  minute  and  formal  record  of  the  gf'cvances 
which  they  laid  to  the  charge  of  the  En(?ll«h  colonisU.     The  insignificance  of  many  of  th«o 
romplainte^nd  the  homeliness  of  the  subject  matter  of  others  contrast  Bom.whut  ud.crouj 
wiof  the  pompousness  of  the  titles  and  the  bitter  gravity  of  the  style.    This  «"«.''>«' ^^r""!; 
cle,  forminK  *»««  «"'««"»  «"«*  "^"V  ""Signified  annals  of  "New  York,  is  preserved  in  Hmrds 
^oS^xon.    Smith.    Chalmei..    Trumbull's  C«m»«hV«/.    The  histories  of  these  event, 
by  Oldm"/or.,  Smith,  and  Chalmers,  are  exceedingly  conf.sed,  and  .'"^'lieSn.^  she'd  by 
IHieir  chronology,  in  particular,  is  remarkably  careless.    Trumbull  8  always  distinguished  by 
d^^ccury  XTta'Iements;       not  less  distinguished  bv  his  partiality.  Ilere.  for  example 
h«  relstsfl  wiUi  -reat  fidelity  nil  the  offences  of  the  Dutch,  but  passes  over  in  total  silence 
every  charge  of^^thia  people  against  tlie  English. 


CHAP.  I] 


SWEDISH  SETTLEMENT  IN  DELAWARE. 


403 


chased  from  the  native  inhabitants  all  the  land  between  that  cape  and  the 
Falls  of  Delaware  ;  and  maintaining  little  intercourse  with  the  parent  state 
from  which  i  .ey  were  dissevered,  but  addicting  themselves  exclusively  to 
jgricultural  pursuits,  they  possessed  their  colonial  acquisition  without  chal- 
lenge or  interruption,  till  Kieft  assumed  the  government  of  New  Nether- 
lands.»  [1642.]  Several  of  the  Swedish  colonists  were  scalped  and  killed, 
and  in  some  instances  their  children  were  stolen  from  them,  by  the  Indians. 
Yet  commonly  the  two  races  lived  on  friendly  terms  together,  and  no  gen- 
eral war  ever  arose  between  them.  The  Indians  sometimes  attended  the 
religious  assemblies  of  the  Swedes  ;  but  with  so  litde  edification,  that  they 
expressed  their  amazement  at  the  ill-breeding  of  the  orator  who  could  exer- 
cise tlie  auditory  patience  of  his  tribe  with  such  lengthened  harangues  with- 
out repaying  their  civility  by  a  distribution  of  brandy.  One  of  the  earliest 
of  Kieft's  political  measures  was  the  intimation  of  a  formal  protest  against 
the  intrusion  of  the  Swedes,  to  whom  he  earnestly  recommended  the  pro- 
priety of  their  instant  departure  from  a  territory  which  he  assured  them  that 
Ills  countrymen  had  purchased  with  their  blood.  But  as  the  Dutch  dis- 
covered no  inclination  to  purchase  it  over  again  at  the  same  expense,  the 
Swedes,  unawed  by  this  governor's  power,  paid  no  regard  to  his  remon- 
strances. A  war,  as  it  has  been  called,  subsisted  between  the  two  com- 
munities for  several  years  ;  but,  though  attended  with  a  cordial  reciproca- 
tion of  rancor  and  much  flourish  of  verbal  valor,  it  was  unproductive  of 
bloodshed.  Longing  to  destroy,  but  afraid  to  attack  each  other,  they 
cherished  their  quarrel  with  an  inveterate  malice  which  might  have  been 
dissipated  by  a  prompt  appeal  to  the  decision  of  more  manly  hostilities.  It 
seemed  to  be  the  object  of  both  parties  rather  to  forewarn  their  enemy  of 
danger  by  menace,  than  to  overcome  him  by  active  force.  At  the  treaty  of 
Stockholm,  in  1640,  Sweden  and  Holland  forbore  to  make  any  allusion  to 
colonial  disputes  or  American  territory  ;  ^  and  the  two  colonies  being  left  to 
adjust  their  pretensions  between  themselves,  their  animosities  subsided  hito 
an  unfriendly  peace.'  Even  this  faint  color  of  good  neighbourhood  did 
not  subsist  for  many  years. 

Meanwhile,  numberless  causes  of  dispute  were  continually  arising  be- 
tween New  Netherlands  and  the  colonies  of  Connecticut  and  New  Haven  ; 
and  tlie  English,  who  had  formerly  been  the  objects  of  complaint,  now  be- 
came the  complainers.  They  charged  the  Dutch  with  disturbing,  kidnap- 
ping, and  plundering  the  English  traders  ;  with  enticing  servants  to  rob  and 
desert  their  masters  ;  and  with  selling  arms  and  ammunition  to  the  Indians. 
The  unfriendly  relations  that  subsisted  between  the  Dutch  themselves  and 

'  The  Swedish  govorniucni  appears  to  have  made  some  attempt  to  obtain  a  recognition  of 
119  riiht  to  the  territory.  An  application  to  this  efi'ect  was  addressed  by  Oxenstiern,  the 
Swedish  ambassador,  to  the  court  of  England ;  but  though  the  Swedes  alleged  that  the  appli- 
cation was  sticcessfiii,  and  the  legitimacy  of  their  occupation  admitted,  no  proof  of  this  aver- 
ment was  ever  produced.  Not  less  imnrobable  was  a  pretence  they  seem  to  have  urged,  of 
havinepurchased  the  claim  of  the  Dutch.  Samuel  Smith's  History  o/ JVeio  Jersey.  This  is 
a  work  of  extreme  rarity,  and  has  been  confounded  by  some  writers  with  Smith's  History  of 
wVeie  York.  It  contains  much  curious  matter ;  but,  as  a  composition,  is  tasteless,  confused,  and 
uninteresting. 

'  Smith.  Holmes.  Professor  K^lm's  Travelt  in  J^orth  America.  Douglass.  Chalmers. 
Chalmers  unfortunately  seems  to  relax  his  usual  attention  to  accuracy,  when  he  considers  his 
topics  insignificant ;  and  from  this  defect,  as  well  as  the  peculiariti^is  of  his  style,  it  is  some- 
times difficult  to  discover  his  meaning,  or  reconcile  his  apparent  inconsistency  in  different  pas- 
sages. Douglass's  Summary,  which  is  replete  with  prejudice  and  partiality  when  it  treats  of 
the  New  England  States,  is  verjr  frequently  inaccurate  when  it  travels  beyond  them. 

'  Trumbuii  roprosonts  the  t»utch  and  Swediiiii  governortt,  in  iwa,  as  "  uniting  in  a 
crafty  design  "  to  exclude  an  inhabitant  of  New  Haven  from  trading  at  Delaware. 


404 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V, 


Uie  Indians  would  render  this  last  charge  against  them  extremely  improbable, 
if  it  wore  not  notorious  that  their  countrymen  in  Europe  have,  on  various 
occasions,  manufactured  and  sold  to  their  enemies  the  cannon-balls  which 
ihey  perfectly  well  know  were  to  be  fired  back  into  tlieir  own  towns.     To 
all  those  complaints  the  English  could  obtain  no  other  answer  from  Kieft 
but  haughty  reproaches  and  angry  recriminations  ;  and  it  wns  partly  from 
apprehension  ol  his  designs,  though  chiefly,  no  doubt,  for  uieir  own  seou- 
rity  against  Indian  hostility,  that  the  New  England  colonies  were  induced 
to  form  tlie  scheme  of  the  federal  union,  which  they  carried  into  efl'eci  in 
the  year   1643.'     That  the  complaints  of  the  English  against  Kieft  were 
by  no  means  unfounded  may  be  inferred  from  the  lact,  that  the  succeeding 
governor  of  New  Netherlands,  though  warmly  attached  to  the  cause  of  his 
countrymen,  declined  to  make  any  answer  to  those  charges,  and  desired 
tliat  he  might  not  be  held  responsible  for  them.     And  yet,  notwithstanding 
their  mutual  disagreements,  the  Dutch  and  English  colonists  never  suffered 
themselves  to  neglect  entirely  either  the  forms  of  courtesy,  or  the  more  sub- 
stantial offices  of  humanity.     Kieft,  perhaps  with  more  politeness  than  sin- 
cerity, congratulated  the  United  Colonies  on  the  league  they  had  formed  ; 
and  whep,  in  the  course  of   the  same  year  [1643],  he  applied  to  New 
Haven  for  assistance  against  the  Indians,  with  whom  he  was  engaged  in 
a  bloody  and  dangerous  war,  the  government  of  that  cplony,  though  pre- 
cluded by  the  federal  union,  as  well  as  by  doubts  of  the  justice  \  of  the 
Dutch  cause,  from  embarking  separatelj^  in  hostilities,  tendered  the  amplest 
contribution  they  could  afford  of  provisions  for  men  and  catUe  to  supply 
the  scarcity  created  by  the  Indian  devastations.     So  unwarlike  were  the 
Dutch  colonists  in  general,  that  they  found  it  necessary  to  hire  the  services 
of  Captam  Underbill,  who  had  been  banished  from  Boston  as  one  of  the  as- 
sociates of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,"  and  who,  at  the  head  of  a  mixed  troop  of 
English  and  Dutch  followers,  opposed  tlie  Indians  with  a  skill  and  bravery 
that  proved  fatal  to  great  numbers  of  them,  both  in  Long  Island  and  on  the 
main  land,  and  was  regarded  as  the  deliverer  of  New  Netherlands  from  en- 
tire destruction.     Notwithstanding  the  need  he  had  thus  experienced  of 
English  assistance,  and  the   benefit   he  derived   from  it,  Kieft  persisted, 
iluring  the  rest  of  his   life,  in  exchanging  with  the  colonies  of  Connecticut 
and  New  Haven,  not  only  the   sharpest  remonstrances  and  vituperations, 
but  menaces  of  vengeance   and  war,   which,  happily  for  hirnself,  he  had 
as  little  ability  as  they  had  inclination  to  execute.     He  continued  all  this 
lime  to  be  involved  in  hostilities  with  the  Indians,  between  whom  and  the 
Dutch  there  was  fought  [1646],  towards  the  conclusion  of  his  administra.- 
tion,  a   great  and  general   battle   on    Strickland's  Plain,  where,  after  an 
obstinate  conflict,  and  great  slaughter  on  both  sides,  the  Dutch  with  much 
difficulty  kept  the  field,  while  the  Indians  withdrew  unpursued.' 

Kieft  was  succeeded,  in  the  following  year  [1647],  by  the  last  of  the 
Dutch  governors  of  New  Netherlands.  This  Avas  Peter  Stuyvesant,  a 
brave  old  officer,  and  one  of  those  magnanimous  spirits  by  which  the  le- 


'  See  Book  II.,  Chap.  III.,  ante.  "  See  Book  II.,  Chap.  II.,  ante. 

»  Trumbull.  Belknap.  Ycl  the  greater  number  of  the  writers  of  American  history  (copy- 
ing each  other'a  statements  without  examination)  have  asserted  that  the  Dutch  were  never 
once  involved  in  a  quarrel  with  the  Indians.  One  old  writer,  indeed,  whose  work  is  very 
M-arco,  hai  Mated  that  the  Dutch  were  continually  hnrBssrd  and  cndan^rcd  by  the  Indians. 
Uritf  Dueriptum  ofJftw  York,  formerly  called  AVw  Ntlherlands,  by  Daniel  Denton.  In  Sum- 
!i.-^l  Smith's  Hii^.'try  of  J^$u?  Jtnsy,  rsfercnec  is  made  to  some  bloody  contoR!"  between  ihe 
Dutch  iwd  iBtdiBDi.  '     ~ 


ave,  on  various 


CHAP.  I.]    MUTUAL  JEALOUSIES  OF  THE  DUTCH  AND  ENGLISH.      4^5 

publican  service  of  Holland  was  in  that  age  remarkably  adorned.  By  his 
justice,  prudence,  and  vigor,  he  succeeded  in  restoring  peace  xvith  the  In- 
dians, and  preserving  it  uninterrupted  during  the  whole  of  his  administra- 
tion. His  arrival  was  honored  by  an  address  of  congratulation  from  the 
commissioners  o    the  United  Colonies  of  New  England,  accompanied  with 

r  'ZZl  '^n'  ''r^r ''°"  °^  '^'  •"i""^^  ^hey  had  sustained  from 

Ins  predecessor  One  of  the  most  serious  of  these  injuries  was  the  fre- 
quent seizure  and  confiscation  of  English  trading-vessels  on  the  pietence  of 
miiaction  ot  the  custom-house  regulations  of  New  Netherlands,  which  the 
Dutch,  with  insolent  injustice,  refused  to  promulgate,  and  yet  rigidly  en- 
forced,  fetuyvesant,  though  he  declined  to  justify  some  of  the  acts  of  his 
predecessor  returned,  as  might  have  been  expected,  a  counter  claim  of 
redress  for  iJie  wrongs  of  New  Netherlands,  and  in  particular  demanded  a 
restoration  of  the  territories  of  Connecticut  and  New  Haven.  This  was  a 
hopeless  demand  ;  and  Stuyvesant,  soon  perceiving  that  the  state  of  his 
mle  and  of  his  force  would  barely  suffice  to  prevent  farther  invasion  of  the 
Dutch  pretensions,  was  too  prudent  to  insist  on  it.  After  various  negotia- 
'nf'  'tS  T  r Vn^/^  .''oncluded  [1650]  between  the  commissioners 

0  the  United  English  Colonics  and  the  governor  of  New  Netherlands,  by 
w  iich  the  settlements  of  the  respective  nations  in  Long  Island  were  mutu- 
ally secured  to  them,  and  a  boundary  ascertained  between  the  Dutch  <  <tUe- 
ments  and  the  Connecticut  and  New  Haven  occupations  on  the  main  land 
This  treaty  was  not  productive  of  the  good  consequences  that  were  expect- 
ed trora  It.  Ihe  English  had  enacted  a  law  prohibiting  the  Dutch  from 
trading  within  their  territories,  —  a  restriction  that  was  highly  resented  by 
the  Dutch  ;  and  the  disputes  that  arose  concerning  the  execution  of  this 
law,  together  with  the  competition  of  the  two  nations  to  engross  the  profits 

01  the  Indian  trade,  engendered  a  degree  of  mutual  jealousy  and  ill-humor 
that  caused  them  to  regard  each  other's  proceedings  and  policy  through  a 
very  unfavorable  medium.  The  treaty  seems  not  to  have  embraced  any 
arrangement  with  regard  to  the  Delaware  territory,  and  Stuyvesant  was 
determined  to  preserve  entire  all  that  yet  remained  uninvaded  of  his  coun- 
try's pretensions  m  this  quarter.  In  support  of  these  pretensions,  he  was 
soon  constrained  to  make  such  efforts  to  resist  a  trading  settlement  which 
the  colony  of  New  Haven  attempted  to  establish  on  the  borders  of  Dela- 
ware,  as  completely  effaced  every  semblance  of  good  understanding  be- 
tween the  Dutch  and  the  English  provincial  governments.  The  breach 
between  them  was  widened  by  a  panic  excited  in  the  settlements  of  Con- 
necticut and  New  Haven  [1651],  where  a  number  of  Indians  volunteered 
a  confession  of  a  projected  massacre  of  the  English,  to  which  they  affirmed 
that  they  had  been  instigated  by  the  governor  of  New  Netherlands.  [1652.] 
The  only  evidence  in  support  of  their  story  that  they  could  produce  was 
the  ammunition  which  the  Dutch  had  been  always  in  the  practice  of  selling 
to  them,  and  which  the  English  now  the  more  readily  believed  to  have  been 
furnished  for  their  destruction,  as  the  Indians  had  frequently  employed  it  for 
this  purpose.  Notwithstanding  the  confident  assertions  of  a  respectable 
historian  of  Connecticut,  this  confession  manifestly  appears  to  have  derived 
Je  credit  it  received  chiefly  from  the  fears  and  prepossessions  of  the 
hnghsh,  who  suffered  themselves  to  be  made  the  dupes  of  perfidious  sav- 
ages, whose  ° — ' —  — '■'^-^  1.    .1      1-         .  ^  .    .    ^        , .      .  . 


uOViFS. 


ose  enmity  was  gratified  by  the  dissensions  of  their  powerful  neigh- 
What  may  be  thought,  indeed,  to  place  this  beyond  a  doubt  is, 


406 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  y. 


that  no  future  conflrnifttion  of  U»e  charge  was  ever  obtained,  even  after  tho 
fall  of  tho  Dutch  dominion  hnd  placed  every  facdity  for  the  procurement 
of  evidence  in  tho  hands  of  their  enemies.     The  governments  ot  Connecti- 
cut   New  Haven,  and  Tlymouth,  however,  blinded  by  rage  and  fear,  Kavx- 
imp'licit  faith  to  a  statement  discredited  no  less  by  the  habitual  fraud  and 
treachery  of  the  Indians,  than  by  the  manly  and  honorable  character  of 
Stuyvesant.     To  his  indignant  denial  of  the  charge,  they  answered  by  re- 
mindin"  him  of  the  massacre  of  their  countrymen  by  the  Dutch  in  Am- 
boyna,  about  thirty  years  before  ;  and  to  his  just  exceptions  to  the  value 
of  Indian  testimony,  they  replied  that  the  Dutch  governor  of   Amboyna 
had  sought  a  pretext  for  his  cruelty  in  the  charges  against  the  Knglisl, 
which  he  extorted  by  torture  from  the  Japanese.     1  he  absurdity  of  tlieii 
reasoning  demonstrates  the  intensity  of  passion  hy  which  they  were  trans- 
ported  ;  and  the  repeated  introduction  of  the  topic  of  Amboyna  shows  as 
clearly  the  strong  though  unconscious  dominion  of  national  prejudice  and 
antipathy  on  their  minds.     To  the  government  of  Massachusetts  the  evi- 
dence of  the  conspiracy  did  not  appear  satisfactory  [1(}.'>3]  ;   nor  could 
all  the  instances  of  her  confederates  prevail  with  this  State   to  join  witli 
them   in  a  war  against   the  Dutch.'     Judging  their  own  forces  alone  in- 
adequate to  such  an  enterprise,  the  otlier  colonies  applied  for  assistance  to 
Oliver  Cromwell  [1654],  who  was  then  engaged  m  the   two  years'  war 
with  Holland  which  the  Long  Parliament  had  begun,  and  who  promptly 
complied  with  their  request  by  despatching  a  squadron  to  undertake,  in 
conjunction  with  the  colonial  troops,  an  invasion  of  New  Netherlands.    But 
the  expedition  was  intercepted  by  intelligence  of  the  peace  negotiated  be- 
tween  the  Protector  and  the  States  General ;  and  his  squadron  having  forti- 
fied the  spirits  of  the  English  colonists  by  demonstrating  to  them  and  their 
adversary  the  readiness  and  determination  of  a  powerful  government  to  assist 
them,  proceeded  still  farther  to  augment  their  security  by   he  conquest  of 
the  French   province  of   Acadia.**     It   is   remarkable  that  the  treaty  of 
peace,  which  was  executed  at  this  time  between  England  and  Holland,  con- 
tained no  express  allusion  to  the  claims  or  possessions  of  either  in  North 
America  ;   but  as  it  was  stipulated  that  war  should  cease  and  peace  and 
friendship  prevail  between  all  the  dominions  and  possessions  of  the  two 
commonwealths  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  as  the  English  expedition 
against  New  Netherlands  was  thereupon  countermanded,  the  validity  of  the 
Dutch   claim  to  this   territory  was  manifesdy  implied  and  practically  ac- 
knowledged. ,        oi  11- 

It  was  in  the  Delaware  territory  that  Stuyvesant  exerted  Ins  most  vigor- 
ous  and  successful  efforts  to  defend  the  claims  of  his  countrymen  against  the 
encroachments  of  the  New  England  colonists  and  the  Swedes.  As  tlie 
war  between  the  Dutch  and  the  Swedes  during  Kieft's  administration  had 
in  some  respects  resembled  a  peace,  so  the  peace  that  ensued  bon;  no 
little  resemblance  to  a  war.  To  check  the  encroachments  which  the 
Swedish  settlers  were  continually  attempting,  Stuyvesant  erected  a  fort  at  a 
place  then  called  New  Amstel,  and  afterwards  Newcastle.  This  proceed- 
ine  gave  umbrage  to  the  Swedes,  who  expressed  their  displeasure  m  a  pro- 
test,  which,  with  Uie  usual  fate  of  such  instrumentality  m  these  provincial 


«  ^nte.  Book  II.,  Chap.  III. 

•  Oldmixon.    Chalmers.    Trumbull.^    Smith  ^     ^    ^ 
U'Kik  i>iucc,  both  on  ihis  occ.-ision  aiitl  afierwarM=,  Uf=twccn  th 
English  coloniea,  is  preserved  in  Hazard's  Collections. 


The  whole  voluminous  correspondenpc  that 
ffovemors  of  the  Huttli  and 


CHAP.  I]  CONQUEST  OF  THE  SWEDES  IN  DELAWARE. 


407 


,  even  after  tlio 
le  procurement 
ts  of  Connecti- 
and   fear,  gavu 
litual  fraud  ami 
le  character  of 
nswered  by  re- 
Dutch  in  Am. 
ns  to  tlie  valuo 
r  of    Aniboyna 
1st  the   English 
)3urdity  of  tlieir 
ley  were  trans- 
boy  na  shows  as 
1  prejudice  and 
iiusetts  the  evi- 
)8]  ;   nor  could 
te   to  join  with 
forces  alone  in- 
for  assistance  to 
two  years'  war 
1  who  promptly 
to  undertake,  in 
etherlands.    But 
:e  negotiated  he- 
ron liavin[^  forti- 
o  them  and  their 
ernment  to  assist 
he  conquest  of 
It  the  treaty  of 
lid  Holland,  con- 
f  either  in  North 
e  and  peace  and 
ions  of  the  two 
nglish  expedition 
we  vahdity  of  the 
d  practically  ac- 

A  his  most  vigor- 
rymen  against  the 
)wedes.  As  the 
dminisl  ration  had 
ensued  bore  no 
ments  which  the 
jrected  a  fort  at  a 
.  This  proceed- 
pleasure  in  a  pro- 
n  these  provincial 

8  correspondeiK^c  that 
tors  of  uie  Dutch  and 


controversies,  was  totally  disregarded.  About  a  year  afterwards  [1G54], 
Uisiiigh,  the  Swedish  governor,  repaired  with  un  armed  vessel  to  the  Dutch 
fort,  and,  obtaining  admission  into  it  by  a  stratagem  somewhat  discreditable 
to  his  own  honor,  as  well  as  to  the  vigilance  of  its  defenders,'  easily  over- 
powered the  garrison,  and  expelled  them  with  violence,  but  without  blood- 
shed, not  only  from  their  strong-hold,  but  from  the  confines  of  Delaware. 
During  the  short  time  that  the  fortress  remained  in  his  possession,  it  re- 
ceived tlie  name  of  Christina,  in  compliment  to  the  queen  of  Sweden. 
Stuyvesant  was  not  of  a  disposition  to  submit  tamely  to  such  an  outrage, 
or  to  content  himself  with  a  simple  recapture  of  the  fort.  He  determined 
to  invade  and  subdue  the  whole  Swedish  colony.  Destitute  of  a  force 
sufficient  for  this  enterprise,  and  fully  occupied  at  the  time  with  a  contro- 
versy more  dangerous  to  his  government,  as  well  as  more  interesting  to  his 
honor,  he  was  constrained  to  apply  for  reinforcement  to  the  West  India 
Company.  This  corporation,  however,  was  then  laboring  under  great  em- 
barrassments ;  in  so  much  that  it  was  only  by  a  friendly  contribution  of  the 
city  of  Amsterdam,  that  its  administrators  were  enabled  to  supply  Siuyve- 
santwith  a  small  body  of  troops.  Thus  reinforced,  he  marched  into  Dela- 
ware [1655],  where  the  Swedes  had  employed  their  leisure  in  erecting 
another  fort,  as  if  they  intended  to  defend  their  pretensions  to  the  last 
extremity.  But  tlieir  resolution  in  facing  danger  was  not  equal  to  their  au- 
dacity in  provoking  it ;  and  no  sooner  did  they  perceive  tliat  these  military 
demonstrations  failed  to  answer  their  true  object  of  deterring  ihe  enemy 
from  approaching,  and  that  they  were  now  attacked  in  earnest  by  a  warrior 
whose  hostilities  were  not  confined  to  stratagems  and  protests,  than  they 
peaceably  surrendered  the  forts,  together  with  the  whole  of -their  settle- 
ments, to  the  forces  of  Stuyvesant. 

The  conquest  of  Delaware  was  thus  accomplished  without  bloodshed ;  — 
a  circumstance  the  more  extraordinary,  as  it  certainly  did  not  arise  from  ab- 
sence of  the  passions  from  which  this  fatal  extremity  might  be  expected  to 
ensue;  for  many  of  the  Swedes  regarded  the  Dutch  with  such  sincerity  of 
detestation,  tlrnt  they  determined  to  return  to  Europe,  and  to  abandon  a 
country  which  they  had  styled  a  paradise,  rather  than  to  submit  to  a  union 
with  the  colony  of  New  Netherlands.  To  this  humiliation,  however,  the  rest 
were  reduced,  and  the  settlement  for  some  years  continued  to  be  ruled  in 
peace  by  a  lieutenant-governor  appointed  by  Stuyvesant."  Thus,  unas- 
sisted by  the  parent  state,  fell  the  only  colony  that  Sweden  ever  founded. 
The  historian  would  have  little  pretension  to  humanity,  who  would  deride 
a  bloodless  adjustment  of  national  disputes.  But  in  timorous  hostilities,  a 
new  feature  ol  opprobrium  is  added  to  the  deplorable  aspect  of  w-ar.  When 
we  recollect  that  these  Swedes  either  had  been  the  subjects  of  the  heroic 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  or  were  the  immediate  descendants  of  his  subjects,  and 
when  we  see  them  provoke  a  war  by  fraud  and  outrage,  and  then  decline  the 
conflict  by  tamely  submitting  to  the  object  of  their  insult  and  hatred,  it  must 
be  acknowledged  that  they  have  enlarged  the  catalogue  of  those  nations 

'  "  Risingh,  under  the  disguise  of  friendship,  came  before  the  works,  fired  two  salutes  and 
landed  thirty  men,  who  wore  entertained  by  the  commandant  as  friends  ;  but  he  had  no  sooner 
discovered  tho  weakness  of  the  garrison,  than  he  mad«»  himself  master  of  it,  seizing  also 
upon  all  the  ammunition,  houses,  and  other  eft'ects  of  the  West  Indian  Company,  and  compel- 
ling several  of  the  people  to  swear  allegiance  to  Christina,  queen  of  Sweden."     Smith. 

'  Chalmers.  Smith.  A  visit  to  Delaware  and  New  Jersey,  about  a  hundred  years  after, 
drew  from  a  learned  Swede  a  sigh  of  patriotic  regret  for  the  indiflerenco  of  his  countrymen 
•0  the  preservation  oi  "  the  uncst  and  beat  pfovuitx  ia  all  North  AiuencE."    jsxoijn  s  ^tUccis, 


408 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


whose  spirit  has  degenerated  in  their  colonial   settlements.     The  Dutch 
themselves  have  been  generally  obnoxious  to  this  reproach  ;  and  their  con- 
duct in  New  Netherlands  will  never  be  cited  as  an  exception  to  its  ap- 
plication      All  their  colonies  were  the  offspring  of  mere  thirst  for  commer- 
cial  gain  ;  no  liberal  institutions  arose  there  to  nourish  generous  sentiment 
or  exercise  manly  virtue  ;  and  the  exclusive  pursuit  of  the  same  objects 
which  eneaeed  them  to  extend  their  dominions  engendered  habits  and  tastes 
corruptive  of  the  energy  that  was  requisite  to  their  defence  and  preservation. 
The  valor  of  Stuyvesant '  rebuked,  without  animating,  the  sluggish  spirit 
of  his  fellow-colonists,  whom  his  example  could  never  teach  either  to  repel 
iniustice  with  spirit  or  to  endure  it  with  dignity.     Yet  Holland  was  now  m 
the  meridian  of  her  fame  ;  and  this  was  the  age  of  Tromp  and  Ue  Ruyter. 
The   attention   which   had   been   awakened   in  the   niother  country  to 
the  state  of  the  colony  of  New  Netherlands  was  sustained  by  the  pros- 
perous  result  of  her  recent  interposition,  and  farther  manifested  itself  in 
the  following  year  [1656],  by  an  ordinance  which  was  enacted  by  the  West 
India  Company  and  the  burgomasters  of  Amsterdam,  and  approved  by  the 
States  General  of  Holland .     It  was  decreed  by  this  ordinance,  that  the  col- 
onists  of  New  Netherlands  should  be  ruled  in  future  by  a  governor  nominat- 
ed  by  the  municipal  authorities  of  Amsterdam,  and  by  burgomasters  and  a 
town  council  elected  by  the   provincial   people;    the  council   thereafter 
enjoying  the  power  of  filling  up  all  vacancies  m  its  own  body.      llys  con- 
stitution  differed  very  little  from  the  actual  frame  of  government  already 
established  in  New  Netherlands  ;  and  the  attention  of  the  mother  country 
beginning  soon  to  relax,  with  the  decline  of  the   colony's  prosperity  no 
farther  attempt  was  made   to  accomplish  the  projected  alteration,     fhe 
West  India  Company  transmitted  about  this  time  to  Stuyvesant  a  ratifica- 
tion, which  they  had  procured  from  the  States  General,  of  his  treaty,  m 
1650,  with  the  commissioners  of  the  United  English  Colonies  ;  and  the 
Dutch  governor  gave  notice  of  this  circumstance  to  the  commissioners,  m 
a  letter  replete  with  Christian  benevolence  and  piety,  and  proposing  to 
them  that  a  friendly  league  and  sincere  good-will  might  thenceforward  unite 
the  colonies  of  England  and  Holland.     But  the  English  were  averse  to  be- 
lieve the  sincerity  of  a  man  whom  they  had  recently  accused  of  pbttmg 
their  destruction  with  the  Indians  •,  and,  beginning  to  regard  the   Dutch 
occupation  as  altogether  lawless   and  intrusive,  they  were  determined  not 
to  sanction  it  by  any  new  recognition.     The  commissioners  answered  the 
governor's  communication  with  austere  civility  ;  recommending  the  continu- 
ance  of  peace,  but  declining  either  to  ratify  the  former  treaty  or  to  execute 
a  new  one.-«     They  had  for  some  time  past  indulged  the  hope  that  the  Eng- 
lish  government  would  unite  with  them  in  regarding  the  Dutch  settlers  m 
America  as  mere  intruders,  wl-o  could  derive  no  claim  of  forbearance  nom 
the  peace  with  Holland,  and  whom  it  would  be  no  less  just  than  expedient 
to  expel  or  subdue.   [1659.]     Their  friends_injaigland_^ucceed^^^ 

■    I  This  Mllant  veteran  did  not  full  to  attract  a  portion  of  that  idle  rumor  and  ubsurrl  cxn|;ger- 

K  order  to  dc  A  them  more  cruelly  by  the    .«nd«  of  the  »"i"«   J7;;"'ji  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
he  cover  th_c  deficiency  of  bin  countrymen's  nnlitary  ardor.     1  ho  fal)lo  ol  the  silver  itg 

reiuleu  ity  liiomo. 
»  CotUctiotu  o/tkt  ^'eu)  York  Historical  Society. 
*  Trumbull. 


CHAP.  I] 


FEEBLE  POLICY  OF  THE  DUTCH  COMPANY. 


409 


pressing  these  views  upon  Richard  Cromwell,  who,  during  his  short  enjoy- 
ment ol"  the  protectorate,  addressed  instructions  to  his  commanders  for  an 
invasion  of  New  Netherlands,  and  wrote  letters  to  the  provincial  assemblies 
in  America,  desiring  the  cooperation  of  their  forces  in  the  enterprise.^ 
But  his  speedy  deposition  spared  him  the  actual  guilt  of  attacking  an  un- 
oft'ending  people,  whom  his  father  had  plainly  regarded  as  comprehended 
in  his  treaty  of  peace  with  Holland. 

Smyvesant  had  already  made  attempts  to  improve  his  conquest  of  the 
Swedes  by  extending  the  Dutch  settlements  in  Delaware  [1660]  ;  and 
equitable  as  well  as  brave,  he  caused  the  lands  which  he  appropriated  to 
be  fairly  purchased  from  the  Indians.  But  his  success  in  this  quarter  was 
now  drawing  to  a  close.  Feudal,  the  governor  of  Maryland,  claimed  the 
territory  occupied  by  the  Dutch  and  Swedes,  as  included  within  Lord 
Bahimore's  patent ;  and  finding  that  Stuyvesant  was  determined  to  retain 
possession  of  the  land  and  defend  the  supposed  title  of  his  country ,  he  pro- 
cured a  remonstrance  to  be  transmitted  in  the  name  of  Lord  Baltimore  to 
the  States  General  and  the  West  India  Company  of  Holland,  who,  with 
an  inversion  of  their  usual  policy,  publicly  denied  the  pretensions  of  the 
English,  but  at  the  same  time  transmitted  private  orders  to  Stuyvesant  to 
avoid  hostilities,  if  they  should  seem  likely  to  ensue,  by  retiring  beyond 
Lord  Baltimore's  alleged  frontier.  This  injunction  was  obeyed,  though 
not  to  the  extent  of  an  entire  evacuation  of  Delaware,  when  Charles  Cal- 
vert a  few  years  after  assumed  the  government  of  Maryland.^  Stuyvesant 
deplored  the  feeble  policy  of  those  whose  mandates  it  was  his  duty  to  obey; 
and  sensible  of  the  total  discredit  to  which  the  Dutch  title  would  be  exposed 
by  thus  practically  avowing  that  its  efficacy  depended  on  the  forbearance 
of  the  English,  he  earnestly  solicited  that  a  formiil  copy  of  the  grant  by  the 
States  General  to  the  West  India  Company  might  be  transmitted  to  New 
Netherlands,  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  him  to  assert,  with  proper  form 
and  dignity,  the  interests  he  was  intrusted  to  defend.  But  his  solicitations 
proved  ineffectual.  The  States  General  were  now  more  anxious  than  ever 
to  avoid  a  rupture  with  England  ;  and  the  West  India  Company,  either 
espousing  their  policy,  or  controlled  by  their  orders,  refused  to  exhibit  a 
title  which  they  feared  that  Stuyvesant  might  so  employ  as  inevitably  to 
provoke  that  extremity.  Perhaps  they  expected  that  his  prudence  would 
be  enforced  by  the  consciousness  of  a  defective  title ;  and  such  was  at 
least  the  ef/ect  that  their  policy  actually  produced.  Stuyvesant,  willing 
by  any  honorable  means  to  propitiate  *he  English,  and  hoping  to  obtain  a 
recognition  of  the  title  which  he  was  unable  to  produce,  sent  an  embassy 
to  Sir  William  Berkeley,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  to  propose  a  treaty  of 
mutual  trade  between  this  colony  and  New  Netherlands,  and  an  aUiance 
against  the  Indian  enemies  of  both.  Berkeley  received  the  ambassadors 
with  much  courtesy,  and  despatched  Sir  Henry  Moody  to  New  Netherlands, 
with  the  articles  of  a  commercial  treaty  ;  but  he  cautiously  forbore  every 
expression  that  might  seem  either  to  acknowledge,  or  even  imply,  assent 
to  the  territorial  pretensions  of  the  Dutch.'' 

Tlie  revolutionary  rulers  whose  dominion  in  England  was  terminated  by 
the  Restoration  had  been  regarded  with  continual  uneasiness  and  apprehen- 
sion by  the  inhabitants  of  New  Netherlands.     The  Long  Parliament  liad 

in  Europe  ;  Cromwell  had  once  been  on  tho 


attacked  their  countrymen 

'  Tliurloe's  Collection. 
VOL.    I.  52 


Sco  antey  Book  III 


>  Chalmora. 
II 


Smith. 


410 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


point  of  subduing  tljeir  own  colonial  settlement  in  America  ;  and  only  the 
deposition  of  his  successor  again  snatched  them  from  a  repetition  of  the 
same  danger.     Of  the  government  of  Charles  the  Second  they  were  dis- 
posed to  entertain  more  favorable   hopes,  which   might,  perhaps,  derive 
some  support  from  the  well  known  fact,  that  their  especial  rivals,  the  inhab- 
itants of  New  England,  were  as  much  dishked  by  the  king  as  tliey  had  been 
favorably  regarded  by  the  Protector.    Accordingly,  when  the  pursuers  of 
Goffe   and  Whalley,  baffled  in  their  attempts  to  discover  the  retreat  of 
these  fugitive  regicides  in  New  England,  besought  Stuyvesant  to  deny  them 
his  protection  in  New  Netherlands  [1661],  he  readily  seized  the  opportu- 
nity of  ingratiating  himself  and  his  people  with  the  English  court,  by  un- 
dertaking to  give  instant  notice  of  the  arrival  of  any  of  the  regicides  within 
his  jurisdiction,  and  to  prohibit  all  vessels  from  transporting  them  beyond 
the  reach  of  their  pursuers.'     But  this  policy,  which,  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged, was  no  honorable  feature  of  his  administration,  proved  quite  una- 
vaiUng  ;  and  every  hope  tliat  the  Dutch  might  have  entertained,  of  an  ame- 
lioration of  their  prospects,  was  speedily  dissipated  by  intelligence  of  the 
designs  entertained  by  the  king  of  England.     Charles,  though  he  had  re- 
ceived, during  his  exile,  more  friendship  and  civility  from  the  Dutch  than 
from  any  other  foreign  power,  ever  regarded  tliis  people  with  enmity  and 
aversion  ;  and   he   was  the  more  disposed,  at   present,  to  enibrace  any 
measure  that  might  humble  the  ruling  jparty  in  Holland,  by  the  interest,  he 
felt  in  a  weaker  faction,  at  the  head  of  which  was  his  nephew,  llie  young 
Prince  of  Orange,  whom  ho  desired  to  see  reinstated  in  the  office  of  Stadt- 
holder,  which  his  ancestors   had   possessed;  —  an  office  which  the  ruling 
party  had  pledged  themselves  to  Cromwell  never  again  to  bestow  on  the 
Orange   family.     These   sentiments   were    promoted   by  the  interest  and 
uro-ency  of  the  Duke  of  York  [1663],  who  had  placed  himself  at  tlie  head 
of  a  new  African  Company,*^  of  which  the  expected  commerce  was  cir- 
lumscribed  by  the  more  successful  traffic  of  the  Dutch.     In  imitation  of 
the  other  courtiers,  the  duke,  moreover,  had  cast  his  eyes  on  the  American 
territory,  which  his  brother  was  now  distributing  with  a  liberal  hand  ;  and, 
accordingly,  in  addition  to  the  other  means  which  he  employed  to  produce  a 
quarrel  with  the    Dutch,  he   solicited  a  grant  of  their  North  American 
plantations,  on  the  specious  pretence  that  they  were  usurped  from  the  terri- 
tory properly  belonging  to  Britain.^     The  influence  of  these  motives  on  the 
mind  of  the  king  was  doubtless  aided  by  the  desire  to  strike  a  blow  that 
would  lend  weight  to  the  arbitrary  commission  which  he  was  preparing  to 
despatch  to  New  England,  and  teach  the  Puritan  colonists  there  that  it  was 
in  the  power  of  their  sovereign  to  punish  and  subdue  his  enemies  in  America. 
The  rumor  of  the  king's  intentions  reached  America  before  it  was  gen- 
erally prevalent  in  Europe,  owing  to  the  vigilance  and  activity  of  the  nu- 

'  Trumbull.  It  was  iipturiuiiH,  at  the  time,  that  (ioii'e  and  Whalley  were  shcltored  within 
the  territory  of  New  Haven,  where  the  local  authorities  and  the  inhiibitanU,  no  fur  from  us- 
Histiiiff,  hod,  with  vory  little  diBguise,  obstructed  and  defeated  the  atteniptB  to  apprehend  tii«ni. 
Thi»  conduct  of  a  people  peculiarly  diatinguished  by  their  enmity  to  the  Dutch  had  probably 
home  weight  in  inducing  Stuyvesant  to  pledge  himself  lo  a  lino  of  conduct  which  would  have 
compromised  the  honor  and  independence  of  his  country. 

*  ThiB  company  was  formed  with  a  view  of  extending  and  engrossmg  the  slave  trade. 
Under  the  patronage  of  the  Duke  of  York,  it  treated  every  commercial  rival  with  a  violence 
and  injustice  worthy  of  the  purpose  of  iu  institution.  In  return  for  the  BpeoiiU  favor  it  re- 
ceived from  the  Knglish  government,  it  lent  it«  aid  lo  harass  the  colonies  by  promoting  a 
rim.d  ovepntinn  nC  ijin  Aria  I'.F  Navigation.  Oldniixon. 
'^»  Sir  John  DaJrymple's  Memoin.    Hume's  EngUind.    Chalmer* 


CHAP.  I] 


HOSTILE  DESIGNS  OF  CHARLES  II. 


411 


merous  friends  of  the  English  colonists,  who  collected  and  conveyed  intel- 
ligence of  the  designs  of  the  court.     When  the  conjunction  of  the  royal 
commission  of  inquiry  with   the  expedition  against  New  Netherlands  was 
communicated  to  the  inhabitants  of  New  England,  the  first  article  of  intelli- 
Tence  appeared  to  them  much  more  unwelcome  than  the  other  was  satisfac- 
tory.    In  Massachusetts,  particularly,  the  language  and  measures  of  the 
General  Court  plainly  indicated  a  strong  apprehension  that  the  military,  no 
less  than  the  civil,  department  of  the  expedition  was  intended  agamst  the 
liberties  of  the   English   colonists.*     Stuyvesant,  whose  anxious  eye  ex- 
plored the  darkening  horizon  of  his  country's  fortune,  descried  these  symp- 
toms of  dissatisfaction  in  the  New  England  settlements,  and  in  the  dimness 
of  anguish  and  perplexity  conceived  from  them  the  desperate  and  chimerical 
project  of  gaining  the  alliance,  or  at  least  securing  the  neutrality,  of  his  an- 
cient enemies.     With  this  view  he  undertook  a  voyage  to  Massachusetts, 
where  he  was  entertained  by  the  governor  and  magistrates  with  much  state 
and   solemnity .'■*     Former  rivalship  was  forgotten  in  the  season  of  common 
danger,  or  remembered  only  to  enhance  the  respect  with  which  Endicott 
and  Stuyvesant  recognized,  each  in  the  other,  an  aged,  brave,  and  honorable 
champion  of  his  country's  cause.     Perhaps  some  traces  of  the  eflfect  of  this 
conference  may  be  discerned  in  the  slowness  with  which  Massachusetts 
obeyed  the  requisition  of  the  royal  commanders  to  raise  a  body  of  men  in 
aid  of  the  invasion  of  New  Netherlands.     But  it  was  impossible  that  Stuy- 
vesant's  negotiation  could  succeed,  or  his  proposals,  even  to  the  extent  of 
neutrality,  be  admitted.     Notwithstanding  this  disappointment,  he  repaired 
subsequently  to  Connecticut,  where  he  was  engaged   in  vainly  attempting 
to  bring  a  similar  negotiation  to  a  more  successful  issue,  when  the  tidings 
of  the  approach  of  the  British  fleet  recalled  him  to  the  immediate  defence 
of  his  province.^ 

The  British  monarch,  who  was  unable  to  assign  a  just  cause  of  war  with 
Holland,  after  trying  in  vain  to  provoke  the  resentment  of  the  States  General 
by  insulting  memorials  and  groundless  complaints,^  determined  to  embrace 
the  pretext  that  had  been  suggested  to  him  of  his  right  to  the  province 
of  New  Netherlands  ;  expecting,  with  good  reason,  that  the  assertion  of  this 
pretended  right  would  supply  the  cause  of  quarrel  which  he  was  industriously 
seeking.    In  pursuance  of  this  policy,  a  charter  from  the  British  crown  was 
issued  in  favor  of  the  Duke  of  York  [March,  1664],  containing  a  grant  of 
the  whole  region  extending  from  the  western  banks  of  the  Connecticut  to 
the  eastern  shore  of  the  Delaware,  together  with  the  adjacency  of  Long 
Island  ;  and  conferring  upon  the  duke  all  the  powers  of  government,  civil 
and  military,  within  these  ample  boundaries.     This  grant  disregarded  alike 
the  existing  possession  of  the  Dutch,  and  tlie  recent  charter  of  Connecti- 
cut, which,  whether  from  ignorance,  or  from  carelessness  in  the  definition 
of  boundaries,  it  tacitly  but  entirely  superseded.     No  sooner  did  the  Duke 
of  York  obtain  the  object  of  his  solicitation,  than,  without  waiting  to  gain 
actual  possession  of  the  soil,  he  ventured  to  exeri:'ie  his  proprietary  powers 
in  their  fullest  extent,  by  assigning  to  Lord  Berkeley  and  Sir  George  Car- 
teret all  that  portion  of  the  territory  which  afterwards  received  the  name  of 
New  Jersey.     But,  as  it  was  manifest  that  the  title  of  the  duke  himself, 
equally  with  that  of  his  assignees,  would  require  to  be  supported  by  a  mili- 
tary force,  an  armament  was  prepared  for  this  purpose,  with  some  attention 
'^YcVantc,  Book  II.,  ChapTlV^  »  Joeselyn,  a'Trumbull.  «  Hume. 


412 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


to  secrecy, — a  precaution,  which,  if  it  proved  ineffectual,  was  likewise 
unnecessary  ;  as  the  States  of  Holland  reckoned  it  impossible  that  the  Brit- 
ish  king  would  attack  their  possessions  without  the  formality  of  a  previous 
declaration  of  war,  and  were  unwilling  to  provoke  his  injustice  by  seeming 
to  expect  it.  So  little,  indeed,  was  the  hostile  expedition  against  New 
Netherlands  credited  in  Europe,  that,  but  a  few  months  before  it  sailed,  a 
vessel  arrived  at  the  colony  from  Holland,  bringing  an  addition  to  its  pop- 
ulation and  a  large  supply  of  implements  of  husbandry.  Stuyvesant  ear- 
nestly pressed  upon  the  West  India  Company  the  alarming  intelligence  which 
he  had  received  ;  but  the  only  defensive  step  to  which  they  were  moved 
by  his  urgency  was,  to  send  him  now,  when  it  was  too  late,  the  original 
grant  from  the  States  General,  which,  at  the  period  when  it  might  have 
availed  him,  he  had  solicited  in  vain. 

The  command  of  the  English  troops  that  were  embarked  for  this  expedi- 
tion, and  the  government  of  the  province  against  which  it  was  directed, 
were  intrusted  to  Colonel  Nichols,  who  had  studied  the  art  of  war  under 
Marshal  Turenne,  and  who,  with  Carr,  Cartwright,  and  Maverick,  also  held 
a  commission  to  visit  the  colonies  of  New  England,  and  investigate  and  de- 
termine, according  to  their  discretion,  all  disputes  and  controversies  within 
the  various  provincial  jurisdictions.  After  touching  at  Boston,  where  an 
armed  force  was  ordered  to  be  raised  and  sent  to  join  the  royal  army,  the 
fleet  advanced  to  Hudson's  River,  aiid  took  its  station  before  the  capital 
of  New  Netherlands.  The  requisition  of  a  subsidiary  force  from  Botton 
was  so  tardily  obeyed,  that  the  enterprise  was  concluded  before  the  Massa- 
chusetts troops  were  ready  to  march  ;  but  [August,  1664],  on  the  commu- 
nication of  a  similar  mandate  to  Connecticut,  Governor  Winthrop,  vyilh  sev- 
eral of  the  principal  inhabitants  of  this  province,  repaired  immediately  to 
the  English  armament,  and  joined  the  standard  of  their  king.* 

The  veteran  governor  of  New  Netherlands,  and  the  pupil  of  Turenne, 
were,  according  to  military  notions,  enemies  worthy  of  each  other ;  though 
doubtless  not  even  military  morality  can  regard  Nichols  as  worthily  employed 
in  executing  the  lawless  rapacity  and  insolent  ambition  of  a  tyrant  on  a 
peaceful,  industrious,  and  blameless  community.     But  the  two  commanders 
were  very  unequally  supported.    Stuyvesant  had  vigorously  exerted  himself 
to  put  the  city  in  the  best  posture  of  defence  ;  but  he  found  it  impracticable 
to  awaken  martial  spirit  in  the  unwarlike  bosoms  of  its  people.    It  must,  in- 
deed, be  confessed,  in  favor  of  these  unfortunate  Dutchmen,  that  the  superi- 
or artillery  and  disciplined  forces  of  the  enemy  forbade  every  hope  of  suc- 
cessful resistance.     Their  inhabitance  of  the  country  had  been  too  short  to 
attach  them  to  it  by  patriotic  sentiments  ;  and  their  sluggish  dispositions  and 
ignoble  habits  rendered  them  totally  unsusceptible  of  the  impressions  which 
their  governor  derived  from  the  prospect  of  a  contest,  where  the  harvest 
of  glory  seemed  to  him  to  be  proportioned  to  the  hopelessness  of  victory. 
They  felt  themselves  unjustly  attacked  ;  and  their  resentment  of  this  injury 
was  so  strong,  that  many  of  them  wm-c  determined  not  to  become  the  sub- 
jects of  a  tyrannical  usurper  :  but  it  was  not  strong  enough  to  overcome 
the  rational  conviction,  that  safety  and  independence  were  the  only  woi  thy 
objects  of  battle,  and  that,  where  independence   could  not  be  gained  by 
fighting,  safety  should  not  be  risked  by  it.     To  add  unnecessary  combat  to 
unavoidable  subjugation  appeared  to  them  a  driftless  and  fool-hardy  waste 
'  5  Smith.    Chaimore.    Truiisbtill. 


CHAP.  I] 


NOBLE  SPIRIT  OF  8TUYVESANT. 


413 


of  life  :  and  if  they  must  surrender  the  image  they  had  created  of  their  native 
Holland  in  the  wilderness,  they  would  rather  resign  it  entire  to  the  pollution 
of  hostile  occupation  than  defaced  and  mutilated  by  the  cannon  of  the  en- 
emy. They  were  willing  to  become  exiles  with  their  wives  and  children,  or 
laborers  for  them ;  to  encounter,  in  short,  every  evil  that  hope  could  allevi- 
ate or  virtue  subdue.  But  to  expose  their  kindred,  their  city,  and  them- 
selves to  the  certainty  of  capture  by  storm,  and  the  extremity  of  military 
fury,  seemed  to  them  an  inversion  of  all  the  dictates  of  prudence  and  virtue. 

Widely  different  were  the  sentiments,  the  views,  and  even  the  deter- 
minations of  Stuyvesant ;  and  for  several  days  his  undaunted  spirit  upheld 
the  honor  and  prolonged  the  dominion  of  his  country,  notwithstanding  the 
desertion  of  her  unwarlike  children,  and  the  impending  violence  of  a 
stronger  foe.  On  the  arrival  of  the  English  armament,  he  sent  a  deputation 
to  its  commander,  consisting  of  one  of  the  ministers  of  New  Amsterdam, 
one  of  the  city  counsellors,  and  two  other  inhabitants,  with  a  courteous  letter, 
desiring  to  know  the  reason  and  purpose  of  this  hostile  demonstration.  Nich- 
ols answered,  with  equal  politeness,  that  he  was  commanded  by  his  royal 
master  to  take  possession  of  the  British  territory  which  had  been  usurped 
by  the  Dutch,  whom,  though  nearly  allied  to  him,  the  king  could  not,  con- 
sistently with  his  honor,  allow  to  invade  and  occupy  the  dominions  of  his 
crown  :  that  he  must  therefore  now  demand  the  instant  surrender  of  the 
place  ;  that  the  king,  being  tender  of  the  effusion  of  Christian  blood,  had 
authorized  him  to  offer  security  of  life,  liberty,  and  estate  to  all  who  would 
readily  submit  to  this  requisition  ;  but  that  such  as  should  oppose  his 
Majesty's  gracious  intentions  must  prepare  to  abide  the  severest  extremities 
of  war.  Governor  Winthrop,  who  was  connected  by  acquaintance  and  mu- 
tual esteem  with  Stuyvesant  and  the  principal  citizens  of  the  Dutch  colony, 
seconded  the  communication  of  Nichols  by  a  letter,  in  which  he  strongly 
urged  the  prudence  of  doing  soon  what  must  unavoidably  be  done  at  last. 
Stuyvesant,  on  receiving  the  summons  of  the  English  commander,  was 
sensible  of  no  other  consideration  than  the  insolent  injustice  with  which  his 
country  was  treated  ;  and  still  earnestly  hoping  that  her  honor  would  be  pre- 
served unblemished,  even  though  her  dominion  should  be  overthrown,  he 
invited  the  burgomasters  and  council  of  the  city  to  attend  him,  and  vainly 
labored  to  instil  a  portion  of  his  own  spirit  into  the  phlegmatic  members  of 
this  municipal  body.  They  coolly  desired  to  see  the  letters  he  had  received 
from  the  enemy  ;  but,  as  he  judged,  with  good  reason,  that  the  easy  terms 
of  surrender  that  were  proffered  would  not  contribute  to  animate  their  ardor 
or  further  his  own  martial  designs,  he  declined  to  gratify  them  in  this  partic- 
ular ;  and  simply  assured  them  that  the  English  had  declared  their  purpose 
of  depriving  Holland  of  her  dominion,  and  themselves  of  their  independence. 
Suspectine;  the  truth,  they  became  more  importunate  in  their  first  request  ; 
whereupon  the  governor,  in  a  transport  of  indignation,  tore  the  letters  in 
pieces,  and  scattered  them  on  the  ground  ;  while  the  burghers,  in  amazement 
and  dismay,  protested  against  his  conduct,  and  all  the  consequences  that 
might  attend  it. 

But  Stuyvesant 's  courage  needed  not  the  aid  of  sympathetic  bravery;  and 
inore  incensed  to  see  his  country's  honor  disregarded  than  appalled  to  find 
himself  its  only  defender,  he  determined  to  try  the  effect  of  an  appeal  to  the 
justice  and  generosity  of  a  gallant  enemy  ;  and  to  express  in  his  reply  to 
the  summons  of  tlie  tingiisn  coiriniandcf ,  not  what  he  painfully  saw,  bui  what 

II* 


M 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


he  maenanimously  wished,  to  be  the  sentiments  of  his  fel  ow-citizens.     He 
exhSedo  a  deputation  sent  to  him  by  Nichols  the  ongmal  grant  of  the 
Staes  General  and  his  own  commission  from  the  West  India  Company ; 
and  in  a  firm  and  manly  letter  maintained  that  a  province  thus  formally  m- 
corporated  with  the  Dutch  dominion  could  not,  consistently  with  the  law  of 
nations,  be  attacked  whUe  peace  subsisted  between  England  and  the  repub- 
He      He  represented  the  long  possession  of  the  territory  which  his  country. 
men  had  enjoyed,  and  the  ratification  which  the  Dutch  clami  received  from 
Ss  treaty  with  the  English  provincial  authorities  in  the  year  1650  ;  and  he 
protested  that  it  was  impossible  that  the  king  of  England  could  have  de- 
Latched  this  hostile  armament,  in  the  knowledge  of  these  facts,  or  wou  d 
hesitate  to  countermand  it,  if  they  were  submitted  to  his  consideration,    lo 
spare  the  effusion  of  blood,  he  proposed  a  treaty  for  a  provisional  arrange^ 
i^ent,  suspended  on  the  issue  of  a  reference  to  the  two  parent  states  ;  and 
to  the  denunciauons  of  military  havoc,  in  the  event  of  a  refusal  to  surrender, 
he  returned  this  calm  and  undaunted  reply  :-"  As  touching  the  threats 
in  your  conclusion,  we  have  nothing  to  answer,  only  that  we  f^jr  nothing, 
but  what  God  (who  is  as  just  as  merciful)  shall  lay  upon  us  ;  a  1  things  be- 
ing  in  his  gracious  disposal :  and  we  may  as  well  be  preserved  by  him  with 
smaU  forces  as  by  a  groat  army  ;  which  makes  us  to  wish  you  aU  happ- 
ness   and  prosperity,  and  recommend  you  to  his  protection.       But  this 
simulation  of  force  and  confidence  was  unava.hng  ;  and   Stuyvesant^ found 
it  far  more  easy  to  refute  the  pretensions  than  to  resist  the  arms  of  his  op- 
ponent.  Even  after  the  English  had  begun  to  invest  the  place,  and  occupied 
a  position  which  announced  immediate  attack  and  inevitable  capture,  he  still 
clunrr  to  the  hope  that  his  fellow-citizens  would  not  surrender  the  rights  of 
their^country  till  they  had  defended  them  with  valor  and  shed  the  blood  of 
the  invaders.     But  Nichols,  who  was  informed  how  little  the  Dutch  troops 
and  colonists  partook  the  martial  ardor  of  their  governor,  caused  a  procla- 
raation,!  repeating  his  original  offers,  to  be  circulated  through  the  country 
and   introduced  into  the  town  ;  a  measure  which  so  completely  disarmed 
the  spirit  of  the  besieged,  and  extinguished  the  authority  of  Stuyvesant,  that 
this  brave  and  somewhat  headstrong  old  man,  after  one  more  fruitless  attempt 
to  obtain  a  provisional  treaty,  was  at  length  obliged  to  capitulate  for  surrender, 
in  order  to  prevent  the  people  from  giving  up  the  place  without  the  formality 
of  capitulation.   [August  27,  1664.]  . .   ,    ,       ,      t*  »  u 

By  the  treaty  which  ensued,  it  was  provided  that  the  Dutch  garrison 
should  march  out  with  all  the  accustomed  honors  of  war,  and  that  the 
States  General  and  West  India  Company  should  preserve  their  ammunition 
and  public  stores,  and  be  allowed  the  space  of  six  months  for  transporting 
thern  to  Holland  ;  that  the  inhabitants  should  have  liberty  either  to  sell  their 
estates,  and  return  to  Holland,  or  to  retain  them  and  reside  in  the  settlement; 
that  all  who  chose  to  remain  should  enjoy  their  ancient  customs  with  respect 
to  inheritance  of  property,  liberty  of  conscience  in  «^*^  «f  ^^^'^^J.  ."^f;"' 
and  perpetual  exemption  from  military  service.  AH  l^"tchmen,  either  con- 
tinuing in  the  province,  or  afterwards  resorting  to  it,  were  to  bo  allowed  a  feo 
trade  with  Holland  ;  a  privilege,  which,  as  it  wa^quite_mcons^en^^ 

.'/..-  .V  ii_.:.i.  rr„  .»,„  «..,„j;-l,  .Pttloni  in  Dolawarc  it  was  fi«p(!Cial!y  reprcscntoa  uiui  u 
iould  b«';ntono;ablechange  for  thorn  to  return  from  «  republican  to  a  ^onarciueai  govrm- 
ment.    8.  Smith'i  Aeu>  Jersey. 


CHAP.  I.] 


CAPITULATION  01'  NEW  AMSTERDAM. 


4U 


Navigation  Act,  neither  Nichols  nor  even  the  king  could  legally  confer,  and 
which  accordingly  was  withdrawn  very  soon  after.  As  a  concession  to  the 
inflexible  obstinacy  of  the  old  governor,  it  was  most  superfluously  provided, 
that,  if  at  any  time  thereafter  the  king  of  England  and  the  States  General 
shftuld  unite  in  desiring  that  the  province  be  redelivered  to  its  former  owners,^ 
their  commands  should  be  promptly  obeyed.  These,  and  various  other 
articles,  of  additional  advantage  to  the  Dutch,  forming  perhaps  the  most 
favorable  terms  that  a  capitulating  city  ever  obtained,  were  satisfactory  to 
every  one  except  the  fearless,  stubborn  veteran  to  whose  solitary  valor  and 
pertinacity  they  were  in  no  small  degree  a  tribute  ;  and  it  was  not  till  two 
days  after  they  had  been  signed  by  the  commissioners  on  both  sides,  that 
Stuyvesant,  still  erect  amidst  his  forlorn  circumstances,  could  be  persuaded 
to  ratify  them.  Yet  the  Dutch  West  India  Company,  whose  blunders  and 
imbecility  promoted  the  fall  of  a  dominion  which  they  were  unworthy  to  ad- 
minister, had  the  mean  ingratitude  to  express  dissatisfaction  with  the  conduct 
of  this  magnanimous  man.  The  conquest  of  the  capital,  which  now  re- 
ceived the  name  of  New  York  (a  name  also  extended  to  the  whole  pro- 
vincial territory),  was  followed  by  the  surrender  of  Albany,  and  the  general 
submission  of  the  province,  with  its  subordinate  settlement  of  Dutch  and 
Swedes  in  Delaware.  The  government  of  Britain  was  acknowledged  over 
the  whole  region  in  the  beginning  of  October,  1664.'* 

Thus,  by  an  act  of  the  most  flagrant  injustice  and  insolent  usurpation, 
was  overthrown  the  Dutch  dominion  in  North  America,  after  it  had  subsisted 
for  more  than  half  a  century,  and  had  absorbed  the  feebler  colonial  settle- 
ments of  Sweden.  It  is  impossible  for  a  moment  to  suppose  that  the  king 
of  England  was  prompted  to  undertake  this  enterprise  by  an  honest  convic- 
tion of  his  right  to  the  territory  ;  and  that  he  was  actuated  by  no  concern  for 
the  interest  of  his  other  colonies  was  proved  (if  such  proof  were  wanting) 
by  his  subsequent  conduct  with  regard  to  Acadia.  This  region,  to  which 
the  English  had  as  fair  a  claim  as  to  New  York,'  was  conquered  from  its 
French  occupiers  by  the  fair  and  legitimate  hostilities  of  Cromwell  ;  and 
yet  the  earnest  entreaties  of  the  New  England  colonies  could  not  prevent 
the  king  from  restoring  it  to  France,  a  neighbour  much  more  dangerous  than 
Holland  to  his  subjects.  But  Acadia  was  not,  like  New  Netherlands,  a  set- 
tlement of  Protestant  republicans,  but  of  the  subjects  of  a  brother  despot, 
to  whom  Charles  became  a  pensioner,  and  to  whom  he  scrupled  not  to  sell 
as  much  of  the  honor  of  England  as  was  capable  of  being  bartered  by  his 
hands.  His  object,  in  so  far  as  it  embraced  the  English  colonies,  was  rather 
to  intimidate  them  than  to  promote  their  advantage.  Yet  eventually  it  was 
tliey  who  derived  the  chief  benefit  from  the  acquisition  of  New  York  ; 
and  this,  as  well  as  every  other  conquest  of  American  territory  achieved  by 
Great  Britain,  only  tended  to  undo  the  bands  by  which  she  retained  her 

'  According  to  Hume,  it  would  appear  that  this  improbable  condition  did  actually  occur ; 
for  he  states,  that,  on  the  complaint  of  Holland,  the  Kin^  disavowed  the  expedition,  and  im- 
prisoned the  admiral.  But  he  iiaa  confounded  the  invasion  of  New  York  with  the  expedition 
against  Goree,  which  took  place  two  years  before,  and  which  Charles,  after  despatching,  affected 
to  disavow. 

'  Oidmixon.    Smith.    Chalmers.    Trumbull.    Hutchinson. 

'  It  was  included  in  the  claim  derived  from  Cabot's  voyage,  and  had  been  made  the  subje*  t 
of  various  grants  by  James  the  First  and  Charles  the  First,  to  the  Plymouth  Council  in  the  first 
instance,  and  afterwards  to  Lord  Stirling.  This  nobleman  was  the  king's  secretary  ot  stat« 
in  Scotland  ;  and  seeing  the  English  courtiers  obtaining  grants  of  American  territory,  he  ap 
plied  for  a  share  of  this  advantage ;  and  Acadia,  under  the  name  of  Nova  Scotia,  was  granted 
to  him  (very  irregularly)  by  a  patsnt  under  the  groat  sea!  of  Scothnd. 


416 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


rBOOK  V. 


cofonies  in  a  state  of  dependence.  As  they  ceased  to  receive  molestation 
or  alarm  from  the  neighbourhood  of  rival  settlements,  their  strength  and 
their  jealousy  converged  against  the  power  and  pretensions  ot  the  parent 

^Tolonel  Nichols,  who  was  appointed  the  first  British  governor  of  New 
York  —  Derhaps  with  the  humane  view  of  persuadmg  his  master  to  refrain 
from 'burdening  or  irritating  the  people  by  fiscal  impositions,  -  studiously 
depreciated  the  actual  condition  of  the  settlement  m  his  letters  to  the  Duke 
of  York.     But  all  the  early  writers  and  travellers  unite  m  describing  the 
Dutch  colonial  metropolis  as  a  handsome,  well-built  town  ;  and  Josselyn 
declares  that  the  meanest  house  in  it  was  worth  a  hundred  pounds. ^    In- 
deed,  the  various  provisions  that  were  introduced  into  the  articles  o  surren- 
der,  for  preserving  the  comforts  of  the  inhabitants  undiminished,  attest  the 
orderly  and  plentiful  estate  which  these  colonists  had  attained,  as  well  as  ex- 
plain  the  causes  of  their  unwarlike  spirit.     If  the  manners  of  the  Dutch  col- 
onists  corresponded  with  those  of  their  countrymen  m  the   pa^enl  state 
they  were  probably  superior  in  refinement  to  the  manners  which  the  English 
colonists  could  derive  from  similar  imitation.     Sir  William  Temple  ^vas 
surprised  to  find  in  Holland  that  he  was  expected  not  to  spit  upon  the  floors 
of  gentlemen's  houses."     Of  the  colonists  who  had  latterly  resorted  to  the 
province,  some  were  persons  who  had  enjoyed  considerable  affluence  and 
respectability  in  their  native  country,  and  who  imported  with  then,,  and  dis- 
placed in  their  houses,  costly  services  of  famdy  plate,  and  well-selected  pro- 
Suctions  of  the  Dutch  school  of  painting.:*    No  account  has  been  preserved 
of  the  total  population  of  the  province  and  its  dependencies  ;  but  the  me- 
tropolis, at  this  time,  contained  about  three  thousand  persons.      More  than 
half  of  this  number  chose  to  continue  in  the  place,  after  Us  annexation  to 
the  Briush  empire  ;  the  rest  abandoned  a  settlement  which  was  no  longer 
to  retain  its  Dutch  aspect  or  name  ;  and  th^ir  habitations  were  soon  occu- 
pied by  a  supply  of  emigrants,  partly  from  Britain,  but  chiefly  from  New 
Leland.     The  Duke  of  York,  in  order  to  allure  the  New  England  planters 
to  setUe  in  his  province,  pubUshed  what  he  termed  conditions  for  plantations 
by  which  (among  other  provisions)  it  was  declared  that  the  inhabitants  of 
every  township  should  elect  their  own  minister  of  religion,  and  determine  his 
emoluments  by  private  agreement  between  themselves  and  him.      Among 
the  Dutch  who  remained  at  New  York  was  the  venerable  Stuyvesant,  who 
still  adhered  to  the  wreck  of  the  institutions  and  community  oyer  which  he 
had  presided,  and  to  the  scenes  that  reminded  him  of  the  exploits  of  his  old 
age.     Here,  for  a  few  years  more,  he  prolonged  the  empire  of  Dutch  man- 
ners and  the  respect  of  the  Dutch  name,  till,  full  of  days  and  honor,  he 
breathed  his  last  amidst  the  tears  of  his  r^-i.ntrymen.     His  descendants  in- 
herited his  worth  and  popularity,  and  in  the  followmg  century  were  frequently 
elected  into  the  magistracy  of  New  York."  . 

trasted  Bketch  of  Duteh  and  English  colonial  '"«""«";. '^•""J"  J",  "j^^^^ 

^d  tha'r  «r fiSJ'Sh  an  Englinlf  planter  -P'^yB  to  incr^a^c  thcjhe.^^^^^^^^^^^ 
try  and  the  gourcea  of  his  revenue  are  proferably  devoted  ^X  *  ""S^,"*"  B„wbS 
,nent  of  his  house  and  the  refinement  of  his  domestic  accommodaUons.    BolmgbroKe  s //c 

count  of  Demerara.  _        .  .     ,j,  p^^,^  „f  ^^^  ^  few  years  after,  published 


..     -      »..-.,».#    4^ 


*  I  ibund  this  rnscuictiitm  ori  a  n'-; 


|,V  Chalmers,  together  with  a  consideration  of  the  'nt«'^'^"'^«L*,'H'^'-        Smi\h. 
■»  Oldmixon.    Smith. 


CHAP.  I] 


ADMINISTRATION  OF  NICHOLS. 


417 


One  of  the  earliest  transactions  in  which  Nichols  was  engaged  [December, 
1664]  bore  reference  not  to  his  authority  as  provincial  governor,  but  to  the 
functions  which  he  shared  with  the  other  commissioners  of  the  English  mon- 
arch ;  in  conjunction  with  whom  he  had  now  to  ascertain  and  determine  the 
boundaries  of  New  York  and  Connecticut.  The  claims  of  the  latter  of 
these  provinces  in  Long  Island  were  disallowed,  and  the  whole  of  this 
insular  region  was  annexed  to  the  new  British  jurisdiction  ;  but  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  boundaries  on  the  main  land,  so  little  disposition  was  en- 
tertained to  take  advantage  of  the  erroneous  designation  in  the  Duke  of 
York's  charter,  —  so  ignorant  also  of  the  localities  of  the  country  were  the 
commissioners,  —  and  so  much  inclined,  at  the  same  time,  to  gratify  the 
people  of  Connecticut,  in  order  to  detach  them  from  the  interest  of  Massa- 
chusetts,—that  Connecticut  undoubtedly  received  an  allotment  of  territory 
far  more  liberal  than  equitable.  At  a  subsequent  period  it  was  found  neces- 
sary to  make  a  more  equitable  adjustment  of  the  limits  of  Connecticut  and 
New  York  ;  which,  however,  was  not  accomplished  without  violent  dispute 
and  altercation  between  the  two  provincial  governments.^ 

Leaving  the  other  commissioners  to  proceed  to  the  executior  of  their 
functions  in  New  England,  Nichols  betook  himself  to  the  discharge  [1665] 
of  his  own  peculiar  duty  in  the  province  which  he  was  deputed  to  govern. 
The  Duke  of  York  had  made  an  ample  delegation  of  authority  to  his  lieu- 
tenant, and  the  prudence  and  humanity  of  Nichols  rendered  his  administra- 
tion creditable  to  the  proprietary  and  acceptable  to  the  people.  To  confirm 
the  acquisition  that  his  arms  had  gained,  and  to  assimilate,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  difierent  races  of  inhabitants  of  die  province,  Nichols  judged  it  expedi- 
ent to  establish  among  them  all  a  uniform  frame  of  civil  polity  ;  and  with 
a  prudent  conformity  to  the  instituuons  already  established  by  the  Dutch, 
he  formed  a  court  of  assizes,  composed  of  the  governor,  the  council,  and  the 
justices  of  the  peace,  which  was  invested  with  every  branch  of  authority,  leg- 
islative and  executive,  within  the  colony.  The  only  liberal  institution  that 
he  was  permitted  to  introduce  was  trial  by  jury  ;  and  to  this  admirable 
check  on  judicial  iniquity  all  suits  and  controversies  were  subjected.  He 
encouraged  the  colonists  to  make  purchases  of  land  from  the  natives  ;  and 
these  purchases  he  confirmed  by  charters  from  himself,  in  which  he  reserved 
to  the  proprietary  a  quitrent  of  a  penny  an  acre.  A  dispute  which  occur- 
red among  the  mhabitants  of  Long  Island  suggested  to  him  a  salutary  regu- 
lation which  continued  long  to  obtain  in  the  province.  The  dispute  arose 
out  of  some  conflicting  Indian  grants  ;  and  to  prevent  a  recurrence  of  such 
disagreements,  as  well  as  of  the  more  fatal  dissensions  which  were  apt  to 
spring  from  these  transactions  with  the  natives,  it  was  ordained  that  hence- 
forward no  purchase  from  the  Indians  should  be  valid,  unless  the  vendition 
were  authorized  by  a  license  from  the  governor,  and  executed  in  his  pres- 
ence. The  formidable  number  and  martial  spirit  of  the  natives  rendered 
it  necessary  to  treat  them  with  unimpeachable  justice  ;  and  to  prevent  their 
frequent  sales  of  the  same  land  to  different  persons  (a  practice  in  which  they 
had  been  encouraged  by  the  conflicting  pretensions  and  occupations  of  the 
Dutch,  Swedes,  and  English),  it  was  judged  expedient  that  the  bargains 
should  be  signalized  by  some  memorable  solemnity.  The  friendly  relations 
now  established  between  the  European  colonists  of  this  province  and  the 
powerful  confederacy  of  Indian  tribes  distinguished  by  the  title  of  The  Five 


Siiiiih.     Chouucr^. 


VOL.   I. 


53 


418 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA 


[BOOK  V. 


J     u-  k  ,«:il  nftprwnrds  demand  a  considerable  share  of  our  at- 
Mions,  and  ^^^h-^^;;^"^,^^^^  .vhich  subsisted  between  the  Dutch 

'"JZdilnTdrnrthe'go'vlm^^^^^^  of  'stuyvesant,  whose  prudence  thus  be 
and  Indians  auriii,  ui^  b  ,„i..„v,u  nnnortun  tv  to  his  successor.' 

necessary  by  the  rocon  eha  go  of  emp  e      "»=^^  ;^;^^j  ,„  ,^^ 

,0  i"'ro'l"ce.prao,ucal    p*auonof  ,  e^,p       ^^^y^^^^^^^  ^^.^^  ^  ^^^ 

„r„de„ce  of  hnstad.     In^  ■'™<'"=  "■"  i""""-^  "'"'^''  ""^ 

Duke  of  York,  there  occur  s"»'  Jnublless  exerc  sed  in  its  compos - 

New  England  settlers  m  LongI«l^"d    doubtless  e  ^^  j 

lion.     Any  person  ^foje  sixteen  years  of  ag^^^  ^^^  ^^.^  ^^^^^^ 

(except  in  defence  of  his  own  hie)  j^a^^  ^^^^^^^  ^  , 

n^other   and  not  ^^'^^'-r^'^^V./^^^^y  ,S^  was  forbidden  ;  and  forni- 

adjudged  to  suffer  ff'\Jj^^^^^^^^^^  imprisonment,  according 

cation  was  punrshcd  %  -«-^^^^^  tS;  barbarous  stat'e  of  medical  scienc^e 
'V^''  ;?rc.  wasfndicatid  by  an  ordinance  prohibiting  all  surgeons,  physi- 
and  P'•«^f^7^.^'"T^^c;  "Resuming  to  exercise  or  put  forUi  any  act  con- 
rians,  and  midwives  from     P;f"S      „  unsubdued  state  of  na- 

trary  to  the  known  ^PP-^^  r.^  e^^^  ^^^^  ^^^^^^,^,^„  ^,  ^^.^,^^^ 

•"7  'PfT'hnd  S  Thrcirof  N  w  York,  which  had  enjoyed  extensive  privi- 
in  Long  Island,     inecuyoi  i  k.  now  incorporated  and  placed  under 

leges  under  the  old  governmntva^^^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^P^^^^  ^^  .^^ 

the  administration  .«f/ J^i'^Uv  to  link  the  provincial  institutions  ;vith 
nomenclature    serving   «J.^'^'""^"  ^  ^j^-  i^^  ,ets  Sf  power  that  was  reserved 

''Th  ^  cS'o7  tsSes  waT  the  im  Sn  of  taxe^  ;  and  this  it  was  soon 
to  the  Court  ot  Assizes  was  u  ^  -.gencies  of  the  war  which  Charles 
called  to  exercise  in  order  ^° '^^^Vf  ^,^J  f '"^i^h  Holland.     But  even  ihe 

the  Second  had  f^f  )7-^f;,t  t  e  "^^^^^^^^^  ^^«'^  "«-^^  ^^  ^  ^«"^"- 
most  ungracious  acts  of  ^'^;^'°  f  '^^'f  ,  forget  he  had  been  their  conquer- 
iating  demeanour  that  ^'^^"^^^^J'^.J^";^^^^^^  displayed  and 

or,  and  by  the  r/^''^  '°"  ^e  Jdilf  bcm  ed  for  the  public  advantage.  An 
the  personal  sacrifices  ^^^^^^^^^Xh  anrSish  plantations  in  Long  Island, 
,  a-embly  of  deputies  from  hDu^^^^^^^  ^^  ^,,^^^  J,^^^^^^^ 

which  he  ^"'"^"f^^  IXf  c^^^^^^^  to  transmit  an  address  to  the  Duke 

took  the  opportunity  oi  their  .^^"S^^S^''  j  j    sovereignty  according  to 

of  York,  acknowledgmg  their  dependence  on  Ins  s  v       g    y         ^^  ^  ,^^ 

his  patent  ;  engaging  to  ^ff  ^/l  \  £•' '"^'j  Sng  that  their  declara- 
evef  laws  might  be  -"'^f  ^^  .^^  Jj  -^ "J^  /s  J  ^^^^^  them  and  their 

tion  might  be  preserved  and  «f ^"^"^^°  ^^V^^^he  performance  of  their  du- 
posterity,  if  they  should  ever  ^'^PS^i^JLt^r^  to  Nichols 

ty."    Yet  one  portion  of  these  people  had  bu^recc     y  ^^^  ^^^^^^^ 

as  the  conquering  leader  of  the  troops  .^*  ^J^^^'f "^^^^^^^  England. 

had  as  recently  been  severed  from  he  ^f^^'/;^  ^^oLnd  [lC66]^vhic^ 
The  intelligence  of  «he /ecjaraton  o  jar^ w  t^^  L^^^^^  j^.^ ^^^^^ 

was  communicated  by  the  I^rd  <-''^"*^^?,"°' ^l^S            preparing  an  ex- 
was  accompanied  with  the_ass«rance  that  the  liutcii  were  ,     ,       & 

-n-gJind^rCMiii^^r'Cdde^^^    ",|f''7''l''^«'fh,f  d' whlTin  a  letter  to  the  Duke  of  York, 
*  It  wa.  probably  to  ^^^'^^^l^^^^^^^'ti  ZT^^^^^  -"«»  acknowledge 

»  CdUUiont  of  the  JVew  York  Ilulorual  iMifty. 


CHAP.  I.] 


ADMINISTRATION  OF   NICHOLS. 


419 


^jtb.    rhalracrs 


pedition  for  the  recovery  of  their  American  colony,  and  that  De  Ruyter 
had  received  orders  to  sail  immediately  for  New  York.'  Nichols  exerted 
liiuiself,  with  his  usual  firmness  and  activity,  to  resist  the  assault  of  so  for- 
midable an  invader  ;  and  though  it  proved  eventually,  that  either  the  chan- 
cellor's  information  was  erroneous,  or  that  the  expedition  was  suspended  by 
De  Ruyter's  more  important  avocations  in  Europe,  the  expense  that  attend- 
ed the  preparations  for  his  reception,  together  with  the  other  consequences 
of  the  war,  inflicted  much  inconvenience  and  distress  on  the  province.  As 
the  people  were  destitute  of  shipping,  their  trade,  which  had  been  carried 
on  by  Dutch  vessels,  was  completely  suspended  ;  no  supplies  were  obtained 
from  England  to  alleviate  this  calamity  ;  and  in  addition  to  other  concomi- 
tant burdens  of  war,  a  general  rate  or  tax  was  imposed  on  the  estates  of  the 
inhabitants  by  the  Court  of  Assizes.  There  was  reason  to  apprehend  that  the 
product  of  this  tax  would  be  insufficient,  and  the  preparations  consequently 
inadequate  to  repel  the  expected  invasion.  In  this  extremity,  the  govern- 
or, without  pressing  the  people  for  farther  contributions  to  defeat  an  enter- 
r.rise  which  many  of  them  must  have  contemplated  with  secret  good-will, 
generously  advanced  his  own  money  and  interposed  his  private  credit  to 
supply  the  public  exigencies.  Happily  for  the  province,  which  Nichols, 
with  the  aid  of  the  neighbouring  English  colonies,  would  have  defended  to 
the  last  extremity,  neither  the  States  General,  nor  the  Dutch  West  India 
Company,  made  any  attempt  to  repossess  themselves  of  New  York  during 
this  war  ;  and  at  the  peace  of  Breda  it  was  ceded  to  P^ngland  [July,  16G7] 
in  exchange  for  her  colony  of  Surinam,  which  had  been  conquered  by  the 
Dutch.  This  exchange  was  no  otherwise  expressed,  than  by  a  general  stipu- 
lation in  the  treaty  that  each  of  the  two  nations  should  retain  what  its  arms 
had  acquired  since  hostilities  began.**  The  Dutch  had  no  reason  to  regret 
the  transaction  ;  for  it  was  impossible  that  they  could  long  have  preserved 
New  York  against  the  incroasing  strength  and  rivalry  of  the  colonies  of  New 
England,  Maryland,  and  Virginia.  It  was  by  this  treaty  that  Acadia  was 
ceded  to  France,  which  had  acted  as  the  ally  of  Holland  during  the  war, 
and  was  the  only  party  that  reaped  advantage  from  it.  England  saw  her 
character  sullied  by  the  injustice  of  her  hostilities  ;  the  glory  of  her  arms 
obscured  by  a  signal  disgrace  at  Chatham  ;  the  conquest  formerly  achieved 
for  her  by  Cromwell  surrendered  [1667]  ;  and  every  one  of  the  purposes 
ihat  induced  her  monarch  to  provoke  the  quarrel  disappointed. 

The  security  which  the  British  dominion  in  New  York  derived  from  the 
treaty  of  Breda  tended  with  seasonable  occurrence  to  supply  the  loss  of 
the  services  of  Colonel  Nichols,  who,  finding  the  pecuniary  btirdens  of  the 
war  pressing  too  heavily  on  his  own  private  fortune,  was  forced,  in  the  be- 
2;inning  of  this  year,  to  resign  a  command  which  had  proved  not  less  hon- 
orable to  himself  than  satisfactory  and  advantageous  to  the  people  over  whom 
it  was  exercised.  The  king  expressed  his  sense  of  the  meritorious  conduct 
of  Nichols,  by  a  present  of  two  hundred  pounds  ;  and  this  brave  and  modest 
loyalist  was  more  gratified  with  the  expression  of  royal  favor  and  remem- 
brance, than  disappointed  by  the  meanness  and  inadequacy  of  the  remunera- 
tion.  He  was  long  remembered  with  respect  and  kindness  by  a  people  whom 

'  Humo  says  that  De  Riiyter  actually  committod  hostilities  on  Long  Island  before  the  dec 
laration  of  war,  in  revenge  of  the  capture  of  New  York.     But  De  Ruytor  was  not  accustomed 
so  inadequately  to  avenge  the  wrongs  of  his  country ;  and  Hume  has  been  misled  by  an  erro- 
neous account,  or  by  inaccurate  recollection,  of  a  more  serious  and  successful  attack  on  New 
York  by  the  Dutch  about  seven  years  after  tiiia  noriod^and  in  the  course  of  a  subseiuent  war. 

'  Smith.    Chalmora.    Douglass. 


420 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


.     V.    i  c      A  i,««iil*.  nnH  divided  ;  and  whom,  notwithstanding;  that  he  was 
he  h»^;«J^J>°;,^^^^^^^^^^^  indopondonce,  he  left  friendly, 

constrained  to  depmo  inein  ^  successfnl  exertions,  together 

^lluhe'atr  peacVrand^^^^^^^    recognition  by  Holland  of  the  Bnt- 

Miommion   devolved  on  his  successor,  Colonel  Lovelace,  a  man  of  quiet 
ipe     nd  Jdem^^^^  -hich  in  tranquil  nmes  so  well  supplied 

he  absence  of  vigor  and'  capacity,  that  the  colony,  during  the  greater  part 
osk  years  that  composed  the  period  of  his  presidency,  enjoyed  a  noisn- 
ot  six  y^-^"  ";"'  ;  ^  ,  o-osneritv  ;'  and  the  most  memorable  occurrence 
Ih^t  ^^Tzld  ralnTntsStVthe  unfortunate  event  that  brought  it  to 

''   m-'socond  war  with  Holland  [1672],  which  the  king  undertook  in  sub- 
servience To  U,e  ambition  of  Louis  tlie  Fourteenth,  was  calculated  no  loss 
o  i'  h"re  the  Uade  of  New  York,  than  to  disturb  the  ha.-mony  ot  is  mixed 
ZCrand  alienate  the  regards  of  the  original  colonists  from  their  ex- 
tin,  rtd^rs    The  false  and  frivolous  reasons  assigned  by  the  Lnghsh  coijrt 
fmtliis  profligate  war  rendered  it  more  offensive  to  every  Dutchman  by 
r\^  :r«ulr  to  iniurv  •  and  the  gallant  achievements  of  De  I  uyter,  that 
0  Sed  theUmiXn  'and  applause  even  of  his  enemies,  must  have  awak- 
pnla  hi  the  mosTphlegmatic  bosoms  of  the  Dutch  colonists  some  sympathy 
whh    he  RloTamldanger  of  their  country,  and  a  reluctance  to  the  dest.ny 
r    associS  them  with  her  enemies.     The  intel  igence  of  the  Drke  of 
York'    recent  profession  of  the  Catholic  faith  contributed  to  increase  the.r 
Y  orK  s  receiu  piuiv  „_„„„:ipfi  ,o  far  w  th  a  considerable  number  ot 

discontent,  which  at  length  prevailea  so  •""'"',  .     j  j 

them    that  thev  determined  to  abandon  New  York,   ana  eiiner  rtuirn  lo 
Holland   or  seek  another  colonial  establishment  m  the  new  world.     Hap- 
•1    ?.r  RHtirAmer  ca,  they  were  retained  within  her  territory  by  the  ad- 
5;L  of  fh   pro.^^^^^^^^  who  engaged  them  to  direct  theircourso 

foward  Uils  province,  where,  rehiote  from  foreign  war,  and  surmountm^ 
•arSts  by  LLt  industry,  they  formed  a  settlement  that  recompensed 
t^Lm  oithe  habitations  they  had  forsaken.^  If  more  of  their  countryrnen 
n  oLtedasimila.  retreat  from  New  York,  their  purpose  was  suspended  by 
Kent  which  occurred  the  same  year,  and  invited  thein  o  e.nbrac(,  a  more 
Jmrfyit  deliverance  from  the  irksomeness  of  their  «'^"«^'°"- ,  ^^  ?" 
!n.Sn  had  been  despatched  from  Holland,  under  the  command  of  B.nkes 
Tl  vertfen,  to  attack^he  shipping  and  harass  the  commerce  of  the  Knghsh 
colon  Is  and  having  performed  tl^s  service  with  some  effect  on  the  Virgm- 
ian  coast',  they  were  induced  to  attempt  a  more  important  enterprise  l)j- 
reSce  oYthe  negligent  security  of  the  governor  of  New  \ork.  Re- 
n«2fwUh  secrecy  and  expedition  to  this  ancient  possession  of  their  conn-, 
V      ulv     6731   t^  the  good  fortune  to  arrive  at  the  metropolis  while 

lLS  wafal'a^Sance,  an^l  the  command  was  ad^n.stered  by  CoW 

r^lS^cli;      Zi  vJas  reversed  the  scene  that  had  been  presented^w  . 

.  F  cm  h.«  monument  i"  AmpthiU  church,  Bedfr^dshue^ 

Bttrbadoe*.    Samue!  Hmithn  H>story  of  Jfete  Jersty. 
i  Sec  aMty  Book  IV.,  Chap.  I. 


CHAP.  I]        REC0NQUE8T  OF  NEW  YORK  BY  THE  DUTCH. 


421 


IVew  York  was  invaded  by  Nichols.  The  English  inhnbitnnts  prepared  to 
aeleiul  Uicmscivcs,  and  oirt-red  their  services  to  Manning  ;  but  ho  ob- 
siriicted  their  efforts,  rejected  their  aid,  and,  on  the  first  intelligence  of  the 
enemy's  n|)proach,  struck  his  flag  before  their  vessels  were  even  in  sight. 
As  tiie  Dutch  lleet  advanced,  his  garrison  could  not  forbear  to  demonstrate 
their  readiness  to  fight  ;  but,  in  a  transport  of  fe«.,  ho  forbade  a  gun  to  be 
fired  on  pain  of  death,  and  surrendered  the  place  unconditionally  to  the  in- 
vaders.' The  moderation  of  the  conquerors,  however,  showed  them  wor- 
tlur  of  their  success  ;  and,  hastening  to  assure  all  the  citizens  of  the  security 
of  private  rights  and  possessions,  they  inspired  the  Dutch  colonists  with 
trimiiph,  and  left  the  English  no  cause  of  resentment  but  against  their  pu- 
sillanimous commander.  The  same  moderation  being  proffered  to  the  other 
districts  of  the  province,^  on  condition  of  their  sending  deputies  to  swear 
allegiance  to  the  States  General,  the  inclinations  of  one  party  and  the  fears 
of  the  other  induced  the  whole  to  submit;  the  Dutch  dominion  was  restored 
with  a  suddenness  that  exceeded  the  circumstances  of  its  overthrow  ;  and 
the  name  of  New  Netherlands  once  more  was  applied  to  the  province.'''  But 
neither  the  tritmiph  of  the  one  party,  nor  the  mortification  of  the  other,  was 
destined  to  have  a  long  endurance. 

Great  was  the  perturbation  that  these  events  excited  in  the  adjoining  col- 
onies of  the  English.  The  government  of  Connecticut,  with  amazing  ab- 
surdity, sent  a  message  to  the  Dutch  admirals,  remonstrating  against  their 
usurpation  of  dominion  over  the  territory  of  England  and  the  property  of 
her  subjects  ;  desiring  them  to  explain  the  meaning  of  their  conduct  and 
their  further  intentions  ;  and  warning  them  that  the  United  Colonies  of  New 
England  were  intrusted  with  the  defence  of  their  sovereign's  empire  in 
America,  and  would  be  faithful  to  their  trust.  To  this  ridiculous  applica- 
tion the  Dutch  commanders  returned  a  soldier-like  answer,  expressing  their 
just  surprise  at  the  terms  of  it,  and  declaring  that  they  were  commissioned 
by  their  country  to  endamage  the  power  and  possessions  of  her  enemies  by 
sea  and  land  ;  and  that,  while  they  applauded  the  fidelity  of  the  English 
colonies  to  their  sovereign,  they  would  emulously  conform  to  an  example 
so  deserving  of  imitation,  and  endeavour  to  approve  themselves  not  less 
zealous  and  faithful  in  the  service  of  the  States  General.  Active  prepara- 
tions for  war  ensued  forthwith  in  Connecticut  and  the  other  confederated 
colonies  ;  but  as  each  party  stood  on  the  defensive,  awaiting  the  onset  of 
the  other,  only  a  few  insignificant  skirmishes  had  taken  place,  when  the  ar- 
rival of  winter  suspended  military  operations.  Early  in  the  following  spring 
[1674],  the  controversy  was  terminated,  without  farther  blood-shed,  by  the 
intelligence  of  the  treaty  of  peace  concluded  at  London,  and  of  the  resto- 
ration  of  New  York  to  tlie  English  by  virtue  of  a  general  stipulation,  that 

'  Manning,  after  all  this  extraordinary  and  unaocountablo  conduct,  had  the  impudenie  to 
repair  to  England  ;  wlionce  he  returned,  or  was  sent  back,  when  tlie  province  was  ajj'un  given 
up  by  the  Dutch  in  tlie  following  vear.  He  was  then  tried  by  court-martial  on  a  charge  oi" 
treachery  and  cowardice,  expresseif  in  the  strongest  and  most  revolting  terms.  Confessing  this 
fharge  to  be  well  founded,  he  received  a  sentence  almost  as  extraordinary  as  his  conduct :  — 
"That,  though  he  deserved  death,  yet  because  ho  had  since  the  surrender  been  in  England,  and 
sun  the  king  and  the  ihikr,  it  was  adjudged  that  his  sword  should  bo  broke  over  his  head  in 
p'lbiic,  before  the  city  hall,  and  himself  rendered  incapable  of  wearinaj  '  sword,  and  of  serving 
his  Majesty  for  the  future  in  any  public  trust."  Smith.  The  benefit  of  the  old  maxim,  re- 
fpecteii  on  this  oocasi<m,  that  grace  is  dispensed  by  the  mere  look  of  a  king,  was  denied  a  f^Vf 
years  aflcr  to  the  unfortunate  Duke  of  Monmouth. 

'  When  the  intelligence  of  this  disaster  arrived  in  England,  preparations  were  made  for 
"  sending  Buccours  to  recover  New  York."     Evelyn's  Ditini.  27th  October,  1673. 

JJ 


422 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


all  countries,  conquered  during  the  war,  should  be  restored  to  the  power  that 
possessed  them  at  its  co-m^ncem^^^^^^^      ^^^  ^^^^.^^^  ^^^^^^^^  ^.  ^ 

The  events  of  this  ^f '  T^t  nortion  of  the  North  American  population 
important  consequences  1°  ^hat  por  i^^^^  oi  ^  ^^  ^^^  v^.^ 

which  denved  ,t\Te"prre"nge  now  obtained  from  the  Wand 
Stadtholder,  which  the  Prmce  o»  ^"^^  6    ^    ■  propitiate  the  king  of 

danger  of  his  <=r?^'"!"\:;"tis  ad^anceLnt  to  the^English  throne,  and 
England,'  paved  the  ^^^^^  ^^^^^^^  colonistsf  though  disunited 

consequenUy  to  a  reign  ""^^^^^^^f  ^  f,^,u  ^^^  as  a  for^n  domina- 

from  Holland,  -ase^j^  ^g^^^^^^^^^  aLs,  and  th'e  final  ces- 

tion.     The  >^ej?°"q"y^jf„' P[fiJS  conventional  arrangement,  cured  the 
sion  of  It  to  England  by  »  P^^f  j^J^^'^^^^i^j^^^iee  of  England's  original  .c- 

" -ir^Ta'nv'of  the  D^^^^^^^  b-"^-'  apprehensive  of  mclesta- 

quisition.     Many  oi  tne  yw.  »        government  whose  temporary 

tion,  or  at  least  despairing  of  Javorfr^^^^  a  gov  ^  ^^^  ^^^^^  V 

"^r:'JTo1oVorthei:  iirm^^  "^^^^^^^^^         --^-^^^  ^^^-"- 

induced  to  loUow  ineir  lorui  p  ^^  promote  their 

na  ;  ^  and  this  dispersion  of  ^^^  Pj^^^^^^^'Xest  New  York  of  a  distinc- 
friendly  commixture  ^^'^^  the  Enghsh  and  t    ^  ^^^^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^ 

^'^  Duke  of  YorU,.uiui.standin^  ^1^^ t^:i^^^a  t^ 2 
the  validity  of  his  original  P?^^"J' ^;^^rpo"session  of  the  country,  and 
the  Dutch  government  was  >"  P^^^^^^^^'.^P^d^o  have  been  vacated  by  tl>e 
which,  even  though  ong'naly  valid,  yet  seemed  to  n  ^^  ^^^.^^ 

intervening  conquest,  ^^ought  .t  prude^  t^^^  „ew  charter'  This 

the  resumption  of  his  P^^^^J^Ju^^iJ^bt   ningVune  29,  1674],  ve- 

land,  with  the  ^^^^-^^  ^^ ^::\^:l  ^,tut  S'  "erm'ssion  ;  arithough  it 
a    P«7"j/^^^j;;  ^tlol^^^^^^^  fro'm  England,  it  subjected 

allowed  the  colonists  to  >"n^o"  ^     ^^^^  elsewhere  prescribed  by 

them  to  payment  of  the  f 'J^/jf^Xrity  of  this  charter,  the  duke  con- 

same  extraordinary  powers  and  pr.vi  eges  tha    ^'^  .„^f"„  ^  greatness  of 

proprietaries  of  Maryland  -^  Caro If      Bu^^^^^^^  S^olicitous  to 

bis  connection  and  h.s  P••o«Pe?;^/he  .^ke  probaoiy 

share  the  dignities  and  immunit.e    ^^ich  were  coveted  oy^ 

prietaries  ;  and  while  as  counts  palatine  ^^^y  -ssumed  a  sty^eo  ? 

I  the  administration  of  their  governmems   h^^  S^.l^'S  evident  inca^- 

his  territory  m  the  name  o\  the  King,      xuc  n<'=      _      ^ r  „„„nrnnr 


pactiy 


::1\1h  ; -s  reiV-tment  to  the  offic^governor. 


of 


CHAP.  I] 


ARBITRARY  ADMINISTRATION  OF  ANDROS. 


4^ 


U«,  Book  IV., Chap.  i. 


which  was  conferred  on  Edmund  Andros  [July  1,  1674],  a  man  who 
disgraced  superior  talents  by  the  unprincipled  zeal  and  activity  with  which 
he  rendered  them  subservient  to  the  arbitrary  designs  of  a  tyrant.^  This 
officer,  whose  subsequent  conduct  in  New  England  has  already  introduced 
him  to  our  acquaintance,  now  commenced  that  career  in  America  which 
has  gained  him  so  conspicuous  a  place  in  her  annals  for  twenty  years  after 
the  present  period.  He  was  commanded  to  respect  private  rights  and 
possessions,  while  he  received  the  surrender  of  the  province  and  its  public 
property  from  th(i  Dutch,  and  to  distribute  justice  in  the  king's  name  ac- 
cording to  the  forms  observed  by  his  predecessors.  But  in  order  to  raise 
a  revenue  and  defray  the  expenses  of  government,  a  great  variety  of  rates 
were  at  tlie  same  time  imposed  by  the  sole  authority  of  the  duke  ;  and  an 
Englishman,  nanied  Dyer,  was  appointed  the  collector  of  these  odious  and 
unconstitutional  impositions.^ 

The  duke,  in  his  instructions  to  Andros,  recommended  to  him  the  exer- 
cise of  gentleness  and  humanity  ;  but  his  selection  of  this  officer  to  admin- 
ister the  arbitrary  policy  which  he  now  began  to  pursue  towards  the  colo- 
nists gave  more  reason  to  suppose  that  the  admonition  was  necessary  than 
that  it  would  prove  efFectual  ;  and,  accordingly,  the  new  governor  had  not 
been  long  in  the  province  [1675J,  when,  besides  embroiling  himself  with 
the  neighbouring  government  of  Connecticut,  he  vcited  the  murmurs  and 
remonstrances  of  the  magistrates,  the  clergy,  and»a  great  majority  of  the 
people  who  were  subjected  to  his  command.  The  pressure  of  the  arbi- 
trary rates  suggesting  especially  to  the  inhabitants  of  Long  Island  the  bene6t 
of  a  representative  assembly,  they  began  at  length  to  broach  this  proposition 
as  a  matter  of  constitutional  right  ;  but  these  first  aspirations  of  liberty  were 
checked  by  Andros  with  a  vigor  and  decision  for  which  he  received  the 
thanks  of  his  master.  A  Dutch  clergyman,  named  Renslaer,  who  was  rec- 
ommended by  the  duke  to  the  patronage  of  Andros,  proved  unacceptable 
to  the  people,  and  was  punished  by  the  magistrates  of  Albany  for  some  il- 
legal and  offensive  language.  The  governor  interfered,  with  his  usual  ener- 
gy, iftthe  dispute,  and,  having  first  loaded  with  Insult  a  popular  clergyman, 
whom  Renslaer  considered  his  rival,  adjudged  all  the  magistrates  to  find 
bail  to  answer  Renslaer's  complaints,  to  the  extent  of  five  thousand  pounds 
each ;  and  threw  Leisler,  one  of  thnir  number,  into  prison  for  refusing  to 
comply.  But  finding  that  in  this  proceeding  he  had  stretched  his  authority 
farther  than  he  could  support  it,  he  was  compelled  to  recede,  barely  in  time 
to  prevent  a  tumult  thai  might  have  dissolved  the  government.  Apparently 
somewhat  daunted  with  his  defeat,  he  conducted  himself  with  greater  regard 
to  prudence,  and  was  enabled  for  a  while  to  enjoy  a  quiet  administration  ; 
but  the  seeds  of  popular  discontent  had  been  sown,  and  a  strong  desire  for 
more  liberal  institutions  took  silent  yet  vigorous  root  in  the  colony.  This 
disposition,  which  the  contagious  vicinity  of  liberty  in  New  England  doubtless 
tended  to  keep  alive,  was  fomented  by  a  measure  to  which  the  governor 
resorted,  in  order  to  supply  the  inadequate  returns  from  ih^  provincial  rates, 
—the  practice  of  soliciting  pecuniary  benevolences  from  the  various  com- 
munities and  townships  within  his  jurisdiction.  [1676.]  This  poJcy,  the 
badge  of  bad  hmcs,  as  a  colonial   historian  has  termed  it,  sometimes  ef- 

'  See  Note  XVIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  Scott's  Model  of  the  Qovemment  of  East  JVew  Jersey.  The  charter  is  here  recited  at  length. 
Of  this  curious  work  (which  will  deiiinnd  farther  notice  in  Book  VI.)  I  have  seen  copies  in 
iiie  library  of  Gottingen,  and  in  the  Advocates'  Library  of  Edinburgh.    Smith.    Chuhuen 


424 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


fectuallv  befriends  those  rights  which  it  attacks  uidirecUy,  and  yet  affects  to 
recoS  In  the  close  of  the  following  year  [l677],>ndros  was  compelled 
lo  pay  a  visit  to  England  in  order  to  obtain  farther  instructions  adapted  to 
tlip  npw  scene  that  was  about  to  open.^  ,     , .  ,  •       ,  , 

The  rates  imposed  by  the  Duki^of  York,  and  which  constituted  the  rev- 
enue he  derived  from  the  province,  had  been  limited  to  the  duration  of  three 
vears  ;  and  as  the  allotted  period  was  on  the  point  of  expiring,  the  interest 
both  of  the  government  and  the  people  Avas  fixed  on  the  issue  to  which  this 
emergency  lould  lead.    The  people  anxiously  hoped  that  the  financial  d.ffi. 
culties  by  which  the  government  was  embarrassed  would  induce  their  pro- 
pr  etary  to  consent  to^he  desires  they  had  expressed  [1677],  and  to  seek 
L  improvement  of  his  revenue  from  the  estabhshment  of  a  representative 
assembly.     But  the  duke  regarded  this  measure  with  aversion ;  and  thought 
?hat  he  made  a  sufficient  sacrifice  to  the  advantage  of  the  colonists  by  simply 
proclaiming  that  the  former  rates  should  contim^e  for  three  years  longer. 
11678  1     When  Andros  returned  to  his  government  with  this  unwelcome 
edict   the  province  resounded  with  murmurs  of  disappointment ;  and  when 
a  new  edict,  in  the  following  year  [1679],  announced  an  mcrease  of  che 
tax  on  the  importation  of  liquors,  the  pubhc  indignation  was  expressed  so 
warmly,  and  so  many  complaints  were  transinitted  to  England,  that  the  duke, 
n  much  surprise,  recalled  his  governor  to  give  account  of  an  administration 
thaT  plainly  appeared  U>  be  universally  odious.   [1680.]     This  prince  was 
deterStliaf  his  subjects  should  be  enslaved,  and  at  the  same  t.rtie  quite 
wilTngthat  they  should  be  happy  ;  and  seemg  no  incompa.bihty  between 
Those  circumstLes,  he  supposed  the  more  readily  that  Andros  might  have 
perpetrated  some  enormities  for  which  the  exigence  of  his  official  pos.t.on 
S'  uld  not  furnish  an  apology,  and  therefore  called  h.m  home  to  ascertain 
f  he  had  really  so  discredited  legitimate  tyranny.     The  mquiry,  as  might  he 
expected,  terminated  in  the  acquittal  of  the  governor,  who  easily  demon- 
strSted  that  he  had  committed  no  breach  of  trust ;  that  he  had  merely  ex- 
erted  a  spirit  suitable  to  the  arbitrary  system  confided  to  his  conduct,  and 
enforced  his  master's  commands  with  the  rigor  that  was  necessary  to  carry 
such  obnoxious  mandates  into  execution.     But  certain  circumstances  which 
occurred  in  the  colony,  during  the  absence  of  Andros,  determined  the  duke 
to  forbear  for  the  present  to  reemploy  so  unpopular  an  officer,  or  to  risk  ns 
own  authority  in  a  farther  struggle  with  the  current  of  popular  will,  till  las 
hand  should  be  strengthened  by  the  hold  of  a  sceptre. 

Dver,  the  collector  of  the  revenue,  continued  for  some  time  after  his  ap- 
pointment to  execute  his  official  functions  with  great  odium,  but  little  oppo- 
sition.    Latterly,  however,  the  people  had  begun  to  question  the  legitimacy 
no  le  s  than  the^  liberality  of  a  system  of  taxation  originating  with  the  duke 
alone     and  when  they  learned  that  their  doubts  were  sanctioned  by  t  e 
opTnLns  of  the  most  eminent  lawyers  in  Eng  and,  their  indignation  broke 
forth  with  a  violence  that  nearly  hurried  them  mlo  the  commission  of  injus- 
lice  still  more  reprehensible  than  the  wrongs  they  comp  ained  ol.     Ihey 
accused  I>yer  of  high  treason,  for  having  collected  taxes  without  the  author- 
ity  of  law  ;  and  the  local  magistrates,  seconding  the  popular  rage,  appointed 
a  special  court  to  try  him  on  this  absurd  and  unwarrantable  dmrge.    1 
was  pretended,  that,  although  he  had  not  committed  any  one  of  tlie  off  nee 
specified  in  the  English  statute  oi;tmisons^yet  it  was  lawful  to  subjectjuni 
"" "^  '  Bmiiii.    Chaimere. 


CHAP.  I] 


A  LEGISLATIVE  ASSEMBLY  GRANTED. 


425 


to  the  penalties  of  this  statute,  on  the  ancient  and  exploded  charge  of  en- 
croaching power ;  —  one  of  those  vague  and  unintelligible  accusations  which 
it  was  the  express  purpose  of  the  statute  to  abolish.  But  reason  and 
humanity  regained  their  sway  in  the  short  interval  between  the  impeachment 
and  the  tnal ;  and  when  the  prisoner  demanded  to  know  whence  his  judges 
derived  their  functions,  and  if  they  did  not  act  as  servants  and  delegates  of 
the  same  prince  whose  commission  he  had  himself  obeyed,  —  the  court  m- 
lerposed  to  suspend  farther  prosecution  of  the  affair  within  the  colony,  and 
ordered  the  prisoner  to  be  sent  with  an  accuser  to  England.  [1681  1  He 
was  of  course  liberated  immediately  after  his  arrival  ;  and  no  accuser  ven- 
tured to  appear  agamst  him.  But  if  the  arraignment  was  any  thing  more  than 
a  bold,  inconsiderate  expression  of  popular  displeasure  and  impatience,  it 
accomplished  the  farthest  purposes  of  its  promoters  ;  and  to  their  spirited, 
though  irregular  measures.  New  York  was  indebted  for  the  overthrow  of  an 
odious  despotism  and  her  first  experience  of  systematic  hberty.  While  the 
duke  regarded  with  astonishment  the  violent  proceedings  by  which  his  offi- 
cer had  nearly  perished  as  a  traitor,  and  was  banished  from  the  colony  with- 
out a  voice  being  raised  in  his  favor,  he  was  assailed  with  expressions  of  the 
same  sentiments  that  had  produced  this  violence,  in  a  more  constitutional, 
and  therefore,  perhaps,  more  unwelcome  shape.  The  governor's  council, 
the  Court  of  Assizes,  and  the  corporation  of  the  city  of  New  York  united 
with  the  whole  body  of  the  inhabitants  in  soliciting  the  duke  to  extend  to  the 
people  a  share  of  the  legislative  authority  ;  and  while  their  conduct  enabled 
him  to  interpret  these  eidresses  into  a  virtual  declaration  that  they  would 
no  longer  continue  to  pay  taxes  without  possessing  a  representative  assembly, 
he  was  informed  by  his  confidential  advisers  that  the  laws  of  England  would 
support  them  in  this  pretension.  Overcome  by  the  combined  force  of  all 
these  circumstances,  and  not  yet  advanced  to  the  height  whence  he  was 
afterwards  enabled  to  regard  the  suggestions  of  legal  obstructions  with  con- 
tempt, the  duke  first  paused  in  his  arbitrary  career,  and  then  gave  a  reluc- 
tant and  ungracious  assent  to  the  demands  of  the  colonists.  Directions 
were  sent  to  the  deputy-governor,  on  whom  the  administration  devolved  in 
the  absence  of  Andros,  "  to  keep  things  quiet  at  New  York  in  the  mean 
lime";  and  shortly  after  [February,  1682],  it  was  intimated  to  him  that 
the  duke  would  condescend  to  grant  the  boon  which  the  people  desired,  on 
condition  of  their  raising  enough  of  money  for  the  support  of  government, 
and  of  the  principal  inhabitants  assuring  him  by  a  written  engagement  that  this 
should  be  done.  In  fine,  after  wavering  a  little  longer  between  fear  and 
aversion,  the  duke  gave  notice  of  his  fixed  determination  to  establish  in  New 
York  the  same  frame  of  government  that  the  other  English  colonies  enjoyed, 
and  particularly  a  representative  assembly.  The  governor  whom  he  nominat- 
ed to  conduct  the  new  administration  was  Colonel  Dongan,  afterwards  Earl 
of  Limerick,  a  man  of  probity,  moderation,  and  conciliating  mannera,  and, 
though  a  professed  Roman  Catholic,  which  perhaps  was  his  chief  passport 
to  the  duke's  favor,  yet  in  the  main  acceptable,  and  justly  so,  to  a  people 
who  regarded  the  Catholic  faith  with  suspicion  and  dislike.  The  instruc- 
tions that  were  given  to  Dongan  required  him  to  convoke  an  assembly, 
which  was  to  consist  of  a  council  of  ten  nominated  by  the  proprietory,  and 
of  a  house  of  representatives,  not  exceeding  eighteen,  elected  by  the  free- 
holders.    Like  the  other  provincial  legislatures,  this  body  was  empowered 

to  maKR  Inwa  for  f ho  r^nlonictc    imrlpi.  fV»o  nnnf^ifi'^n  r\f  «y%.»f.-.«ry.J«.r  t^  *Un  ~«.. 


VOL.    I. 


54 


jj 


426 


(jaHlSTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


,  •    •        J     „«  «f  fhn  Pmnire   and  of  dependence  on  the  assent  or  dissent 

?  Ta  f,  r  conauered  people  for  nearly  twenty  years,  and  governed  by  the 
Sary  win  oX  DSke'of  York  a/d  his  deputies,  were  elevated  m  the 
aib  liary  will  o  ,     ^  j   ^^„     i^it  and  vigor  ;  and,  by  a  singular 

scale  of  P^*'^'^*;^^'"'^^"^^^^  at  the  very  time  when  their  old  ri- 

:rt^c"ioS"of  N^  deprive/of  it.    Nothing  could  he 

nt'e  acceptable  to  them  than  this  interesting  change  ;  and  the  ardent  grat,- 
Tde  of  their  acknowledgments  expressed  niuch  more  justly  the.r  rel.sh  of 
he  benefit  tlian  the  merit  of  their  nominal  benefactor.^    ,-•,»•         i-  i 

'~J!r^a7r^^s:cV:SZTcl:L  i„  .he  ear  ./^  ;  ftom  »hich, 
n  from  a  Sim  ar  communication  by  the  munic.pahty  of  New  York  to  the 
Boa  d  of  Tri  a^ew  years  after/some  'fi%r':y2':^'SZ^Z't 

IrP^c':,  *ch  con.i,.d Jwenty^-  -^ '  ^^rVr^t 

peltry  procured  from  the  /"^  ?ns,  ana        y  ^^^  g^^^^ 

jnany.        1  he  duKe  niaimameu  a    ^l"^,     ,     .      rp^  ^e  were  about  twenty 

-T-s,;iur~^/iWorv«/-<A«.fl"''*^.0?«'«»««'»^^^^^^  oualitvto  the  finest 

•  Uenton  stale*  limt  the  r<«w  iors  loDacco  wa,  ci,i)^K..rea  .., ,        , 

Qrodiice  of  Maryland. 


CHAP.  II.] 


COLONEL  DONGANS  ADMINISTRATION. 


4S7 


tration  which 


arrived.  Four  years  after  (in  1686)  it  was  found  to  have  improved  so  con- 
siderably, thai  th-i  shipping  of  New  York  amounted  to  ten  three-masted 
vessels,  twenty  sloops,  and  a  few  ketches  of  intermediate  bulk.  The  militia 
had  also  increased  to  four  thousand  foot,  three  hundred  horse,  and  a  compa- 
ny of  dragoons.'  The  augmentation  of  inhabitants,  indicated  by  this  increase 
of  military  force,  appears  the  more  remarkable,  when  we  consider,  that, 
some  time  prior  to  this  last  mentioned  period,  the  province  was  diminished 
by  the  dismemberment  of  the  Delaware  territory,  which  had  been  partly 
surrendered  to  Lord  Baltimore,  and  partly  assigned  to  William  Penn. 


nualitv  to  the  finest 


CHAPTER    II. 

Colonel  Dongan'B  Adininistration.  — Account  of  the  Five  Indian  Nations  of  Canada.  — Their 
Hostility  to  the  French.  — Missionary  Lahors  of  the  French  Jesuits.  — James  the  Second 
abolishes  the  Liberties  of  New  York  —  commands  Dongan  to  abandon  the  Five  Nations  to 
the  French.  —  Andros  again  appointed  Governor.  —  War  between  the  French  and  the  Five 
Nations.  —  Discoritents  at  NewYork  -Leisler  declares  for  King  William,  and  assumefl  the 
Government.— The  French  attack  the  Province,  and  burn  Schennctady.  — Arrival  of  Gov- 
emorSloughter.  — Perplexity  of  Leisler— his  Trial  — and  Execution.— Wars  and  mutual 
Cruelties  of  the  French  and  Indians.  —  Governor  Fletcher's  Administration.- Peace  of 
Rysvvick— Piracy  at  New  York.  — Captain  Kidd.  —  Factions  occasioned  by  the  Fate  of 
Leisler.— 1  rial  of  Bayard.  — Corrupt  and  oppressive  Administration  of  Lord  Cornbury. 
—  State  of  the  Colony  at  the  Close  of  the  Seventeenth  Century. 

Colonel  Donoan  did  not  arrive  at  the  seat  of  his  government  till  a  year 
after  the  date  of  his  appointment  [August,  1683]  ;  a  delay  which  appears  to 
have  created  some  uneasiness,  and  was  probably  beneficial  to  the  people. 
in  affording  time  for  the  first  ardor  of  an  ill-merited  loyalty  to  cool,  and 
suggesting  precautions  for  preserving  liberty  that  should  signalize  the  first 
opportunity  of  exercising  it.  To  appease  the  public  inquietude,  the  govern- 
or, immediately  after  his  arrival,  issued  writs  to  the  sheriffs,  directing  them 
10  convene  the  freeholders,  for  the  purpose  of  electing  their  representatives 
in  the  assembly  ;  and  this  legislative  body  soon  afterwards  held  its  first 
meeting  at  New  York,  to  the  great  satisfaction  of  the  whole  province. 
One  of  the  earliest  ordinances  which  it  framed  naturally  arose  from  the 
mixture  of  nations  of  which  the  population  was  composed,  and  was  an  act 
of  general  naturalization,  extending  equal  privileges  to  all.  From  this  period 
the  Dutch  and  English  at  New  York  were  firmly  compacted  into  one  national 
body.  They  saw  the  daughter  of  their  common  proprietary  married  to  the 
Ctadtholder  of  Holland  ;  and  willingly  cemented  their  own  union  by  frequent 
intermarriage  and  the  ties  of  consanguinity.  There  was  passed,  at  the  same 
time,  an  act  declaring  the  liberties  of  the  people,  and  one  for  defraying  the 
requisite  charges  of  government  for  a  limited  time.  These,  with  a  few 
other  laws  regulating  the  internal  economy  of  the  province,  and,  in  particular, 
appointing  its  division  into  counties,  were  transmitted  to  the  Duke  of  York, 
and  received  his  confirmation,  as  proprietary,  in  the  following  year.  [1684.] 
An  amicable  treaty,  which  the  governor  concluded  with  the  provincial  au- 
thorities of  Connecticut,  extinguished  the  long-subsisting  dispute  with  regard 
to  the  boundaries  of  Connecticut  and  New  York.^ 

But  the  administration  of  Colonel  Dongan  was  chiefly  distinguisneo  by 
the  attention  which  he  bestowed  upon  Indian  affairs,  and  by  the  increasing 


'  State  Papers,  apud  Chalmers. 


•  Chalmers,    Trumbull, 


4^8 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


rived  from  the  most  ^'"^t^  ?"^S^he  Mo^awk^^ 
handed  five  Indian  nations,  of  ^^^^^  ,'^^''/^^^^^^^  on  terms  of  the 

lained  the  most  asting  name  «"^  J^f  ^/^^'^^Ld  warfare  and  mtUual 
strictest  equahty,  ma  PX'"^t£s  of  tie  united  body  reckoned  them- 
defence  and  security.    ,  ^  ^e^  members  o  distinctive  appellaiion 

selves  superior  to  all  the  >•««    ^J.  Tj^  But  the  principles  of 

which  they  adopted  •  was  J^P  ^^^  ^^^  °  ,^^^^  than  ^e  mi'ght  ex- 

Iheir  confederacy  display  far  •V**^^  P^^'^y/^^^^^      ^j^     embraced  the  Ro- 

pect  from  the  -^^^f^^^lt^^rt^^^^^  '^'^  P^°P'^  '^ 

man  principle,  ?VlcIL  After  ever/  conquest  of  an  enemy,  when 
other  nations  with  themselves      After  eve  y         1         ^^     ^^      ^^^^^.^^^ 

riiey  had  indulged  their  ^^^^"^.^^^^'".^i^rcaptives  ;  and  frequently  with 
their  policy  in  the  adoption  f^^J^flS  most^Sguishe  sachems  and 
so  much  advantage,  ^^at  several  of   he^  most  am   g  ^^^^  .^^  ^^^^ 

commanders  were  derived  from  ^«"r  ^?^^  ^^^l  ,nd  dignity  were 

separate  repv,blican  constitution,  in  wlncboffic^^^^  ^g^  Y^^^^^ 

claimed  only  by  ^S^' P>^°^"/«^,^"^  blS^l  h^ee  tribes,  bearing  re- 
of  public  esteem;  and  ^^^^^^.^^^e^^^  of,  the  Tortoise, 

rt:!'    nVtb -W"1    noti^^^^^^^^^^^  or  civilized,  that  has 

greater  beauty.  Such  was  the  efticacy  «f  ^^f  ^^n  tlie  statue  ofVe 
fhe  grace  and  symmetry  oVi^'rrP  fist^imeb;  ie  American  Apelles, 
Apollo  Belvidere  was  beheld  ^^^^^f^^^J  '."^  ^e^^^^^^^^^  and  exclaW, 
Benjamin  West,  he  started  «5   ^e  "nexpe^^^^  g         .^  ^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^ 

u  li'ow  like  it  is  to  y7"^\^^°^\^^^^  V  the  usual  In- 

nations,  and  especially  *«,^i^™'' ^^^  ^titude  in  the  endurance 

dian  qualities  of  attachment  to  hberty,  stubborn   or  .     ^^^ 

of  pain    -  ;J;j;,Xrto  "iS^^^^^^^^^  inwar->.and%y  a 

ence  of  craft  ^"^  ^fj^jf  T  '°,  "^erance,  resolution,  and  active  intrepidity. 
more  than  usual  degree  «' ,P®f  ™^  «L^  Charlevoix,  that  they  advance 
It  was  universally  reported  of  jl^^^^^^^^yL^S;  ^Almost  all  the  tribes 
like  fo.es,  attack  hke  Uons   and  r^^^-[^^^^^^^^^^  though  not  in- 

adjacent  to  this  people,  and  even  rnany  at  a  grea  J      Jion  of  its 

elided  in  the  confederacy,  yielding  to  the    orce  or  ui    j 

'~^~0;^f^^^>^:^^^^^^^^  thymic'.. nl  Spartans;  as  ti.ey  did 

«  In  this  peculiarity  .nosl  o(^  the  Ip^'^.^^J^^Tf^^eech.    Plnuuch's  YA/c  of  Lycurgus  re- 
,lso  in  their  studiou.  "tlt.vat.on  of  c"";^^'-"*^.;;  J  ,,,•,„«»,    ■  the  Five  Nations. 

wbittwvan  authority'  lu  a  Roman  dictator.      Coidcn. 


ciiap.  If] 


THE  FIVE  INDIAN  NATIONS. 


429 


course  of  judicious  policy  and  victorious  enterprise,  had  completely  suc- 
ceeded in  causing  the  federal  character  and  sentiments  to  prevail  over  the 
peculiarities  ot  their  separate  national  subdivisions.  In  the  year  1677,  the 
confederacy  possessed  two  thousand  on«  hundred  and  fifty  fightine  men. 
Both  the  French  and  the  English  writers,  who  have  treated  of  the  character 
or  affairs  of  this  people,  agree  in  describing  them  as  at  once  the  most  judi- 
cious and  pontic  of  the  native  powers,  and  the  most  fierce  and  formidable 
of  the  native  inhabitants  of  America.'  There  was  only  wanting  to  their 
fame  that  literary  celebration  which  they  obtained  too  soon  from  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  a  race  of  civilized  men,  who  were  destined  to  eclipse,  and 
finally  extinguish,  their  greatness.  They  have  received,  in  particular,  from 
the  pen  of  an  accomplished  writer,  Cadwallader  Golden,  one  of  the  gov- 
ernors of  New  York,  the  same  historic  illustration  which  his  own  barbarian 
ancestors  derived  from  the  writings  of  C»sar  and  Tacitus 

When  the  French  settled  in  Canada,  in  the  beginning  of  this  century, 
ihey  found  the  Five  Nations  engaged  in  a  bloody  war  with  the  powerful  tribe 
of  Mtrondacks ;  in  which,  after  having  been  themselves  so  severely  pr-ssed 
that  they  were  driven  from  their  possessions  round  Montreal,  and  forced 
to  seek  an  asylum  on  the  southeast  coast  of  Lake  Ontario,  the  Five  Nations 
had  succeeded  m  gaining  a  decided  advantage,  and  in  turn  constrained 
their  enemies  to  abandon  their  lands  situated  above  the  Three  Rivers,  and 
fly  for  safety  behind  the  strait  where  Quebec  was  built.  The  tide  of  suc- 
cess, however,  was  suddenly  turned  by  the  arrival  of  Champlain,  who  con- 
ducted the  French  colony,  and  who  naturally  joined  the  AdirondaCks,  be- 
cause he  settled  on  their  lands.  The  conduct,  the  htavety,  and  especially 
the  firearms,  of  these  new  allies  of  the  enemy  proved  an  overmatch  for  the 
skill  and  intrepidity  of  the  Five  Nations,  who  were  defeated  in  several 
battles,  and  reduced  to  great  distress.  It  was  at  this  critical  juncture  that 
the  first  Dutch  ship  arrived  in  Hudson's  River  with  the  colonists  who  es- 
tablished themselves  at  Albany.  The  Five  Nations,  procuring  from  these 
neighbours  a  supply  of  that  species  of  arms  which  had  occasioned  the  supe- 
rionty  of  their  enemies,  revived  the  war  with  such  impetuosity  and  success, 
that  the  nation  of  the  Adirondacks  was  alnr.ost  entirely  destroyed  [1684], 
and  the  French  too  late  discovered  that  they  had  espoused  the  fortunes 
of  the  weaker  people."    Hence  originated  the  mutual  dread  and  enmity  that 

'  La  Potherio'8  HUtory  of  J^wtk  Jmerien.  Colden.  Smith.  Wentworth  Greenhalph'g 
]«^rna}^pud  Chalmers.  Gait's  Life  of  We»t.  Charlevoix's  7V«r«/*  in  North  Amtkca. 
Though  I  have  dwelt  at  gome  length  on  the  charactei  oF  the  Five  Nations,  I  should  accouat 
It  a  mere  waste  of  words  to  particularize  the  names  or  discriminate  the  policy  of  all  the  vari- 
oui  Indian  tribes  with  whom  the  North  American  colonists  were  from  time  to  time  connected 
by  friendly  or  hostile  relations.  In  general,  the  distinctions  between  them  ■were  few  and 
inoonsiderablc  ;  and  the  revolutions  of  their  condition  and  policy  (as  Milton  remarked  of  the 
annals  of  barbarians)  not  more  interesting  than  the  kindred  vicissitudes  of  a  commonwealth  of 
crows. 

« -To  amuse  the  French,  the  Five  Nations,  at  one  time,  made  a  proposal  Of  peace,  to  which 
the  French  heartily  inclining,  requested  them  to  receive  a  deputation  of  Jesuits,  whose  ex- 
ertions, they  expected,  would  sincerely  conciliate  the  friendship  of  the  savages.  The  Five 
.Nations  readily  agreed,  and  desired  to  see  the  priests  immediately;  but  tho  instant  they  got 
hold  of  them,  they  marched  to  attack  the  Indian  allies  of  the  French,  and  taking  the  priestK 
Willi  thoin  as  hostages,  to  enforce  tho  neutrality  of  their  countrymen,  gave  the  Adirondacks  a 
signal  defeat.  Colden.  fhe  tribes  opposed  to  the  Five  Nations  in  this  war  are  called  tho 
Ihirom  and  Algonquins  by  Charlevoix,  who  acknowledges  that  the  war  was  provoked  bv 
the  trenchery  and  imustice  of  the  allies  of  his  countrymen.  The  Five  Nations  are  often 
ermed  by  French  writers  the  Iroquois,  anA  by  tho  English  writers  the  Mohateks ;  though 
thu  latt  was  merely  the  distinctive  name  of  one  of  tho  confederated  tribes.  Loikiel  reraarkB 
»ery  justly,  jhat  "  the  numbers  of  the  Indians  have  been  often  overrated,  owing  to  tho  differ 
oat  na.v.es  given  to  one  nation."     History  of  ikt  Maracian  tdissions  in  Jrarih  Mf^-triea, 


4dO 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  \. 


4wU 

i_    -c    „«v.  nnrl  tVip  ronfeclcrated  Indians  and  en- 
long  subsisted  between  the  French  ^"d  ^^e  conlec  ^^^^^^^^^^  ^^ 

tailed  so  many  -^l^'^'^'f^H^H  ^ie  count  y  than  their  savage  enemies, 
climate  and  less  acquainted  wuh  ^"^  ^"^^^^  ^„,t  expeditions.  A  party 
attempted  vainly  to  l-^*:;^^  *  '^'g'/'r^^^^^^  the  governor  of  CaSada, 

despatched  m  the  winter  ^f  ^f^^^^^^^^  g^^ng  wastes  of  snow,  and,  after 
to  attack  the  Five  Nations,  1?«^J^^''. ^ ^  ^l^owing  where  they  were,  at  the 
enduring  extreme  misery,  ^"'^f '  ^^^^J 1  a  D^chman  of  consideration, 
village  of  Schenectady,  near  Albany,  ^'^^^  \.  h,  exhausted,  famished, 
nam^dCorlear,>  h^^  recently  fo«n^^^^^^^  Jembled  rather  a  crew  of  helples; 
and  stupefied  with  .^^^^  *"^„^^""^^' d  ^ould  have  fallen  an  easy  prey  to  a 
suppliants  than  an  invading  ^'''^J';"?  ™i°es  ;„  the  village,  if  Corlear, 
band  of  Indians  who  were  X  "leSe  appe  mnce,  had  not  employed 
n^oved  with  -^•"Pf  «\°S,:USrthrinIns,  JS^rsuade'  them  to  spare  their 
both  influence  and  artifice  J^'^^  ^^^^^  ^^eir  own  people  against  a  more 

unfortunate  enemies,  "V.^^^^XaJar^^^^  he  pretended  to  have  re- 

formidable  attack  in  ^different  quarter,  o^^  v^^^^^^  ^^^  ^.^  ^^^^^ 

ceived  intelligence      When  the  Indans  ,  ere  g,^^     ^^^  ^^^^^ 

men  brought  refreshments  to  ^^«  ;^r^'^;^^^^  were  enabled  to  return  .n 

with  provisions  and  other  conaforts  byj^'<;h  ^n  y  .^  .^  ^^^  ^^^^^^ 

safety  to  Canada,  ^'^VlZS^h^^.  ^tead  of  aggravating  by  con'- 
of  men  to  mitigate  ^yk'ndness  and  chanty^  ^^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^ 

tention  and  ^^^o.iy,^^ej^^^^^ 

of  humanity.      1  he  *  rencn  guvci  t-      i^  ngyoient  stratagem    but  their 

kindness,  aid  the  Indians  never  ^^^^^^^f  .^^f  J""7f  er  a  long  prevalence  of 

mutual  hatred  and  warfare  c?nVnued  unabated^    A  ^&  F^^ 

severe  but  indecisive   host.ht^s    boA  prt^^^^ 

though  not  exhausted  of^";^^^'^^;^^  endured  ever  since'without  any 

r^nXSfnte^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^  Colonel  Dongan  was  appointed 

^°I5fX^S  Z^iubsistedbet^^^^^  ^^ 

only  confused  and  uncertam^^^^^^^^^^^  ^j,j,„,3  ,,a  friend- 

who  assert  that  the  Dutch  ^^^5 ^ J;°"  •  j'  ^j^eir  stalemeiits  entirely  from 
ship  with  the  Indians,  seem  ^J^^/Jj^^^^'^^^^  U>  have  mistaken  ^r  an  indi- 
thir  own  conjectures  of  wha  was  l^^^^nL  readiness  of  .he  Dutch  to 
cation  o    particular  f °f  ^-w  "  the    "d.  ^.m   ^^  ^^^  ^.^^^  ,v.s  people  ^vere 

traffic  with  friend  or  foe.  ^^'^^J  y'^'ign,  '__  though  with  what  particular 
engaged  in  a  bloody  war  with  the^I^^^^^^^^      t^  ^^^  ^^^^      S,„      ^   ,, 

tribes  there  are  no  nieans  of  «^certaining^  neighbours  of  which 

administration  they  enjoyed  a  peace  ^  When  clnll  Niclols  assumed  the 
the  benefit  descended  to  he  Enghs^^^^^    Whe  ^^ 

government  of  New  York,  I  e  entercQ  J         productive  of  no 

Nations  ;  which,  however,  "VnircomrnercS  intercourse,  in  which  the 
farther  connection  than  an  extensive  comrnerc.a^i  ^^^. ^^^  ^^^^^. 

Indians  supplied  }»>«  .^ngl'^l;  wuh  P^^^^y^^^J^^^^^  ,^  ,oyed  against  them- 
lion,  of  the  use  of  which,  as  \?"Sf  ^^;7^7[f  -^  proved,  unfortunately,  re- 
selv'es,  the  colonists  ^v ere  entirely  «"d;;;^ '^^^^^ct  fidelity,  but  always 
gardless.     The  Indians  adhered   o  the  treaty  w  ^^^^^^^j^^^  ,f  .ere- 

evinced  a jealouspridejnjnin^^ 
--rH^i:ir;=;;:i^;^dI^^^  of  re.pea 

the  gov-emoT  of  New  iork  with  II. .| J-  .cr^.,  =^ 

w-'lh  which  they  were  acquainted.    CoWen. 


CHAP.  II.]  MISSIONARY  LABORS  OF  THE  JESUITS. 


431 


•"  T  hpfrT  u  i°  '"  '."dependent  people  ;  and,  in  particular,  when 
any  of  the.r  forces  had  occasion  to  pass  near  the  English^forts,  th^y  ex- 
pected  to  be  saluted  w.th  military  honors.     In  the  mean  time  the  French 

2"hos  ilftironh '  ':r'  ^^f^^  ^^^^^^^'^'^^  °f  ^J^-^-  deliverance  Tom 
i„t  the    fvef  St   rl°™  ^^^y  «^^«"d«d  their  settlement 

along  the  river  fet.  Lawrence,  and,  m  the  year  1672,  built  Fort  Frontienac 
on  Its  northwest  bank  where,  devolving  from  the  p  renUake  of  On  ario 
„  commences  Its  rapid  and  majestic  course.  With  a  policy  proport  oned 
tothe  vigor  of  their  advances,  they  filled  the  Indian  settlemLtswhh  mis- 
sionaries, whose  active  and  successful  exertions  multiplied  converTs  to^he 
faith  and  allies  to  the  interest  of  their  countrymen  ^""^eris  to  tne 

The  praying  Indians,  as  the  French  termed  their  converts,  were  either 
neutral,  or,  rnore  frequently,  their  auxiliaries  in  war.  The  Jesiirs  preached 
not  to  their  Indian  auditors  the  doctrines  that  most  deeply  wound  t^e  pride 

0  human  nature,  nor  a  system  of  pure,  austere  morality,  which  the  conCt 
of  the  great  mass  of  us  nominal  votaries  practically  disowns  and  disgraces 
They  required  of  their  converts  but  a  superficial^lmnge,  -  the  aTption 
of  one  form  of  superstu.on  in  place  of  another  ;  i  and  thly'  captivated  C 
senses  and  impressed  their  imaginations  by  a  ceremonial  at  once  picturesque 
and  mysterious.     Yet  as,  from  the  weaknes-  and  imperfection  of  man,^an 
admixture  of  error  ,s  inseparable  from  the  purest  system  of  Christian  doc- 
trine, so,  from  the  overruling  goodness  of  God,  a  ray  of  truth  is  found  to  per- 
vade even  the  most  corrupted.     And  the  instructions  of  the  Jesuits,  fS-om 
which  the  lineaments  of  Christianity,  though  disfigured  by  meretricious  ad- 
ditament,  were  by  no  means  obliterated,  may  have  contributed,  in  some  in- 
stances,  to  form  the  divme  image  in  the  minds  of  the  Indians  ;  and  the 
seed  of  heavenly  truth  unchoked  by  the  tares  of  human  error,  may  in  some 
places  have  yielded  a  holy  and  happy  increase."     The  moral  and  domestic 
precepts  contained  m  the  Scriptures  were  frequently  communicated  with 
success,  and  advantage  ;  and  various  congregations  of  Indian  converts  were 
persuaded  by  the  Jesuits  to  build  villages  in  Canada  in  the  style  exemplified 
by  the  French  colonists  ;  to  adopt  European  husbandry,  and  to  renounce 
spirituous  hquors.3     The  visible  separation  of  the  Catholic  priests  from  the 
general  family  of  mankind,  by  renunciation  of  conjugal  and  parental  ties, 
gave  an  awful  sacredness  to  their  character,  and  a  strong  prevailing  power 
to  their  addresses      In  the  discharge  of  what  they  conceived  their  duty, 
iheir  courage  and  perseverance  were  equalled  only  by  their  address  and 
activity.     1  hey  had  already  compassed  sea  and  land  to  make  proselytes  ; 

'  There  is  preserved  in  Neal's  JVew  England  a  specimen  of  the  French  Missionary  Cote- 
r  «m  contaming  a  tissue  of  most  absurd  and  childish  fictions  gravely  propounded  as  tL«^' 
ces  of  Christian  doctrme.    The  following  anecdote  is  related  by  ColLn.     ''About  the  tS 
Se  FZtZ"o fi.n'rC-'^r  of  Ryswick,  Therouet,  a  noted  InLn  sachem,  dfed  a  Montreal 

1  he  trench  §avc  hiin  Christian  burial  in  a  pompous  manner ;  the  priest  that  attended  him  at 
«  death  having  declared  that  he  died  a  true  Chr*istian.  For  (said  the  priest wWle  I  expKed 
iJr/'"  ^\TT  ""^  °"'  ^"^i^l^r-  ^»'°"'  t''"  Je^s  ""<=ified.  he  cried  dut,  '  O,  had  Y  been 
Z'ni  '^""'^  ^T  /«r  "««d  his  death,  and  brought  away  'their  scalps ! '  "    "Some  of  the 

wZhp;;^-T-l^°''"-fl'  «''°"V^"y  y^^  afterwards.  "  having  been  baptised  by  Romish  orieste! 

»  A  nlh!^„r  r'^i";-'  '^^'''^  "'"^  considered  merely  as'additions  to  their  Indian  ffnery." 

roimVrvmfn     nnVi  t^r  r"'"'^^,  "^^  ^^"^  *''''"''"  •"""""«  themselves  missionaries  to  their 

Mun^men  ;  and  several  of  them  fell  martyrs  to  their  zeal,  which  had  prompted  them  to  at-' 

2  Jo?fT  •"'""  ""^  'I'^V^''  ^"^'"•e^  "f  their  own.  These  martyrs'^  diel  with  the  usual 
2mtt  wS  r- '  •"'V'^y  superadded  to  it  a  mildness  and  cl/arity  of  demeanour  and 
Mnument,  which  their  murderers  regarded  with  surprise,  and  ascribed  to  some  magical  influ- 
ence exercised  upon  them  by  the  rito  of  baptism,   tharlevoix's  TravtU.  ^ 

Ineir  strict  adherence  to  this  difHrnh  rnnunnlntinn  i»ss  », 
eiier  in  the  year  1749.    Kalm'g  Trare/*. 


<I32 


HISTORY  OF  NOETH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


were  at  war  with  "^^^'^  *^°""^;^^^^^^^^^  '^ji  ^^ng.  to  all  men,  e.nbraced  Indian 
apostohcal  example  of  ^««or'"S  «  *  established  hi.melf  so  firmly  in  the 
habits  of  1--^.,^"?  11^  fn  Nations,  that,  although   they   continued 

?*^fl??"tnle  natt>>l  c u  if.  a.uinst  the  French,  they  adopted  h.m  as  h 
faithful  to  \he  na  lo  >  1  €  H  „  .^  ^„.  with  such  industry,  resolution,  and 
brother,  and  electc.  hmi  a  |"^»^"™-^  ;  themselves  to  recommend  their 
insinuation  did  iho  *^rench  Jesmts  exe  t  ,^^       ^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^      ^^^^ 

faith  and  the  mte rests  of  "'^'f^P^^^'V.  ^  -y  officers  and  sol- 
French  laity  a  so  and  ej«-f  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^  Te  English^in  conciliating  the 
diery,  succeeded  better  than  ^'^^  6«"^'^j; J^,,  ^.^.„,  ^oductive  of  more  polite- 
good  graces  of  the  savages.  *^«"^  ^  j^J  ^  .^  ^,,h  even  the  displeasure 
ness  and  accommodation/  ^^""^K'^^^'T^^^^  of  ini.   kh  was  less 

which  the  French  sonietnnes  excited  by  co«  J.^^^^       ^ 

galling  than  the  affronts  wlj^^^^^^^^^^  th'e  English  wL  best 

fct^otSwit^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

vivacity  of  tiieFrenc^^^^^^^^^^  of  America,  whicl., 

rnXfXy/ceprsomeNew^^^^^^^ 

^^  frGlty::r d^n^er^^^^^^^^      bymemorable  exertion. 

''^/J'o^lTDoI.tn'' who  ^vas  not  encumbered,  like  his  official  predecessors, 
Colonel  l^o"f "'.  XhTfunctions  of  government,  nor  involved  m  collis- 
with  a  monopoly  °f  »" J^^^^^"? 'Tleisure  for  a  considerate  .urvey  of  the 
ions  with  popular  discontent,  had  l^^ure  lor  ^nd  very  soon  discov- 

state  of  his  countrymen's  relations  ^'^^  Ae  Man  ,  and       y^^^  ^^^^^^ 

ered  that  the  peace  ^^f '^  ^^^J^  J^heTfo^^^^^^^^ 
colonists,  by  enabling  them  »°^^^fJ^X^^^^  consequences  to  some 

wide  extent  of  <=°"S'^;.^^^,„f.1^^^^^^^^  to  them\ll.     The  Five 

of  the  colonies  of  B"»«'"' ?"^3or^^^^  a  pretext  for  its  gratifica- 

Nauons,  inflamed  with  martial  ,^f  °  '  f  .^ JJ^"^i,e(I  from  various  quarters 
tionm  the  recollecUon  of  msults  they  had  receiv^^^  southward,  and 

in  the  season  of  ihe.r  adverse  f°'',V;'"^^Slui  the  borders  of  clroli- 

conquered  the  whole  country  from  ^^  ^iss'ss^ppi^^ 

na  ^exterminating  numerous  ^nbes  a^^^^^^^^^  ^^J^^^^ . 

Many  of  the  Indian  albss  of  ^ ''^S'"'^/r  '  „  J,„   compelled  to  take  arras, 
and  'these  colonies  themselves  we  e  Jequ«m»)    ^^7^^^  j     ^^,,, 

both  in  defence  of  ^^.^^^f 'f ^v ^  "vo^^^^^^^^       h^ir  invade^rs  Lived  the 
allies  incensed  and  alienated  by  d»^covi.r  ng  ^^^  ^^^^ 

-A  curious  inBtanccot  the  compla.«a,.re  of  ths  j,eoplo  «  r.m  ^J        ^^^^^  ^ 
count  of  a  tribe  of  «»\'^«\«^5\XIC  ml  conference       Chwlevoix  boaftH  that  the  French 
aWaya  appearing  stark  "»»'«'*«' ^^^""'""'/gSee^^^^    in  rendering  thohiselves  agreeable  to 
are  tfce  on\y  European  peope  ^f?  J*'*;^:" '"d  «  l'""  «'f'"»  Senonville,  the  governor  of 
«.o  Indian/;  and  yet  he  tum«e  f  h«»  F^^^^^^ 

S^^ofJi^^^a^d^ppei^riiig  alwaya  good-humorod.  •     Los.... 


CHAP.  II]  TREATY  WITH  THE  FIVE  NATIONS.  j^ 

of  peace,  embraJng  all  the  EneL  e  t  l.l!''  ^a'TV  ^-'^"h  '"'^'Y 
them.  Harchets,  co^respon  iinrTo  the  „,?!?  fl''^l'  "!•  f'^""''  ''''^ 
were  solemnly  buried  in  L  g  cfund  •  and  thf  Z,  f  ,^^^  ^n.hsh  colonies, 
,he  acknovvle^iged  supreme  head  on^eEtir  and  ^^  '' 

w.re  suspended  along  the  frontiers  of  th^K  •  Ha"T.P°"fe*^^'"«^y' 
Vox  this  ireaty  the  Five  Nations  Ion.  continue? tnT'  *'  ^""  •^"''°"^-' 
respect ;  and'their  fidelity  to  hs  enlamnents  wn  ^"'"""f.f^^^  «"  '"^'«J«ble 
renewal  of  hostilities  between  them  and  thpirn'  T"''''^  P'T"^"^  ^y  ^ 
It  was  at  this  time  that  the  me  chTu^of  Ne^^  S  fi^fT''  '^'  J""^"^^" 
great  lakes  to  the  westward,  honinrto  nfrfl J;  ?  •  ^  u  "^^^"^"••ed  on  the 
he  French  were  pursuing  wthrcVnrEnTr"^-"  '•'  ^"^''H^'  ^'^'^h 
endeavoured  to  guard  from  inva^on  by  urenoJl^^^  ^^'"^  '^^'^ 

K„glish,and  by  Lry  artifice  tStetTETtroit  tlr^^^^^^^^^^ 

the  French  colonists  from  navl^gThrLVeV^trbX^e^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Nations,  and,  consequently,  as  ho  apprehended,  to  England      Bu    In    n 
swer  0  h.s  application  he  was  admonished  that'  it  was  p  eposterou;  o  ex" 
pect  that  France  would  command  her  subjects  to  desi  t  ffom  a  "ucra^v; 
commerce,  for  the  benefit  of  their  rivals  ;  and  he  was  di  ec^ed  rather  bv 
acts  0   hberahty  and  courtesy  to  encourage  the  Indians  to  retain  thelaS 
rence  to  England,  and  to  mduce  all  the  tribes,  from  regard  ?o  their  own 
■nterest,  to  trade  w.th  the  English  in  preference  to  the  Sh     observh^^ 
jnthal  such  prudence  as  might  prevent  offence  to  European  nefeour'sf 
far  were  these  views  frorn  being  accomplished,  thatVrom  tl^sthie  there 
commenced  a  series  of  disputes  between  the  two  rations,  which  fo    the 
greater  port  of  a  century  engaged  them  in  continual  wars  and  hoS  intrigues 
that  threatened  the  destruction  of  their  colonial  settlements,  cost  thetJes  of 
many  of  the  European  colonists,  and  wasted  the  blood  and  promoted  the 
!?th"r Zuiity"'  ""^"'""'''  '"^""^  "^«  "^-  --'-d  S^  *e  vortex 
On  the  death  of  Charles  the  Second  [1685],  the  Duke  of  Ybrk  ascend- 
ed  his  brother's  throne  ;  and  the  province  of  which  he  had  been  the  proprie. 
tyy  devolved  with  all  its  dependencies,  on  the  British  crown.    tKodL 
of  New  York  received  with  improvident  exultation  the  account  of  thdr 
proprietary's  advancement  to  royalty,  and  proclaimed  him  as  their  monarch 
with   he  liveliest  demonstrations  of  attachment  and  respect      TWiad 
been  for  sonrie  t.nje  past  soliciting  with  much  eagerness  a  formal  S  of 
he  constitution  tha'  was  now  practically  established  among  theni  fand  the 
duke  had  promised    >  gratify  them  in  this  particular,  and  acfually  proceeded 
30  far  as  to  sign  a  patent  in  conformity  with  their  wishes,  whi?h    at  his 
Z.Z    V^"  throne,  required  only  some  trivial  solemnity  to  render 
omplete  and  irrevocable.    But  James,  though  he  could  not  pretend  to  for 
g^wasjVDt^slmmedjovb  of  England,  th<j  promise  which  he 

■      'Charlevou.    Cold«n.    Smith      If.i™.'- -n-i— i-     oCirl. 


VOL.    I. 


55 


KK 


434 


HISTORY  OP  NO^TH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


the 


T^  1     ^r  v«rlr  •  nnd  n  cool  and  unblushing  refusnl  was 
had  made  when  I5"»^«  f  J^ork  .  and  a  cool  ^^  ^^^  .^^^ 

returned  to  the  "^^'l^?^  .'°'''^'^;'°;iu;arv  8ys"em  in  New  York  'which  ho 
DeternunedtoestaU.^^^^^^^  „ew  immunities  he 

designed  for  i>iew  /;"S*^""'        ,    mnreded.     In  the  second  year  of  his 

reign  he  mvested  liongan  ^v'"' "  "^         .  •  ^^xes  ;  and  commanding 

consent  of  a  council,  to  ^"'^^V  ^Ti^A    Thoueh  he  now  appointed  Andros 

him  to  suffer  ««  P'-»»'^"^-P';"V".'X;,  iSd  [J^^       16B6],  he  paused 
to  administer  the   govermnent  ot  New  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

awlVile  before  ^e  -tu.^^^^^^^^^^^  ,  ^,  dros  to  gov- 

m  New  York.    But  te  people  r    additional    token   of  their 

medium  of  the  press.  j.     j  j^^j^g^  by  habit  to 

""^r  th  iSen:r  t^nt  d  osUion^o::^  with  rigor^  a  syste. 
regard  with  inditlerence,  ;"»"  "^  J  ji  ly  the  remainder  of  his  adminis- 
of  arbitrary  government  ;  j?'*' ''f e^^'^J^^  j  ^,3  ^^t  discreditable  to  his 
tration,  though  less  f^^«  "^^e  to  his  p^^^^^^^^^^ 

character,  and  continued  to  disclose  «^^^f  l"^J„7^^^^  Though  hifnself  a 

to  the  public  weal  which  .ts  ""^^^  '^^^^„^/S^^^^^ 
Roman  Catholic,  he  beheld  with  a^arrn  and  res^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^^ 

of  the  French  priests  into  the  'f^^rf^elourt  of  France  to  command  him 
his  bigoted  master  was  P'^"""'^^^// ';;' '7/  "he  Catholic  church,  he  con- 
to  delist  from  thus  obstructing  the  progress  o    f^^^^^.^^  ^f  ^i^  Jesuits 

tinued  nevertheless  to  w«  n^h^  ^n^^^^^^^^^^  ,„d  to  their  friendshin 

'T.VXrh  6e  sti  Unssted'that  the  French  should  not  treat  U 
with  the  English,  lie  s""'  ,/..,,.  u:„  ^^iy[xy  and  ntervention ;  but 
the  Indian  aUies  of  New  York  w  bout  h's^F^^^^^^  ^^^  j^ 

the  French  court  again  en^P^ed  '^^  mflu^nc^^^^^  pretension.  The  Five 
consequently  received  of --^j;, ;&  ,0  heTd  the  Assistance  of  his  forces 
Nations,  however,  ««^7«tnolLv  Their  untutored  sagacity  had  long  per- 
than  the  suggestions  of  b'«  pobcy .    1  heir  un  ^^^.  j^  ^^.^^.^^  ^^^^^,^ 

ceived,  what  the  mmisters  of  ^^e  court  o.^ng  j^        ^^^  themselves 

to  discern,  that  the  «;;tensive  projects  of  t  ancebot,^^^  ^^^^^,^^  .^ 

with  «ub  "gallon,  and  portended  a  serious^..^^^^^^  B^  ^^^^  ^^^ 

the  diminution  of  their  ^^^^^f ^^  Ji^'  f^.^^^^^^^^^^  The  treaty,  that  excluded 
arated  them  from  the  rival  s.^^tle^n^^t  of  Canada^   1  ne  u^  ^^^^^ 

the  Five  Nations  from  hostile  «\P«^;°"!,;^^,tu;e  to  Xnd  with  less  dis- 
allied  to  the  other  English  ^olo".es,  gave  them  hMs^ire  .^^^^^  ^y 

traction  to  their  nearer  interests  ;  and  <^".d'"6  '~/f^o^^^^^    French,  they 
Ih^  suoplies  -bich  their  nuinerouse^^^^^^^  [Se'^Lrwhich  4 

had  of  late  pretended  a  right  to  eonsiaer  u  ^      ■      ^jth  this  view, 

were  entitled  to  chastise  and  '^«^\«\'/"^'  1"  JJte/ed  in  ^ 
attacked  all  theC«»adian  ^^^d^^  J^J^^'"  •'j^yX  Jthey  w  re  at  war.    The 

rr3,^£'^ti^i^ct7t:rsi:^^^ 


CHAP.  11.1  NEW  VORK  ANNEXED  TO  NEW  ENGLAND. 


^ 


,e|U.la.io„,  „„d  .l,elr  ScTSn,    IZ'n"  '°  """  <^.<'?'"«'r'  ""eir 

W  air  aS^  ".3S  ol^tv" ".al"' hi' J"'"  ""T^  "■"^'=''"'-  ^hey 
practised  on  the  aincere &,'„  Z  teliTi  J''  ''""""'i' '"^ceMly 
Sddrcss  .0  conclude  with  Wm  a  Irea/rofUS  "'?''  "^F  '"^  "?^  ""^ 

.680]  by  whiol.  U  „aa  ^HpuJcd'tf  nlr^'^^id^^ral^ 
to  Indian  tribes  at  war  with  tho  nthoi.       a-     j     .■'''"""'"  6'**^  assistance 

.he  French  .„.h„n.iea  i  clt^ '^^n.^W^K  ii^reraeTr/S^e;': 
deavours  to  chastise  by  force    or  Hpha„nK  k„  •  .  .^'""'"  ^'gor  /neir  en- 

.ho  preferred  the  EngLh  aSnc^:  to' tS;  'l^^S^l^lZ:^ 

'°  n :  f  r/     K^°T  ^'^  *"'  ^^""''•y  »°  ^he  erring  policy  This  master 
and  to  abandon  her  alhes  to  the  hostility,  and  her  barrier  to  the  vidattn 
of  an  insidious  and  enterprising  rival.     He  could  not,  indeed   divest  him' 
sel  of  the  interest  he  had  conceived  in  the  fortunes  o    the  FVeNationT 
and  seized  every  opportunity  of  imparting  to  them  advice  no  ess  prudeni 
than  humane,  respecting  the  conduct  of  their  enterprises  and  the  r^atmen 
of  their  prisoners.     But  his  mability  to  fulfil  former  engagements  and  afford 
additional  aid  greatly  detracted  from  the  efficacy  of  hi!  Counsel      ThoZt 
the  remonstrances  of  Dongan  enabled  the  ministers  of  James  o  discovef 
in  the  following  year  [1687]    that  the  treaty  of  neutrality  for  America  was 
nrejudicial  to  the  interests  of  England,  it  was  impossible   to  prevent  The 
S  wiS  ^n^ '  '"  '''  ^'°-  ^'  ^'^  --  ^-'  that  impoliLTa^nfe! 

But  the  king  had  no  intention  of  relinquishing  his  empire  in  America- 
and  his  mind,  though  strongly  tinctured  with  bigotry,  was  not  tofaUyTre' 
spective  of  political  views ;  though  he  seems  ra?ely%o  have  miSd  these 
considerations  together.  As  his  bigotry  had  prompted  h^m  T  deliver  up 
t.t  Th-°  ^*'^f '-^"^h,  his  policy  now  suggested  the  measure  of  com? 
pactmg  all  his  northern  colonies  under  one  frame  of  government  for  thSr 
more  effectual  defence.  To  this  design,  assuredly,  he  wa3  a  least  as 
strongly  prompted  by  the  desire  of  facilitating  the  eJircise  of  his  own  pre 
rogative  m  the  colonies,  as  by  concern  for  the  safety  of  their  inhabitanTs  ^As 
Je  scheme  he  had  formed  incuded  New  York,  and  as  he  thought  the  todo 

his  province  now  sufficiently  prepared  to  abide  the  extremity  of  hifS 
he  indulged  the  more  readily  the  sentiments  of  displeasure  that  Doneanlad 
excited  by  obstructing  the  French  Jesuits,  which  was  a  thLe  of  Snual 

SZ  a"."  'd-  T'  '^  ^TA    ^'''  ^°'"--'-  °f  this  Lrito  ou 
frpl^ir  FH     "^j^'"f '''?!^  V"^°y«'  ^"'"'"^"d  to  deliver  up  his 
S  t.  .h     A      -^  ^'!-^-"'  ^^^'''^^  *^^Q^  5  «"d  New  York  not  only  re- 
P.  1     t^^^°"»"•°^.«f 'ts  ancient  tj^rant,  but  beheld  its  existence  as  a 

E  FnJ;'nV"'7'f '''""^  ""'T^  '"  "^  annexation  to  the  government  of 
New  England.  Andros  remained  at  Boston  as  the  metropolis  of  his  iuris- 
diction,  committmg  the  domestic  administration  of  New  York  to  Nicholson, 
i  ''^"'^"«";-f  ^«7°r ;  and  though,  by  the  vigor  of  his  remonstrances 

ana  nis  reoutation  for  abilnv   ho  r.«rv>r,«n„j  »u_  t? i   .  .         ♦ 

.  ..    _ -  _!.«._  J  ....  ..viin/cticQ  iiic  r  luiicii  lo  suspeoa  some 


406 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


lury  ana  lenuny  „ponle  of  New  York,  deprived  of  their  liberties,  and 

dZflT^^  l\?aS^:  N^lTEngl  nd,'feU  themselves  additionally 
a^rieved  Z  the  policy  which  compelled  them  to  stand  aloof  and  behold 
SS  of  aUies  whom^  they  had  engaged  to  assist  together  with  their  own      ■ 
m^t  mnorJant  interests,  suspended  on  the  issue  of  a  contest  m  which  they 
^e  noruffered  to  take  a  share  ;  while,  at  the  same  time   their  country. 
Ten  in    he  eastern  part  of  New  England  were  harassed^by  a  dangerous 
San  war  ascribed  on  strong  reasons  to  tlie  intrigues  of  the  French.^    But, 
Sotji  deserted  by  the  Enghsh,  the  Five  Nations  maintamed  the  struggle 
wUh  an  enei^gy  that  promised  the  preservation  of  their  independence  and, 
Mlv   w  hYsuccess  that  excited  hopes  even  of  the  subjugation  of  their 
cSd  adversaries.  Undertaking  an  expedition  against  Montreal  they  con- 
Sed  tlieir  march  with  such  rapidity  and  secrecy  as  to  surprise  the  I  ranch 
in^Sost  unguarded  security.    [July,  1688.]     The  suddenness  and  fury  of 
heir  attlckCved  irresistible.     They  sacked  the  town,  wasted  the  neigh- 
bouringpWitSuons,  put  a  thousand  of  the  French  to  the  sword,  and  earned 
away  a  nSer  of  prisoners  whom  they  burned  alive  ;  retummg  to  the.r 
?^  ^^AvWvT thP  loss  of  onlv  three  of  their  own  number.     It  was  now  that 
rdi saXttage  Iri sing  froiJ  L  neutrality  of  the  English  was  most  sensibly 
fdt  b  the  cruelties  with  which  the  Indians  stained  the  triumphs  they  oh- 
dned   and  Z^Tlh^  inauence  of  a  humane  ally  might  have  contributed 
o  im.derate,«  and  also  m  the  inability  of  the  savages  to  improve  their  v.c- 
oririnto  lasUng  conquest.     They  strained  every  nerve,  indeed,  to  follow 
UP  the  r  advantage,  and,  shortly  after  the  sack  of  Montreal,  were  enabled  to 
oScupTthe  fort  It  Lake  Ontario,  which  the  garrison  m  a  panic  abandoned 
^o  them ;  and  being  now  reinforced  by  the  desertion  of  numerous  Indian 
aUils  S  the  French,  they  reduced  the  remaining  possessions  of  this  people 
in  Canadrto  a  state  of  the  utmost  terror  and  distress.     Nothing  could  have 
saved  the  French  from  total  destruction,  but  the  ignorance  which  aisabled 
the   Indians  from  laying  siege  effectually  to  fortified  places;   and  it  was 
^Lfest  to  every  inSligent  observer  that'  a  singe  vigorous  act  of  interpo- 
Sn  by  Uie  English  colonist,  would  have  sufficed  to  terminate  for  ever 
tlie  riv dry  of  France  and  England  in  this  quarter  of  the  world.^ 

In  the  midst  of  a  contest  which  the  French  and  the  Indians  thus  pro- 
longed  by  ^decisive  hostilities,  a  scene  of  civil  war  and  revolution  was 
gradually  evolved  at  New  York.  [1689.]  A  deep  and  increasing  d.safiec- 
Uon  to  the  government  prevailed  there  among  all  ranks  of  men  ;  and  ns  the 
eeneal  discontents  of  late  had  been  plainly  gathering  to  a  head,  some  violent 
SrwarSully  anticipated  ;  and 'perhaps  was  suspended  by  d.vjns  .n 
sentiment  arising  from  the  different  aspects  in  which  the  state  o  public 
a^rpJ^sen^S>elf_to_different  minds.     To  the^r^Uhj^andjh^- 

le  frequently,  and  not  bUd- 


CHAP,  n.]  GENERAL  DISAFFECTION  IN  NEW  YORK. 


457 


len  ;  and  as  the 


cerning  the  privation  of  liberty  and  the  political  degradation  of  the  prov- 
ince  appeared  with  justice  the  only  public  grievances  which  they  had  oc 
casion  tc  oeplore,  or  were  interested  to  remove.     But  an  outrageous  dread 
o(  popery  had  invaaed  the  minds  of  the  lower  classes  of  people,  and  not 
only  aimmished  real  and  substantial  evils  in  their  esteem,  but  Nearly  extin- 
guished common  sense  in  their  understandings  and  common  justice  in  their 
sentimen^      The  king's  well  known  bigotry,  his  attempts  to  introduce  die 
Romish  faith  and  churcn  mtb  England,  and  the  protection  which  he  extended 
to  the  operations  of  the  French  Jesuits  among  the  Indians,  had  inculcated 
this  additional  apprehension  on  their  irritated  minds  ;  and  the  servile  apos- 
tasy of  some  of  the  officers  of  government  at  New  York,  who  endeavoured 
to  court  royal  favor  by  professing  to  adopt  the  king's  religious  faith,  ap- 
peared  strongly  to  confirm  it      Some  angry  feelings  that  had  been  excited 
in  the  commencement  of  Colonel  Dongan's  administration  were  now  sud- 
denly reawakened  fronri  slumber,  to  augment  and  diversify  the  prevailing 
ferments.     At  that  period,  notwithstanding  the  exertions  of  a  former  eov- 
ernor  to  adjust  the  boundaries  of  properly  in  Long  Island,  a  variety  of  dis- 
putes  on  this  subject  prevailed  m  the  same  quarter  between  different  indi- 
yiduals  and  different  townships  ;  and  on  Dongan  had  devolved  the  thank- 
less  office  of  adjusting  these  controversies  by  judgments,  which  could  hardly 
fail  to  engender  some  enmity  against  himself^     In  such  cases  it  too  com- 
monly  happens  that  the  arbitrator,  seeking  to  gratify  both  parties,  disappoints 
them  both,  and  IS  taxed  on  all  sides  with  partiality  ;  or  that,  studying  only 
to  administer  strict  justice,  he  excites  extreme  discontent  in  those  whom  his 
award  both  deprives  of  the  property  they  had  hoped  to  keep  or  gain,  and 
stigmatizes  as  unjust  or  unreasonable  in  their  pretensions.     Most  n.en  pos- 
sess sufficient  mgenuity  to  supply  them  with  plausible  reasons  for  impifting 
the  disappointment  of  their  expectations  to  the  dishonesty  of  those  who 
obstruct  or  withhold  them  ;  and  defeated  litigants  have  in  all  ages  been 
noted  for  the  vehemence  and  acrimony  of  their  spleen.     A  great  many 
persons  who  accounted  themselves  wronged  by  Dongan's  decrees  made  no 
scruple  to  impute  their  disappointments  to  the  darkness  and  obliquity  of 
his  popwA  understanding.     They  conceived  a  violent  jealousy  of  popish 
designs,  which  the  recollection  of  their  fancied  wrongs  preserved  unimpaired 
either  by  the  lapse  of  time  or  by  the  moderate  and  equitable  strain  of 
Dongan  s  admmistration.     The  rancorous  sentiments  harboured  by  these 
persons  were  revived  and  inflamed  by  recent  events  and  appearances  •  the 
apostasy  of  some  of  the  public  officers  confirmed  their  apprehensions  of 
popery  ;  and  the  painful  stroke  intlicted  by  the  establishment  of  civil  tyran- 
ny was  chiefly  felt  by  them  as  aggravating  the  smart  of  a  former  and  totally 
different  injury.     This  class  of  persons  esteemed  popery  the  most  terrible 
feature  m  the  aspect  of  the  times,  and  their  own  disappointments  the  most 
signal  exemplifications  of  popish  wickiidness  ;  and  considered  these  as  by 
far  the  fittest  considerations  to  unite  the  general  resentment  and  justify  its 
vindictive  reaction. 

While  the  minds  of  men  were  thus  agitated  by  common  discontent, 
but  restrained  from  cordial  union  by  difference  of  opinion  and  variety  of 
apprehension,  the  public  expectation  was  still  farther  aroused  by  intelli- 
gence from  Europe  of  the  invasion  of  England  by  the  Prince  of  Orange, 
and  by  sympathy  with  the  swelling  scene  which  was  in  progress  in  the 
parent  state.     Yet  no  commotion  had  arisen,  xvhen  the  important  tidings  ar- 


KK 


438 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


,.ed  of  the  acce.io„  "f^Tjlet'^r  tr^hiltSft 

,689],  and  °    ll-^VoT     Kvir  con^^^^^^^^^^^  ^-f^'l^  V'^'  '»" 

government  of  Andros.     fY™, "I;.  ,     ,  Loducine  an  cxp  osion  of  popu  ar 

"!'f  "rff  The^^e'rct  *t^  ata"uthSs  of  Ne»  U  had  n^tLu 
Violence,  it  the  conauci  ui  i  hesitation  to  comply  mih,  the  gen- 

cated  an  intention  to  resist,  or  '^^  1?!^*  f J^f  ^'^^^^^^^^  and  his 

eral  revolution  of  the  ^.^^^^  J^'^daiming^^^^^  and  Mary,  but  de- 
council,  not  only  r«f»^'"^if'°VaX^^^^^^^^^^^  Boston,  commanding,  ^vith 
spatched  a  letter  to  9°^^Xte  release  o^  Andros,  and  the  chastisemont 
haughty  menace,  the  ^^jf  ^^^^^^^^^^^  to  put  him  in  confinement. 

of  the  insurrechonary  rabble  7°  'j  P'^'VV^^  ^^  £^  Revokition,  the  more 
Notwithstanding  ^^s  demonstration  of  oppo^tion  to  tn^^^^  perceived  that  their 

prudent  and  considerate  ,V'''Xle  of^the  rest  of  the  empire,  and  were 
iocal  government  must  ollow  '^e  [ate^^J^^^^^^^^^^^^  of  Nicholson  and  his 
disposed  calmly  to  await  the  ^P^"^^"^".^,;^"^^^^^^^  or  help  from  Britain 
council  to  Wilfiam  and  Maj^  o    h^^^^^^^^^^^     ^^^f^^^  ..^y  of  the  people, 

to  reduces  them.  But  the  •"JP;"^"^;.  .  j^j,  with  the  terrors  of  popery, 
and  especially  of  those  who  '^  ere  panic  s^^^^^J^   "      ^    ^^^  apprehension 

could  not  aWde  tins  '^f^hl^.  Niclo  son  and  his  associates  in  office.^ 
of  some  notable  stroke  o^ J^f  M'^^"'  '^' j  ° 'lil    ^  man  of  eager,  headlong 
This  party  found  a  ch>.f  -  Ja^b  ^^^^J^J^^^^^  ^.^^^  I,,     J^ 
temper,  endowed  wi  h  much  pieoeian  i        ,  ^^^^^^  .jj_^^,^^^_ 

shall..v  capacity  ;  whose  blazing  ^^^l  apmst  PW.  ^j^^  _ 

vuent  ).y  Andros,  seeni^d  to  .^^^'f^J^ '"'^/^^/Irov  nee.  He  had  already 
tion  to  the  political  and  ^e  'S^^V^^^X™?,;^,^/;^  p^^  customs  for  somi 
co.L.mitted  the  first  act  of  '•^^^^"".tJ^L  was  a  Papist,  and  that  there  was 
;..ported  goods,  aUeg-g  jhat  t^e  coUector  -        ^apist^^^^  ^^  ^^^^ 

i,o  iegiumate  government  m  "^e  *^o»o"/-  '  '  •  invasion,  and  summoned 
pretJations  for  defending  the  city  against  a  foreign  •^;^^»°  ;  ^   ^^  ^^^^  ^^^ 

|.  trained  bands  ^^  f^^^   ^^..^^^^^  1680];   and 

rapists  were  preparing  to  '"^"^^'^'^^  '." ,?  ^..„-  .j  bands,  instantly  marched 
Leisler,  who  commanded  a  <^^r^rUJ'^Vr^f^^^^  «f  th^  fort. 


if  the  violence  and  „|,pre«,o„  ol  jj'«"^  "  he  fort  ^hUh  thev  l-e 
had  not  forced  ihera.lo  ''kV'",., ant  oSr  whom  he  king  and  qnecn 
ready  to  deUver  np  to  »/  ''™'2  '  fi°S  ha.T.e  «™  "o.  joined  b, 
might  depute  to  commmd  . t.     '^^^f '^j^^'^^^  ^^^^^  ,  ,„,,,e„ger  .0 


CHAP.  U] 


LEISLER'8  USURPATION. 


439 


cut,  persuaded  the  revolutionary  leaders  in  these  colonies  to  countenance  his 
enterprise.  But  a  report  arising  that  an  English  fleet  was  approaching  to 
assist  the  insurgents,  their  c  luse  was  forthwith  embraced  by  all  classes  of 
people  m  New  York  ;  and  Nicholson,  app  ehensive  of  sharing  the  treatment 
of  Andros,  fled  to  England.  Unfortunately  for  Leisler,  the  command,  which 
priority  of  resistance  and  the  favor  of  the  lower  classes  enabled  him  to  ac- 
quire, his  natural  temper  equally  prompted  him  to  retain,  though  surround- 
ed by  men  who  dreaded  his  precipitancy  and  reluctantly  submitted  to  his 
elevation.  Ihese  new  associates  had  influence  enough  to  cause  a  second 
proclamation  to  be  issued,  in  which  the  unworthy  censure  on  Dongan  was 
omitted,  and  no  stipulation  whatever  inserted  as  to  jhe  creed  of  the  royal 
officer  to  whom  the  fort  would  be  surrendered. 

It  had  been  happy  for  all  parties,  if  the  jealousy  of  Leisler's  rivals  ha.l 
been  satisfaed  with  this  wise  and  moderate  control  over  his  measures  Buc 
Courtlandt,  the  mayor  of  the  city.  Colonel  Bayard,  Major  Schuyler,  and 
several  other  persons  of  consideration,  unable  to  brook  the  ascendency 
of  a  man  whose  birth  and  parts  were  inferior  to  their  own,  retired  to  Alba- 
ny, and,  seizing  the  fort  there,  declared  that  they  held  it  for  King  Williaii 
and  disclaimed  all  connection  with  Leisler.  Each  party  now  professed  ad- 
herence to  the  same  sovereign,  and  denounced  the  other  as  rebels  to  his 
authority.  Leisler,  though  intrusted  by  the  militia  with  the  sole  command 
of  the  province,  judged  it  prudent  to  associate  some  respectable  citizens 
with  himself  in  the-  administration  of  his  perilous  functions.  Having  for- 
tified  his  own  power  by  the  appointment  of  a  committee  of  safety  at  New 
York,  he  despatched  his  son-in-law,  Milbourn,  against  the  adverse  faction 
at  Albany.  Courtlandt  and  his  associates,  burning  with  resentment,  yet 
averse  to  shed  blood  in  such  a  quarrel,  were  relieved  from  their  perplexity 
by  a  hostile  irruption  of  French  and  Indians  [1690],  which,  by  the  desola- 
tion it  inflicted  on  the  surrounding  country,  either  rendered  their  post  untena- 
ble, or  induced  them  to  sacrifice  their  pretensions,  for  the  purpose  of  ena- 
bling their  countrymen  to  unite  all  the  force  of  the  province  against  the 
common  enemy.  Abandoning  the  fort  to  ^heir  rival,  they  took  refuge  in  the 
neighbouring  colonies  ;  while  Leisler,  with  rashly  triumphant  revenge,  con- 
fiscated their  estates.  To  add  strength  and  reputation  to  his  party,  he  sum- 
moned a  convention  of  deputies  from  all  the  towns  and  districts  to  which 
his  influence  extended  ;  and  this  assembly,  in  which  two  deputies  from 
Connecticut  were  admitted  to  assist  as  advisers,  published  various  regula- 
tions for  the  temporary  government  of  the  province.  But  these  legislative 
ordinances,  and  especially  the  financial  impositions,  were  disputed  by  a  pow- 
erful party  among  the  colonists,  whose  indignation  against  Leisler  was  con- 
lined  with  difficulty  to  insults  and  menaces  ;  and  many  of  the  EngHsh  in- 


liabitants  of  Long  Island,  wh=le  they  expressed  a  reluctant  submission  to  his 
applied  to  Connecticut,  and  solicited  this  province  to 

.^1 i_   i-    !i      r       •     I'    .•  1 


authority,  privately 

annex  their  insular  settlements  to  its  jurisdiction. ^ 

In  this  unhappy  state  of  division  and  animosity  the  colonists  of  New 
York  remained  nearly  two  years,  notwithstanding  a  revolution,  which,  by 
elevating  the  Stadtholdor  of  Holland  to  the  English  throne,  had  promised 
to  unite  them  together  more  firmly  than  ever.  Happily,  the  quarrel  exhib- 
ited no  symptoms  of  national  antipathy  between  the  Dutch  and  English, 
who,  without  discrimination  of  races,  embraced  respectively  the  party  to 

'    Srjiith,      Hutchin>nn.       Tniinluill        Phnlmnra  ~ 


440 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMEEICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


which  their  particular  sentiments  attached  them  ;  and  though  a  great  deal 
of  ra-'e  and  malignity  was  engendered  between  the  two  factions,  no  blood 
was  slied  by  either  while  their  controversy  lasted.     But,  unfortunately,  the 
miseries  of  foreign  war  and  hostile  invasion  were  soon  added  to  Uie  calam- 
ity of  internal  discord.     The  condition  of. the  French  m  Canada  was  sud- 
denly  raised  from  the  depth  of  adversity  by  the  arrival  of  a  strong  rein- 
forcement from  the  parent  state,  under  the  command  ol  a  skiliul  ana  en> 
terprising  officer,  the  old  Count  de  Frontignac,  who  now  assun^ed  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  French  settlements,  and  quickly  gave  an  altered  coniplexion 
to  the  affairs  of  his  countrymen.     He  set  on  foot  a  treaty  with  the  Five 
Nations,  and  succeeded,  meanwhile,  in  obtaining  a  suspension  of  their  hos- 
tilities.   War  had  already  been  declared  between   France  and  England; 
and  the  dissensions  among  the  inhabitants  of  New  York  seeming  to  invite  an 
attack  upon  this  province,  he  undertook  to  revive  the  drooping  spirits  of 
his  people  by  improving  the  tempting  opportunity  of  success.     A  numerous 
troop  of  French  and  Indians  was  accordingly  collected,  and  despatched  in 
the  depth  of  winter  against  New  York.     3y  a  strange  coincidence,  which 
seemed  to  have  been  decreed  for  the  purpose  of  branding  the  trench  name 
in  America  with  the  blackest  ingratitude  and  inhumanity,  this  party,  hke 
their  predecessors  in  1665,  after  wandering  for  twenty-two  days  through 
deserts  rendered  trackless  by  snow,  approached  the  village  of  fechenecta- 
dv,  so  travel-tainted,  hunger-bitten,  and  benumbed  with  cold,  that  they  oro- 
tfosed  to  surrender  themselves  to  the  inhabitants  as  prisoners  of  war.    ieb- 
ruarv   1690.1    But,  arriving  at  a  late  hour  on  an  inclement  night,  and  learn- 
ine  from  the  messengers  whom  they  had  sent  forward  to  tender  their  sub- 
mission, that  the  inhabitants  were  all  in  bed,  without  even  the  precaution  of 
a  public  watch,  they  exchanged  the  design  of  imploring  mercy  to  themselves 
for  a  plan  of  nocturnal  attack  and  massacre  of  the  defenceless  people  to 
whose  charity  their  own  countrymen  had  once  been  so  highly  indebted. 
This  ungrateful  and  sanguinary  purpose  was  executed  with  barbarous  alac- 
rity  •  and  the  scene  which  ensued  must  be  acknowledged  to  afford  one  of 
the  most  loathsome  and  detestable  pictures  that  have  ever  been  exhibited 
of  human  cruelty  and  ferocity,  inflamed  by  the  dire  and  maddening  conta- 
gion  of  frantic  example.     Dividing  themselves  invo  a  number  of  parties, 
they  set  fire  to  the  village  in  various  places,  and  attacked  the  inhabitants 
with  fatal  advantage,  when,  alarmed  by  the  conflagration,  they  endeavoured 
to  escape  from  their  burning  houses.    The  exhausted  strength  of  the  h  rencli 
seemed  to  revive  with  the  blaze  of  destruction,  and  their  spirits  to  catch  a 
fiery  energy,  and  wild,  ferocious  glee,  from  the  animated  horror  of  the  Fxene. 
Net  only  were  all  Uie  male  inhabitants  they  could  reach  put  to  death,  but 
pregnant  women  were  ripped  up,  and  their  unborn  infants  dashed  against  tlie 
walls  of  the   houses.     But  either  the  delay  occasioned  by  this  elaborate 
barbarity,  or  the  more  merciful  haste  of  the  flames  to  announce  the  calamity 
to  those  who  might  still  fly  from  the  assassins,  enabled  many  of  the  inhab- 
itants  to  escape.    The  bloodthirsty  efibrts  of  the  assailants  were  also  some- 
what impeded  by  a  careful  discrimination  which  they  judged  it  expedient  to 
exercise.    Though  umnindful  of  benefits,  they  were  not  regardless  of  policy; 
and  of  a  number  of  Mohawk  Indians  who  were  residing  m  the  village,  not 
one  sustained  an  injury.   Sixty  persons  perished  in  the  massacre,  and  twenty- 
fteven  were  taken  prisoners.     Of  the  fugitives  who    escaped  half  naked, 
•     ■    •  '      !!rh  a  storm  of  snow  to  Albanv,  twenty-five  lost  the 


^kU 


1-^  •u-»: 


n«r    trtKr\*ir 


CHAP.  11]  SCHEME  FOR  THE  INVASION  OF  CANADA. 


441 


use  of  their  limbs  from  the  intensity  of  the  frost.  The  French,  having  to- 
tally  destroyed  bchenectady  retired  loaded  with  plunder  from  a  place  where 
.t  Will  probably  be  thought  that  even  the  celebrated  contemporary  atroci! 
ues  of  their  countrymen  m  the  Palatinate  had  been  equalled,  if  not  exceeded. 

^tp  nf  N  T  i  ®J^^"^«*«dy  excited  general  consternation  in  the 
prov  nee  of  New  York.  Forces  were  quickly  raised  to  repel  or  retort  the 
hostility  of  the  French  ;  and  on  the  application  of  Leisler^he  province  of 
^^^'ZTl'V'TF'^''''''^'''''''''  ^•««'^-  ItwaXunddifficuhto 
^TfL^  ITJ^T"^  '""JT  ^'''''^y  ''''^  ^"'««  ^ho  had  once  de- 
'nil ;  but  they  declared  that  no  artifices  of  the  French  should  ever 
prevail  with  them  to  adopt  the  quarrel  or  espouse  the  interest  of  an  ancient 
enemy  against  an  ancient  fnend.  As  the  province  of  Massachusetts  was 
severely  harassed  at  the  same  Ume  by  Indian  hostilities  instigated  and  aided 
ly  Count  l-rontignac,  a  scheme  was  projected  between  the  New  England 
states  «f  New  York  for  a  general  invasion  of  Canada.^  An  expedition, 
commanded  by  Sir  William  Ph.pps,  sailed  from  Boston  against  Quebec  • 
and  the  united  forces  of  Connecticut  and  New  York,  under  the  command 
of  Genera  Winthrop,  ivere  to  march  against  Montreal.  But  Leisler's  son- 
m-lavv,  Milbourn,  who  acted  as  commissary-general,  had  made  such  im- 
perfect provision  for  the  expedition,  that,  partly  from  this  defect,  and  partly 
trom  the  inability  of  the  Indians  to  supply  as  many  canoes  as  they  were  ex- 
pected ic  furnish  for  crossing  the  rivers  and  lakes,  the  general  was  oblieed 
to  convoke  a  council  of  war,  and,  in  conformity  with  the  unanimous  opinion 
of  his  officers,  to  order  a  retreat.  [Sept.,  1690.]  The  expedition  against 
Quebec  was  equally  unsuccessful.  Leisler,  transported  with  rage  whin  he 
jvas  informed  of  the  retreat,  caused  Winthrop  to  be  arrested  ;  but  was 
instantly  compelled  by  universal  indignation  to  release  him.  Infatuated  and 
reiidered  giddy  by  his  dangerous  elevation,  this  man  began  to  display  the 
unbuckled  spirit  that  precedes  and  portends  a  fall.  The  government  of 
Connecticut,  incensed  at  the  affront  by  which  he  revenged  the  fruit  of  his 
kinsman  s  incapacity  on  the  ablest  officer  and  most  respected  inhabitant  of 
iheir  provmce,  signified  in  very  sharp  terms  their  astonishment  and  displeas- 
ure at  his  presumption,  and  warned  him  that  his  own  predicament  demanded 
more  than  ordinary  prudence  and  circumspection,  and  that  he  stood  in 
urgent  need  of  friends.^ 

Leisler,  indeed,  had  reason  to  tremble.  King  William  at  first  received 
his  messenger  with  the  most  flattering  encouragement,  and  admitted  him  to 
tlie  honor  ol  kissing  his  hand,  in  testimony  of  his  satisfaction  with  the  conduct 
of  affairs  at  New  York.  But  Nicholson,  on  his  arrival  in  England,  found 
means  to  gam  the  ear  of  the  king,  and  instil  into  his  mind  a  prejudice,  of 
which  the  attainment  of  royalty  rendered  it  extremely  susceptible,  against 
the  insurgents  both  of  Boston  and  New  V-,k.  William  returned  thanks, 
indeed,  to  the  people  of  l^ew  York,  by  Le..'.r's  messenger,  for  their  fidel- 
ity ;  but  in  none  of  hss  romraunications  with  either  Boston  ur  New  York 
did  lie  recognize  the  g-v  i.ucis  whom  the  people  had  appointed  ;  and  he 
demonstrated  to  the  mhahuf^nts  of  both  those  places  how  very  lightly  he  re- 
garded their  complaint^  .itrainst  Andros  and  Nicholson,  by  subsequently  pro- 
moting these  men  to  the  government  of  others  of  the  American  provinces 
He  would,  doubtless,  have  continued  to  keep  New  York  and  Massachusetts 

'  Me,  Book  II.,  Ch«p.  V. 

•Smith.    Trumbull.    "  ■- 


VOL.  1. 


Sewe't,  MS.  Die.rv.  anud  HolmAg, 
56 


442 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V 


•  J  4  ^r,^  nnlitical  frame  ;  but  plainly  foreseeing  that  he  must  grant 
united  under  ^"«  P^^  //^^V.hat  he  might  hope  to  evade  a  similar  con- 
a  <=h?'^^«'^^\^;7;rk  which  had  never  yet  possessed  thiS  advantage,  he 
'''''°",«d  to  relepLtTon  which  both  desired,  and  in  August  1689,  com- 
consented  to  the  sepaiauuu  nrovince  to  Co  onel  Sloughter.    In 

nmted  the  separate  S^^^J^  ^l^^^.^  sUuaS>n  of  his  mastl's  affair 
consequence   however   of  Aeemb^^^^^^  ^.^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^  ^^^^^ 

in  England,  Slo^S^^/  d^^^"^^";^  ""l^  till  Leisler  and  his  partisans  had 
his  ^PP^'"^'"^"^  tMa  ch  19,  1691]    and  ^^  ^^^  ^^^^^.^^^  .^ 

enoyed  power  so  ^o^S^vvTerrexcLdingly  afraid,  to  re^  Leisler 

with  so  much  odmm  that  they  vveeexc^e  ,j^  ^.^^^6^  ^^.^ 

seems  to  have  hoped  to  ^hej^^'/;'^'  ^^^ 

authority, ^2X^0^^^^^^^^^  Colonel  Sloughter  to 

himself  no  otherwise  noti^e'J  |^;«"  "7  the  language  of  folly  and  fury,  that  he 
deliver  up  the  fort,  he  ^^Jf^'^'  " J.'^t^^^^^^^^  under  the  king's  own 

would  not  surrender  It,  unle^    "^^^^^^^^X^Z,  unfortunately,  possible  to 
hand,  were  exhibited.     S"^* .  ^ '^'°  „  ^"j^^ain  •  and  he  only  sealed  his  fate 

T'Tl'Xt  d^TpZ  andluti  ird  hirrmies  witl.  a  fegal  pretext  ,o 
by  this  sally  oi  despair,  dim  ^^  ^^^^^^ 

"an  "?Lrtt°~'s     L"";^!  no7v  readny.ope„e/.„  aU4e 
"?      ,.•   ,lm  LelTorl  enemies  hastened  to  prefer  agamst   h,m  ;  and  a|. 

°^  n  ^il'^r^ullishter  having  thus  established  his  authority  in  tiie  province, 

or.     A  Si'n^ff  »""'  I     ?  roval  eovernors  and  their  councils,  bin 

regulatu^ns  es  abhsbed^^^^^^^  %^  .__  ,„^ 

even  the  lav\s  enacieu  uy  n     v  v  . .       ^      j^  j  ceased  to  be 

pretext,  that,  h-mgj>ecn  v.da^^^^^^^^^^^  ,^  ,.^  ,,. 

bindmg  on  the  P?°Pl^-,^;.;;X  convocation  of  a  representative  assembly 
sence  of  a  provincial  cliarter,  V^^^^^J^^^^^''".,,^  q,  ,\^e  mere  grace  of  the 

proceeded  H'", SU  d^^^^^^^^^^^^^  ""  '^'  ""''''''' 

king,  a  remarkable  law  dcclarativeiy  amuug  birthright  of  the  colo- 

ertils  of  Englishmen  formed  «  P^^^^Xd  ^rS  Leisler  and 

nists  ;  but  this  law  was  afterwards  f7""^f  ^^^^^^^^^  Dudlev,  whom 

Milbourn  were  now  brought  to  trial,  for  high  treaso^^^  ^^^.  ,^^  ^^^^ 

the  king  had  r«^-^ly,,!PP"t  oft   e^^^^^^^  -"^«  r^-^"^'«"  ^" 

previously  been  expelled  from  otticc  at  «  s         ^  ^^^^^^  ^^ 

;vhich  the  prisoners  owed  ^l^^;^^^^.^"^//^;;^^"^  JlZ  a  candid  appecia- 
cupied  by  an  e-P«-/^j^/^"^^^^^^^^^^  expected.     Denlig  the 

tion  of  the  conduct  of  the  accusea  was  i  r  eonvirted, 

competency  of  the  tnbuf  -^  reft,     g  to  pkad,^t^^^^^^^ 
and   received  sentence  of  death.      Ane^go;ej      ,  ^^^.^_ 

horn  inflicting  the  doom  of  traUors  T  J^^-^^^^.Pr  o7l  is  so  ereign  ;  and, 
habitants,  had  /irst  cecUred  t^-f  ^^^^  ^  o  tbe  Vnglish  ministers,  de- 
shortly  after  the  trial  [Mav,  691],  ^\^°'^  /^^  "V^^^^  ^^^^ad  be  disposed 
s.rine  them  to  direct  him  in  wlut  manner  the^convjct.^sncn^^^^^^^^  ^^|  ^^^.^ 

of:  "but  he  had  hardly  taken  ti.w  step,  wnen  mc  renvr.,-.  .-- 


CIIAP.  11  ]    RENEWAL  OF  THE  TREATY  WITH  THE  FIVE  NATIONS.    443 

enemies  induced  him  to  alter  his  purpose,  and  issue  the  warrant  of  death, 
which  was  instantly  carried  into  execution. >  The  adherents  of  Leisler  and 
Milbourn,  who  had  been  much  enraged  at  the  sentence,  were  confounded 
witli  terror  and  astonishment  when  they  beheld  its  fatal  result,  and  began  to 
tiy  in  such  numbers  from  the  province,  that  it  was  judged  expedient  to 
pass  in  haste  an  act  of  general  amnesty.  Leisler's  son  complained  to  the 
king  of  the  execution  of  his  fathgr  and  the  confiscation  of  his  property  ;  and 
the  privy  council,  pronouncing,  that,  although  the  trial  and  execution  were 
legal,  it  was  advisable,  under  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  case,  to  re- 
store the  forfeited  estate,  this  was  all  the  grace  that  could  for  some  time  be 
obtained.  But  a  compensation  more  honorable  and  satisfactory  was  awarded 
soon  after  ;  and,  during  the  reign  of  the  same  king,  the  English  parliament 
decreed  a  reversal  of  the  provincial  attainder.  The  passions,  which  Leis- 
ler's administration  excited  in  one  party,  and  which  his  execution  com- 
iniinicated  to  the  other,  continued  long  to  distract  the  public  councils,  and 
embitter  the  social  intercourse  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  York.^ 

The  most  respectable  circumstance  of  Sloughter's  short  administration 
was  a  conference  which  he  held  with  the  chiefs  of  the  Five  Nations,  who 
admitted  that  they  had  hearkened  to  the  enticing  overtures  of  the  French, 
and  so  far  relaxed  their  hostile  purposes  against  this  people,  as  to  entertain 
propositions  for  a  lasting  peace  with  them  ;  but  now  they  willingly  con- 
sented to  brighten,  as  they  termed  it,  their  ancient  belt  of  friendship,  and 
to  renew  a  league,  offensive  and  defensive,  with  the  English  "  We  remem- 
ber," they  declared,  "  the  deceit  and  treachery  of  the  French  ;  the  belt 
they  have  sent  us  is  poison  ;  we  spew  it  out  of  our  mouths  ;  and  are  re- 
solved to  make  war  with  them  as  long  as  we  live."  On  his  return  from  this 
conference,  a  sudden  death  put  a  period  to  Sloughter's  administration.^ 
[July,  ";91.] 

To  confirm  the  Indians  in  the  purposes  they  now  professed,  and  to  ani- 
mate by  exercising  their  hostility  against  the  French,  Major  Schuyler,  who 
had  acquired  extraordinary  influence  with  the  Five  Nations  by  his  courage, 
good  sense,  and  friendly  attention  to  their  interests,  undertook,  in  the  close 
of  this  year,  an  expedition  against  Montreal  at  the  head  of  a  considerable 
body  of  provincial  and  Indian  forces.  Though  the  invaders  were  finally 
compelled  to  retreat,  the  French  sustained  great  loss  in  several  encoun- 
ters, and  the  spirit  and  animosity  of  the  Five  Nations  vi^ere  whetted  to  such 
a  pitch,  that,  even  when  their  allies  retired,  they  continued  during  the  win- 
ter to  harass  the  enemy  with  incessant  attacks.  Count  Frontignac,  whose 
sprightly  manners  and  energetic  character  supported  the  spirits  of  his  coun- 
trymen under  every  reverse,  was  so  provoked  with  what  he  deemed  the 
ingratitude  of  the  Five  Nations  for  the  forbearance  shown  to  them  at  Sche- 

'  "  When  no  other  measures  could  prevail  with  the  governor,  tradition  informs  us  that  a 
sumptuous  feaut  wras  prepared,  to  which  Colonel  Sloughter  was  invited.  When  hia  Excel- 
lim  y's  reason  was  drowned  in  his  cups,  the  entreaties  of  the  company  prevailed  on  him  to 
sit;!!  the  denth-warrunt,  and  before  he  recovered  his  senses  the  prisoners  were  executed." 
Smith.  At  their  execution,  Leisler  and  Milbourn  confessed  their  errors,  ascribing  them  to 
ignorance,  jealous  fear,  rashness,  and  passion,  and  evinced  great  courage,  composure,  and 
piety.  •'  I  hope  these  eyes  shall  see  our  Lord  Jesus  in  heaven,"  were  the  words  of  Leisler 
tth"n  the  executioner  bound  a  handkerchief  round  his  face.    Bancroil. 

'  Smith.    Chalmers. 

'  Golden.  Smith.  Of  the  language  in  which  the  Indians,  when  pressed  by  the  Frencn,  ap- 
ulii'd  for  lielp  to  the  governors  of  New  York,  tho  follovviru',  nmonj;  other  specinions,  has 
wen  preserved  by  these  writtrs.  "  We  speak  to  you  now  in  tfio  name  of  the  Five  Nations, 
ami  come  to  you  howling.  This  is  the  reason  why  wo  howl,  —  that  the  governor  of  Can- 
ada encroaches  oil  our  IriiitiB.''  &,c. 


444 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


*  A     that   besides  encouraeing  his  own  Indian  allies  to  burn  their  pris- 
re^  a'lWthe  h  -^^^^  ^^  ^  ^-^^  still  more  Jreadlul  two  Mo- 

hawk warders  who  fell  into  his  hands.  [1692  ]  In  vam  tlie  t  rench  pnosts 
LmonS^d  against  Uiis  sentence,  and  urged  h.m  not  to  bnng  so  louU 
^^nnth«  Christian  name  ;  the  count  declared  that  every  other  consuiera- 
.tarn  on  ^e  t^^^"f '^"  "^  "^^  and  defence  of  his  people,  and  that  he 

SdTt  LX rSr  l^emert'aln  the  i>elief  that  they  -#t  pra^.e  t^^^ 
extreme  of  cruelty  on  the  French  wiUiout  risk  of  requital.  If  he  lad  been 
merely  alated  by  politic  considerations,  without  being  stimulated  by  re- 
merely  aciuaieu     y j>  perceived,  from  the  conduct  of  all  the  Indian 

Sin Xif I  r:iKcVother,  tbit  the  fear  of  retaliation  had  no  effi- 
triDes  m  uieir  "*•;  .  ,u  j^  barbarous  pracUces,  which  he  now 

TdLroottrsa"  ioT  "  far  TSis  example  was  enable  of  doing  The 
oS  findUig  that  their  humane  intercession  was  unavailing,  repaired  to  the 
Prisoners  and  labored  to  persuade  them  to  embrace  the  Christian  faith,  as 
rnrenaratioD  for  the  dreadful  fate  which  men  calling  themselves  Chrmmns 
wereTepared  to  inflict  on  them  ;  but  their  instructions  were  rejected  ^v.,h 
were  preparea  |"  '  prisoners  resolved  to  dignify  by  In- 

rrse^teT  a^  d^^^^^^^^  IndL  death  they  were  doomed  to  un- 

i  S^  before  the  execution,  some  Frenchman  less  mhuman  than 
hisTovernor,  threw  a  knife  into  the  prison,  -  and  one  of  the  Mohawks  de- 
his  governor,  uucv  cnrvivor  col  ect  ne;  his  soul,  and  e?4pr3ssing 

fS  «r  ToTefltrl'Xtad  oL'S^n.a„y  Fre„ch.en  .„  ier,,  ,1,. 
same  pansT  vhich  he  was  now  himself  prepard  lo  eu<l,,rc.  \V1,™.. 
Sed  3c  stake,  he  looked  round  on  his  excM-m.oners,  the.r  n,slrnme„ls 
S-tolre  and  (he  assembled  mnltitnde  of  specialors,  w,th  a  I  ihe  calmness 
and  cloUeency  of  heroie  for.ilude  ;  and  afle,-  snslaimng  for  some  l«s 
^IroTptd  ,Ln  and  -"^^J^K  1  irSS^^s -S  tS 
rr  U«"  ot  "Srh  tly  ;;w"urse„ey;pre,ailed  .1,1,  ,h. 
g  V  Ir  ;:  oX  .1,0  inflicion of  .ha,  mor.al  M"--  -  ^h'""""  "-"'' '« 

It  was  wiui  grc  „pnuisitions  which  rega   authority  derived  froni  the 

lean  colonies  any  of  "'«//:^"'*'"°"' '""  '    J',  a  ,,;,  reign  was  signalized  hv 
tyrannical  usurpations  «J  ^.s  predecesso^^  ^^^^  ^J^^^^  ^^^^ 

"el^rtoTeXt'^r":   or^^^^^  ^  e' w'sSuled  by  the  Kn^ish  lawyers  that 
rid  Tot^rcfLe  to  recognize  the  charter  of  Connecticut  w.tli  all  its  am- 

the  envied  privileges  of  Connecticut.                                              disposition 
Colonel  Fletcher,  a  sordid^  unpnnci^pled^Ji^^  1 

=  — —  ^  Coldon.      cHiith. 


CIIAP.  II.]  SPIRIT  OF  THE  CONNECTICUT  PEOPLE. 


446 


less  inhuman  than 


irascible   disposition 


and  narrow  understanding,  yet  endowed  with  a  considerable  share  of  acUvi- 
ly  was  the  governor  who  next  arrived  to  represent  the  king  at  New  York  •  i 
nnd  to  him  was  intrusted  the  execution  of  the  design  that  WilHam  entel- 
tamed  asainsi  the  neighbouring  colony.  [August,  1692.]     Happily  for  the 
hberi.es  which  he  undertook  to  invade,  this  officer  was  more  fitted  by  his 
temper  to  disclose,  than  by  his  capacity  to  conduct,  a  system  of  arbitrary 
and  encroaching  policy.     By  the  commission  which  he  now  received  from 
,  e  crown,  he  was  invested  with  plenary  powers  of  commanding  not  merely 
the  mihtia  of  New  York,  but  all  his  Majesty's  militia  in  the  same  quarter 
of  America.     His  first  step  towards  acliieving  this  encroachment  Ls  to 
tender  a  commission  from  himself  to  Governor  Trent,  who  already  com- 
manded  the  mihtia  of  Connecticut  m  conformity  with  the  directions  of  th« 
provincial  charter  ;  and  the  reception  of  this,  even  in  the  light  of  a  mere 
supererogatory  confirmation,  it  was  doubtless  expected,  would  pave  the  wav 
to  a  more  distinct  and  complete  establishment  of  the  king's  pretensions.    But 
in  the  popular  constitution  of  Connecticut,  the  offices  of  government  were 
,hen  filled  by  nien,  who,  thoroughly  appreciating  the  privileges  they  enioyed, 
had  sense  to  discern,  and  spirit  to  resist,  every  attempt  to  violate  them 
and  the  proffer  of  Fletcher's  commission  was  not  only  flatly  rejected,  but 
made  the  subject  of  a  vigorous  remonstrance.     Incensed  at  such  contu- 
macy, as  he  was  pleased  to  regard  it,  Fletcher,  ^vith  his  usual  impetuosity, 
repaired  abruptly  to  Hartford  [1693],  and   commanded  the  assembly  of 
ihe  btate,  who  were  convoked  at  the  time,  to  place  their  militia  forthwith 
under  his  orders.     He  even  carried  his  insolence  to  the  length  of  declaring 
that  he  would  issue  a  proclamation  inviting  all  persons  who  were  for  the 
king  to  join  him,  and  denouncing  all  others  as  guilty  of  disloyalty  and  sedi* 
tion.    blading  his  menacing  injunctions  received  with  calm  but  inflexible 
disregard,  he  presented  himself  with  one  of  his  council,  Colonel  Bayard,  to 
the  mihtia  at  their  parade  ;  and,  expecting  that  a  royal  warrant  would  find 
greater  favor  with  the  men  than  it  had  done  with  their  civil  rulers,  he  com- 
manded Bayard  to  read  his  commission  aloud,  as  an  act  of  declarator 
possession  of  the  authority  to  which  he  pretended.  But  Captain  Wadsworth, 
who  was  always  ready  to  confront  any  danger  that  menaced  the  liberties 
of  his  country,  and  who  had  once  before  saved  the  charter  of  Connecticut 
from  invasion,'^  now  stood  forward  to  prevent  the  privileges  it  conveyed 
from  being  abridged  or  insulted,  and,  commanding  the  drums  to  beat,  effectu- 
ally drowned  the  obnoxious  accents.    When  Fletcher  ventured  to  interpose, 
Wadsworth  supported  his  orders  with  such  an  energy  of  determination,  that 
the  meaner  spirit  of  his  antagonist  was  completely  outbraved  and  over- 
mastered ;  and  seeing  the  countenances  of  all  around  kindling  in  sympathy 
with  the  patriot's  fervor,  he  judged  it  prudent  to  consult  his  safety  by  a 
hasty  return  to  New  York.     The  king,  with  the  view  of  covering  this  de- 
feat, or  of  trying  whether  legal  chicane  could  repair  it,  caused  the  matter 
to  be  submitted  to  the  deliberation  of  the  attorney  and  solicitor  general  of 
England  ;  and  on  their  reporting  without  hesitation  in  favor  of  the  plea  of 
Connecticut,  an  order  of  council  was  passed  in  conformity  with  their  opin- 
ion ;  — as  if  the  question  had  involved  a  mere  local  dispute  between  two 
F»'nciajJiirisdiction^,  in  which  the  king,  without  any  precognition  of  its 
'  *,T"  "PPO'.nte*'  «'•<»  governor  of  Fennel vania  by  the  king,  who  had  deprived  WilUdm 

Hin  of  his  nmnrintarv  fiinntmna 


Pann  of  his  proprietary  futictk>iu. 
•  Ante,  Book  I!.,  Chap.  V. 


LL 


446 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


to   exercise 


the  dignified  functions  of  supreme  and  impartial 


merits,  was 

"  Vorlunately  for  New  York,  tlie  indiscretion  of  her  governor  was  prevent- 
ed  from  being  so  detrimental  as  it  Height  otherw.se  have  proved  o  her  I„. 
^  «„  Wuerests  by  U,e  confidence  he  reposed  m  Major  Schuyler,  whose 
dian  uueresis,  oy  ui«   •-  ,      n-eserve  the  affections  and  sustain  t ho 

.eighty  .nfluence  --  -P^^^  ,^^^^^^^^^  indeed,  was  rendered  by 

spirit  of  the  Jive  ^^«**°°^;  X"  ,,•  .  ^^^  Frontignac,  even  while  occu- 
the  prov  ncal  g^^^XfJ^^^j^'^^En^^^^^  by  his  vigor  and  activity 

P"'^  fl't  otle^f  sevVr"elflV  '  Stir'red  by  this  intelligence,  Fletch/r 
to  mflict  on  them  a  severe  "le  j    demanded  if  any  of  them 

assembled  the  ^'^'\^l/^^^^^^^^  the  French.  ^The  men 

were  willing  to  march   "^^f  "'^J^^^^^^^^  u  Qne  and  all."    Their 

threw  up  their  hats  m  '^>«  f '^  ^"^1^7;  u^^^^^^^^  the  Indians  ;  and 

though  It  P'T^^^^  ""  .        f  promptitude  to  lend  them  assistance,  that  they 
regardedasademonstratmn  01  prompt  ^^  ,^ 

""''l  ntrfhlr    "a^i   wa's  too&^ 

marked,  nevertheless,  tliai    J^^        .  ^^  ,  j^-i^  ^y,^  ^hoie  power  of 

succour  tdl  It  had  beoo";«  ""^^^^^^^^^^^^^  efforts  to  maintain  the 

France  m  America  was  ^°r^,f "/^^'^^^  ^jth  partial  and  divided  opera- 

Tbefnationd  one)  took  no  share  in  the^.ost^^^^^^^^^^  at  al  •       ^^^^  ^^^^^ 

0ufnttd\7eilT^^^^^^^^^ 

rnin^uccouTng  the  Indians  ;  though  it  was  to  li.s  services  in  this  last  par- 

fcular  that  he  owed  what  little  popularity  he  enjoyed  m  the  provmce.  A 
Sfant  to  Sie  church  of  England,  he  labored  incessantlrto  introduce  a  model 
bigot  to  "^«,  ."r^""^*^"  °;/;^^^  virk    and  naturally  encountered  much  resist- 

of  her  ««;«b>'«''™«f*"^T/o;p^gite  predilections  of  the  Dutch  and  other 
ance  to  this  projec    from  ^^e  oPPO^^^e  pr  ^^^^^^^  .^  procuring  a  bill 

Presbyterianinhabitants.     At  lensui  ms  ci  or  assembly  of 

parishes :  but  when  «» <><'""^'  J  |  j  ,g,,  ,  pro,iso  that  the  governor 
d>e  privilege  of  fecUng  ihu  ^^ '^'"'''''»„,-,  ?  „„d  eoUating  the  beam- 
L'r"  ,ra™:„  tnT:7 2:  wtive-1  b/t.,e  assetnbly^  The  ^o,. 
S  ;  exas;r.e"a.  their  opposition,  called  the  -™ber'  be  ore  h™^^^^^^^^^ 

positively  denied^       mu^  leil  7^^  J^.^^^  ^^^^^         have  but  a 

S°r:tX  It^P^  power  o^he  .ov^rn^^.^rfet^::. 
take  all  upon  X?"-  ""^  K  » Y;'2rr„f  ,„rHou?e  of  Lords  or  appc, 

.1 .«».  „r  Nnur  Vnrk. 

*  Golden.    Smith. 


CHAP.  II.]         TEMPER  OF  FLETCHER'S  ADMINISTRATION. 


447 


great  charge  to  the  country.  Ten  shillings  a  day  is  a  large  allowance,  and 
you  punctually  exact  it.  You  have  been  always  forward  enough  to  pull 
down  the  lees  of  other  mimstors  in  the  government.  Why  did  not  you 
think  >t  expedient  to  correct  your  own  to  a  more  moderate  allowance  ^  "  The 
,nenibt-is  of  assembly  endured  the  ebullitions  of  his  violence  and  spleen  with 
invincible  patience  ;  but  not  the  less  firmly  did  they  withstand  his  pretensions. 
In  the  following  year  [1694],  their  disputes  were  so  frequent  that  all  public 
business  was  mierrupted  ;  and  the  governor,  with  policy  more  splenetic  than 
deliberate,  announced  his  intention  of  convoking  the  assembly  no  more.  But 
though  his  own  emoluments  were  secured  by  an  act  that  established  the  pub- 
lic revenue  for  a  series  of  years,  the  necessity  of  raising  farther  supplies  to 
make  presents  to  the  Indians,  and  the  arrival  of  a  body  of  troops  from 
Uriiain,  obliged  him  to  depart  from  his  purpose.  He  was  directed  also  by 
the  king  to  lay  before  the  assembly  an  assignment  which  his  Majesty  had 
framed  ot  the  quotas »  to  be  respectively  contributed  by  the  colonies  for 
I  the  maintenance  of  a  force  against  the  French.  The  assembly  could  not 
be  persuaded  to  pay  the  slightest  attention  to  this  royal  proposition  But 
they  made  a  liberal  grant  of  money  for  the  support  of  the  troops  that  had 
arrived,  and  added  a  present  to  the  governor  ;  who  now  perceiving  that  the 
people  of  rSew  York,  though  endowed  with  a  spirit  over  which  his  insolence 
and  passion  could  obtain  no  triumph,  might  yet  be  rendered  subservient  to 
his  avarice,  ceased  to  harass  himself  and  them  by  farther  pressing  obnoxious 
schemes,  and  cultivated  a  good  understanding  with  the  assembly  during  the 
remainder  of  his  administration.  In  the  prosecution  of  this  altered  policy 
lie  was  more  successful  than  some  other  royal  governors  of  the  American 
provinces,  whose  remarkable  unpopularity  during  many  years  of  honest  and 
praiseworthy  exertion  has  excited  surprise  in  those  who  have  not  examined 
with  sufficient  minuteness  the  whole  of  their  official  career.  Like  Fletcher, 
those  officers  were  at  first  disposed  to  regard  the  provincial  inhabitants  as  an 
inferior  people,  and  commenced  their  administration  with  insolent,  dom- 
ineering carriage,  and  arbitrary  pretensions  ;  like  him,  they  learned  wisdom 
from  experience  ;  but  before  the  lesson  was  taught,  the  opportunityof  profit- 
ably applying  it  had  been  lost ;  the  people  had  ceased  to  be  as  tractable 
as  in  former  days  ;  and  the  spirit  of  liberty,  thoroughly  exercised,  had  be- 
come prone  to  suspect  encroachment,  and  prompt  to  repel  as  well  as  firm  in 
resisting  it.  Their  administration  was  embarrassed  by  the  total  want  of  pub- 
lic confidence,  which,  having  once  deservedly  forfeited  it,  they  found  that 
even  a  coniplete  change  of  measures  was  insufficient  to  regain.  From  igno- 
rance or  disregard  of  such  considerations  as  these,  it  has  been  supposed, 
and  plausibly  maintained  by  many  writers,  that  the  executive  government 
of  the  American  provinces  was  obstructed  by  the  factious  obstinacy  of  a  per- 
verse and  unreasonable  people ;  when,  in  truth,  the  governors  were  but 
reaping  what  themselves  and  their  predecessors  had  sown,  and  struggling 
with  the  just  suspicions  that  their  original  misconduct  had  created.  Tn  all 
the  provinces  where  either  regal  power  was  not  circumscribed  by  cnarters,  or 
where  (as  in  Massachusetts)  the  nomination  of  the  chief  executive  officer 
was  by  charter  reserved  to  the  crown,  such  were,  not  unfrequently,  the  pro- 


'  The  list  of  the  respective  quotas  was  as  follows :  — 

Pennsylvania  £  80  Rhode  Island  and  Providence 

Massachusetto  350  Connecticut 

Maryland  160  New  York 

Virginia  S40 

This  assignment  wu  durogarded  by  every  one  of  the  colonies. 


£48 

lao 

900 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


// 


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1.0 


I.I 


1.25 


Ki    12.2 


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Hi 

Ui     Hi 

^  yo   112.0 


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1.8 


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HiotDgraphic 

Sciences 
Corporation 


33  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER,  N.Y.  14S80 

(716)  872-4S03 


\ 


(v 


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^^ 


^ 


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448 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


ceedines  of  the  British  governors,  and  the  compexion  of  their  adm,ni3tra- 
ZTmd  Britain,  it  must  be  confessed,  by  delegating  authority  to.uch 
men  'and  abetting  such  policy,  took  infinite  pains  tonounsh  and  educate  the 
TpS  of  liberty  in  those  of  her  colonial  dependences,  where  it  seemed  least 

^''^^Cremtder'^^^^^^^  -  -t  distinguished  by  any 

domestic Tcurrrence  that  deserves  to  be  particularly  commemorated  1  he 
waXtweTn  ^e  French  and  the  Five  Nations  sometimes  languished  l^r  the 
Tddre^s  of  Frontignac's  negotiations,  and  was  oftener  kindled  into  addit.ona 
toy  and  havoc  by  his  enterprise  and  activity.  Neither  age  nor  sickness  could 
chJl  3fe  aXr  o7  this  commander's  spirit,  or  impair  the  resources  of  h.s 
caPacUy.  On  the  direshold  of  his  o^vn  fate,i  and  supported  m  a  hUer,  he 
flew  to  every  point  of  attack  or  defence,  to  animate  the  courage  of  his  sol- 

fth^ir'StS  4^-^  ,t  it^TotsTt:  J? 

iaspiredwidjam^uale^d^^^^^^^^^ 

Cct,  i:s^ptpare?S;rcaaorand  physical  ifbits  for  -h  extremes 
of  su&r  S!  endured  a  great  deal  more  pain  than  they  inflicted.  [1696.] 

C^  r  A  *  A^.n.JtaA  n(  nil  its  e^ridon  except  a  sachem  in  extreme  om  age, 
whoZ«ld~»J^o?rp!!lati«n  ;  b^.,  seated  wiO..  dl  .he  Brmness 
WHO  Deirayea  no  »>»  v       p       i^  •     ujg  caoitol,  saluted  his  civilized  com- 

•«:lCattd  drr^tu^dr^^^^^^  ^^'     ^very  ba„d 

^B  i^ta^dy  litedTwiund  hi.  time-stricken  frame  ;  and  while  French  and 
SirSs  were  plunged  into  his  body,  he  contemptuously  advised  h.s 
Indian  Kn»^?J^^f,  /  \  u;^  ^^^^l^  f^^^  ;„  order  tliat  their  French  allies 
Indian  enemieis  ratoer  to  Durn  imn  wmt  mo,  !««„«,  ni»rhans  " 

might  learn,  ftom  his  example,  how  to  suffer  like  men.       ^eve^  Perhaps 
Ji  Charlevoix,  "  ^asa  man  treated  with  more  cruelty  ,  nor  ever  did  any 
^dure  it  with  superiormagMn^^ 

competition  took  RI^^^J^^^^",  J^  J^Stge^^^^^^^^^  «M''^ 

c*rtmn  which  peoolc  <^°"W'"2  Jf^'^ofeX  account  than  that  the  Indian.,  greatly  excel lod 
horrid  tre|«dv  thai  ensued  »  »''""J'J^  ?*••„"", .„.norta  of  laUihter  by  the  fitntaBtic  variety  of 
^h--™l-'^«>"^!!SL*^'«"^^!fc?h   o  dir;C  to  hav*e  beenVon^pted  to  this  bnn:,,. 


Thfi  French  soldiers  appear  to  have  been  prompted  to  this  brut;,l. 
rdferJcUy     Their  clman^^^   object  was  to  create  .ireconc,l«bIc^..n. 


lty\T:"r:fe7en«f^^^^  Jl^  ^^STf^:  N&r  CoW^r  But  it  was  after- 

nfity  between  a  trtTni  n_evrly  alHed  to  h.m^  ITJ.I'uLL  the  imitation  of  savage  practice,,  U,r 


1  me  rnre  iiuuuim.      ^«.-~--      

which  Indian  principle  confined  it 


^hich  Indian  principle  confined  It.  .    ^„_  .Uw  all  their  oriMnera.    A  great  many  re- 

>  Neither  thS  French  nor  th^  I"^•7^•';7,^  'and  1    hKcEn  it  was  remarked  that 
mained  to^be  "changed  a  the  end  of  the  w«^,^^^^^^^^    ^^^  ^^^^  .^  .  j    . 


.„....„„„  ,.  „--_.ged  «ttho-J°f 'he  war;  a^^^^^ 

all  the  Indians  returned  with  '''""^tX  *'J  *inTuc"F^^^^^ 

difiicult,  and  in  some  utterly  impoemble,  to  «n«Iuce  r  '^"^ •"""",  -       rj.^;         ^^  jo  \nctem  H'e 

the  Indian,  and  embraced  their  httbits,  to  return  to  civ'Hjfd  me^  „:„i",„Tn,«n.    Civilization 


STSnIiian.  and  embraced  tl.eir  h«biu.  to  return  to  cmu.ea^^  ^.^ 

probability  that  the  1"^  r"™  »f«  *J«8«X,Woi^^^^^^^  The  English 

frnplies  a  virtuous  conflict,  »»^l>"\™  "  "^Tr  frS  who  had  been  token  prisoners  bv  the 
found  it  no  less  difficult  to  prevail  ^'^^  ^Xn  tmc  A^ith  them,  to  return  to  New  York; 
French  Indians,  and  ived  for  «"y  «°"«^/  f^'Jln'^e^t^r  plenly?th^^  the  common  inhabit. 
"  though  no  people  enjoy  more  libert;^,  and  ''"J"  f  *";!! /u^  ,J^;  i„dians  wa«  no  less  ran;  in 
.nt.  of  Nsw  York  do;-  Golden,  v  he  e«orci»e  of  mercy  by  "'e^o'";;;  „«„„p.i  thev  in- 
ita  occurrence  than  singular  in  its  elTecu. 


,.     .u .: .  .„i.nm  ihpv  nMMrved  they  in- 


CHAP,  n.]         LORD  BELLAMONT  APPOINTED  GOVERNOR. 


449 


The  governor  of  New  York  from  time  to  time  encouraged  the  Five  Na. 
tions  to  persevere  in  the  coatest,  by  endeavouring  to  negotiate  alliances  be- 
tween them  and  other  tribes,  and  by  sending  them  valuable  presents  of  am* 
munition,  and  of  the  European  commodities  which  they  principally  esteemed; 
and  their  communications  to  him  fluctuated  between  grateful  acknowledg' 
ments  of  these  occasional  supplies,  and  angry  complaints  that  he  foucht  all 
Ins  battles  by  the  hands  of  the  Indians.     Indeed,  except  repelling  some  in- 
significant  attacks  of  the  French  on  the  frontiers  of  the  province,  the  English 
governor  took  no  actual  share  in  the  war,  and  left  the  most  important  in- 
terests  of  his  countrymen  to  be  defended  against  the  efforts  of  a  skilful  and 
mveterate  foe,  by  the  unaided  valor  of  their  Indian  allies.     The  peace  of 
Byswick  [September,  1697],  which  interrupted  the  hostilities  of  the  French 
and  English,  threatened  at  first  to  be  attended  with  fata!  consequences  to 
those  allies  to  whose  exertions  the  English  were  so  highly  indebted  ;  and 
if  lletcher  had  been  permitted  to  continue  longer  in  the  government  of 
New  York,  this  result,  no  less  dangerous  than  dishonorable  to  his  country- 
men, would  most  probably  have  ensued.     A  considerable  part  of  the  forces 
of  Count   Frontignac  had   been  employed  hitherto  in  warlike  operations 
agamst  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire,  in  conjunction  with  the  numer- 
ous Indian  confederates  of  the  French  in  that  quarter.     But  the  peace 
of  Ryswick,  of  which  he  now  received  intelligence,  enabled  him  to  concen- 
trate his  whole  disposable  force  against  the  only  foe  that  remained  to  him  • 
and  refusing  to  consider  the  Five  Nations  as  identified  with  the  English,  he 
prepared  to  invade  them  with  such  an  army  as  they  never  before  had  to  cope 
mth,  and  overwhelm  them  with  a  vengeance  which  they  seemed  incapable 
of  resisting.  ^ 

But  Fletcher  was  now  very  seasonably  succeeded  by  the  Earl  of  Bella- 
mont  [April,  1698]  in  the  government  of  New  York  and  Massachusetts  ; 
and  this  new  governor,  who  wa^  well  endowed  with  both  resolution  and  ca- 
pacity, perceiving  the  danger  and  injustice  of  suffering  the  French  to  exe- 
cute their  design,  promptly  interposed  to  counteract  it.  He  not  only 
furnished  the  Five  Nations  with  an  ample  supply  of  ammunition  and  military 
stores,  but  notified  to  Count  Frontignac,  that,  if  the  French  should  pre- 
sume to  attack  them,  he  would  march  with  the  whole  forces  of  his  province 
to  their  aid.  The  count  thereupon  abandoned  his  enterprise,  and  complained 
to  his  sovereign  (Louis  the  Fourteenth)  of  the  interruption  it  had  received ; 
while  Lord  Bellamont,  in  like  manner,  apprized  King  William  of  the  step 
he  had  taken.  The  two  monarchs  commanded  their  respective  delegates  to 
lend  assistance  to  each  other,  and  exert  a  spirit  of  accommodation  in  mak- 
ing the  peace  effectual  to  both  nations,  and  to  leave  all  disputes  concerning 
the  dependency  of  the  Indian  tribes  to  the  determination  of  commissioners 
--^Z'!''f_j^*'*^  named  in  pursuance  of  the  treaty  of  Ryswick.     Shortly 

dulgcd  a  degree  of  tenderness  very  remote  from  the  stoicism  which  they  commonly  affected; 
and  when  obliged  to  surrender  them,  confessed  the  pain  of  the  sacrifice  by  unwonted  effusioni 
«  tears.  Ssee  a  description  of  the  restoration  of  some  of  these  prisoners  in  Dodsley's  Annual 
Ktgisterfor  176.5.  The  celebrated  Mrs.  Grant  of  Lnggan,  even  while  enjoying  andf  ndorning. 
in  mature  age,  the  refined  happiness  of  civilized  society  and  literary  dlstincHon,  confeisod, 
ilrat,  from  her  aMidental  intercourse  in  early  youth  with  the  Mohawk  Indians,  she  had  imbibed 
an  attBchment  flir  these  savages,  and  even  for  their  mode  of  life,  which  no  after  circumstan- 
ces had  been  able  to  counteract. 

So  many  English  prisoners  have  remained  and  married  in  the  Indian  settlements  (sayi 
jToiegjor  Kalm),  and  so  many  French  traders  have  spontaneously  united  themselves  to  the 
Indians,  thaj  ihe^"  Indian  blood  in  Canada  is  very  much  mixed  with  European  blood,  and  n 
Jfcst  part  ui  iac  andians  now  living  (1749)  owe  liidit  origia  to  Jiiurope." 


VOL.   1. 


57 


LL 


460 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


after  the  reception  of  these  mandates,  a  peace  was  concluded  between  the 
tWh  andX  Five  Nations  ;  but  not  till  English  msolenco  and  French 
address  had  nearly  detached  these  tribes  entirely  from  the  allmnce  they  had 
so  steadily  maintained,  by  leading  them  to  believe  that  the  Eng^^h  .nterposed 
iaS  concerns  for  no  other  reason  than  that  they  accourted  them  the.r 
vassals      The  French  endeavoured  to  take  advantage  of  the.r  lU-humor  by 
pJess  ng  them  to  admit  an  establishment  of  Jesuits  into  their  settlements    But 
ES  the  Indians  at  first  entertained  the  proposition,  and  listened  with  their 
usSavity  and  politeness  to  the  enticing  harangue  of  a  Jesuit  who  was  de- 
Dut^d  to  support  it,»  their  habitual  sentiments  soon  prevailed  over  atran- 
Et  dTscontem,  and  they  declared  their  determination  to  adhere  to  the  Eng- 
bh  and  to  rec;i.;e,  instead  of  the  French  priests,  a  mission  of  Protestant 
pas  ors  which  Lord  Bellamont  engaged  to  introduce  among  them.'^ 
^  Some  Ses  that  prevailed,  and  some  disorders  that  were  apprehended 
at  New  York,  had  prompted  King  William  to  bestow  the  governmen  of  this 
province  on  Lord  Bellamont,  whom  he  justly  deemed  peculiarly  well  quali- 
fied  by  the  influence  of  his  elevated  rank,  added  to  the  firmness  and  integ- 
rkv  of  hs  character,  to  correct  the  one  and  compose  the  other      Fletcher, 
Xhl  p  eceding  governor,  had  proved  a  very  unfaithful  steward  of  the  public 
reveSue'and  gratified  his  avarice  and  his  partialities  by  unjust  and  exorbitant 
appropr  arions  and  grants  of  land.     Lord  Bellamont,  after  investigating  the 
pHSs  of  Fletcher's  administration,  openly  denounced  him  as  a  qorrupt 
S  profliga  e  magistrate  ;  and  not  only  caused  judicial  proceedings  to  be 
fnstitSed  against  Wm  and  the  favorites  whom  he  had  enriched  with  a  share 
rrpubfic  spoils,  but  at  one  time  proposed  to  send  h.m  as  a  prisoner  to 
undergo^  a  criminal  trial  in  England.     The  expense  and  difficulty  of  procur- 
1  what  would  be  deemed  requisite  evidence  by  a  judical  tribunal  together 
wfth  other  obstructions  which  commonly  impede  the  success  of  schemes  for 
Tccori^hing  the  exposure  or  compelling  the  restitution  of  official  pillage 
rendered  those  purposes  and  proceedings  abortive.  r   .     . 

AnSempt  tS  correct  another  abuse  proved  at  first  extremely  unfortunate 
andwas  attended  with  remarkable  circumstances  in  its  progress,  and  ira  port- 
ent r onsequences  in  England.     The  late  war  gave  rise  to  a  great  deal  o 
pr  va3g,  which  in  mtny  instances  degenerated  into  piracy  ;  and  the  ev.I 
wrincSd  by  the  readiness  with  which  James  the  Second,  in  his  exile, 
Zted  commissions  for  naval  service  to  adventurers  adhering  or  professing 
arerence,  to  his  cause,  and  who  preposterously  hoped  that  these  commis- 
"b^s  would  entitle  their  maritime  robberies  to  be  regarded  as  acts  of  legu.- 
maL  warfare      From  New  York,  in  particular,  many  piratical  ciuisers  were 
known  toba^e  sailed  ;  and,  indeed,  there  was  strong  reason  to  suspect  that 
rSher's  hunger  for  gold  had  been  too  voracious  to  scruple  the  acceptance 
of  it  from  Aelands  o?  those  robbers  as  the  price  of  his  connivance  at  the.r 
depreSS     Lord  Bellamont,  whom  Uie  king  with  especial  urgency  direct^ 
X  adopt  he  most  vigorous  measures  for  the  extirpation  of  this  system 
(wh?ch  he^d  ead?d  the  more  from  its  subservienc_e^the  mtr^gues  ofjhe 


Hoinph^~y*i  aUtor'Ual  Account  of  the  Hoculy  for  ,ropagaimg  IM  u«p«. 


CHAP.  II.] 


CAPTAIN  KIDD. 


^1 

exiled  monarch),  was  advised  by  some  imprudent  or  disingenuous  counsel- 
lor to  ,nv.te  the  assistance  of  one  Kidd,  who  was  represented  to  hTm  as  a 
'^ZfJT'  •""?  '""''Tip  «"^  acquainted  with  the  persons  an™  the 
.aunts  of  the  pirates  Kidd,  being  in  England  at  the  time,  was  introduced 
to  Lord  Bellamont  by  the  person  who  so  characterized  him,  and  reS 
offered  to  undertake  the  suppression  and  apprehension  of  the  pira"es   if  the 

a  last  sailing  trigate  of  thirty  guns.  The  earl  laid  the  proposal  before  the 
king,  who  was  fully  disposed  to  embrace  any  feasible  plan  for  extirpat  ne 
piracy  :  but  some  difficulties  having  been  started  by  the  admiral^'  the  Theme 
was  dropped  ;  end,  unfortunately  for  the  reputation  of  all  paSs  a  privSe 
adventure  to  be  conducted  by  Kidd  against  the  pirates  was^  suSsted  b'te 
stead,  and  finally  embraced.  The  king  himself  was  concernK  he  ent^ 
pr.se,  and  had  a  tenth  share  of  its  eventual  profits  reserved  to  him  ;  and  Se 
LordChancenor  (Somers)  the  Duke  of  Shrewsbury,  the  Earls  of  Romney 
and  Oxford,  Sir  Edmund  Harrison,  and  various  other  persons  of  disdncTo7 
were  associated  in  the  adventure  as  partners  with  their  sovereign  Sd  re' 
ceived  an  ordinary  commission  from  the  crown  as  a  privatee?,  with  pecTal 
directions  from  the  royal  and  noble  owners  of  his  vessel  to  attack  IhepS 
and  to  hold  himself  directly  responsible  to  Lord  Bellamont.  eXS 
on  this  importent  enterprise,  with  so  much  illustrious  character  intrusted  tf 
hs  keeping,  Kidd  reached  New  York  long  before  the  arrivalof  LorTBe^ 
lamont,  whose  assumption  of  his  government  did  not  take  place  till  more  than 
uvo  years  after  his  nomination.  No  sooner  had  this  n...ieman  landed  at  New 
York,  than  he  learned,  with  the  deepest  confusion  and  resentment,  that  by 
his  patronage  of  Kidd  he  had  been  accessory  to  an  enormous  aggravatioJ 

Wn  and'of  7nt  H"  ^'^"f  ^^  ^"^P""'  ^^  "«"  ''  '^  ^^e  dishonor  of  Ws 
king  and  of  all  the  distinguished  per-ons  associated  in  the  privateering  adven- 
ture ;  and  that  Kidd  had  already  rendered  himself  more  infamous  and  for- 
midable  than  any  other  pirate  that  infested  the  seas,  by  the  extent  of  his  dep- 
redations and  his  reckless  disregard  of  human  life.  £ord  Bellamont  exerted 
fLTr  "^'^"J  V^'r^'l^''  "^^^PPy  ^^^°^  •'  «"d  having  fortunately  sue- 
0  ed  hims^P/!  l"^'"^  Y^  ''  ^"''°",  t^^^^^J'  ^here  the  pirate  rashly  sup- 
posed himself  unknown,  he  wrote  to  the  secretary  of  statj,  desiring  that  a 
warrant  might  be  sent  for  transmitting  this  daring  offender  to  England,  where 
Jeady  considerable  interest  was  excited  in  the  public  mind  by  the'trdings 
of  the  freebooter's  desperate  enterprises,  and  by  vague  rumors  of  the  as- 
sistance he  had  derived  from  the  first  personages  in  the  realm.  A  ship  of 
war  was  instantly  despatched  to  convey  the  prisoner  to  London,  and  repel 

tlSf^V '''  r-^'  ^'  ""'^^  ^.^;.^  '•^^^"^  ^  '^"^'  ""fortunately  the  vessel 
was  disabled  on  her  passage,  and  obliged  to  return  to  port. 

A  strong  suspicion  now  arose  of  collusion  between  Kidd  and  the  royal 

ministers,  who,  it  was  supposed,  were  determined  at  all  hazards  to  screen 

him,  lest  m  his  own  defence  he  should  discover  their  infamous  confederacy. 

Ih^  susp|j.on  vvas  inflamed  by  the  artifices  of  the  Tory  party,  opposed 

to  King  William  s  government,  who  vehemently  pressed  a  motion  in  the 

ttouse  ot  Commons,  that  all  persons  concerned 'in  Kidd's  adventure  might 

be  dismissed  from  public  employment.     Though  their  motion  was  rejected, 

they  prevailed  with  the  house  to  have  Kidd  examined  at  the  bafc-when 

at  length  the  ejiert.ons  of  the  ministers  and  of  Lord  Bellamont  to  vindicate 

"-  "»aract6«  i«u  suecccdcd  m  bringing  him  to  England ;  and  though  dia- 


thoir  /« 


462 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  -9. 


appointed  at  first  in  their  hope  of  obtaining  any  valuable  disclosures  from 
him,  yet,  either  honestly  suspecting  what  tliey  professed  to  believe,  or  hoping 
that  he  wcoid  be  induced  to  become  an  instrument  of  their  purposes  (which 
be  discovered  more  inchnation  than  abiUty  to  do),  they  endeavoured  to  have 
his  uial  deferred,  and  prevailed  with  the  house  to  call  him  again  to  its  bar, 
e/en  after  an  address  had  been  voted  to  the  crown  demanding  that  he  should 
be  remitted  forthwith  to  an  English  jury.     Kidd  was  brought  to  trial  at  the 
Old  Bailey  in  the  year  1701,  and,  totally  failing  eitlier  to  crimmate  the  min- 
isters or  to  defend  himself,  was  convicted,  with  several  of  bis  accomplices, 
of  piracy  and  murder,  and  soon  after  underwent  the  just  punishment  of  his 
crimes.     The  passionate  violence  of  the  Tory  faction  in  England  prevented 
this  matter  from  proving  as  injurious  as,  more  moderately  handled,  it  would, 
and  perhaps  ought  to,  have  been  to  Lord  Bellamoni  and  the  Whig  ministers 
of  the  king.     Kidd's  conduct  previous  to  his  employment  as  a  privateer  had 
been  in  reality  such  that  a  proper  investigation  of  it  should  have  exposed  him 
to  punishment,  instead  of  recommending  him  to  an  important  command.    A 
charge  derived  from  this  gross  and  culpable  neglect,  and  directed  against  all 
who  had  been  concerned  in  procuring  Kidd's  commission,  was  introduced 
into   the   articles  of  impeachment  preferred  soon  after  by  the  Commons 
against  Lord  Somers.    The  character  and  conduct  of  the  Earl  of  Bellamont 
were  severely  arrcugned  in  d)is  charge  ;  though  his  recent  death  at  New  York 
prevented  him  from  being  included  m  the  impeachment.     But  the  managers 
of  the  prosecution  associatmg  the  charge  of  culpable  neglect  with  otfter 
weightier  imputations  which  they  were  unable  to  prove,  and  involving  them- 
selves (purposely  perhaps)  in  a  dispute  with  the  House  of  Lords,  the  im- 
peachment ended  in  an  acquittal,  witliout  producing  a  trial.' 

The  most  formidable  disorders  that  threatened  the  government  and  com- 
munity of  New  York  were  portended  by  tlie  increasing  animosity  of  two 
powerful  factions,  consisting  of  the  friends  and  the  enemies  of  the  unfor- 
tunate Leisler.  The  son  of  this  man,  incapable  of  forgetting  or  forgiving 
the  tragical  fate  of  his  parent,  had  l^red  incessantly  for  the  reestablish- 
ment  of  his  character  ;  having  obtained,  by  the  assistance  of  the  province 
of  Massachusetts  (where  the  enemies  of  Leisler,  and  especially  Dudley, 
who  had  condemned  him,  were  the  objects  of  general  aversion),  an  act  of 
parliament  to  reverse  the  attainder  of  his  father,  and  now  proceeding,  with 
every  likelihood  of  success,  to  urge  a  claim  for  retribution  of  his  family's 
sufferings  and  losses,  he  elevated  the  spirits  of  his  partisans  in  New  York 
by  the  hope  of  a  triumph  so  humiliating  to  their  adversaries.  The  mutual 
animosity  of  the  two  lactions  was  excited  to  such  a  degree  by  the  occur- 
rence and  the  prospect  of  fresh  opportunities  of  its  indulgence,  that  the 
conduct  of  public  business  began  to  be  seriously  obstructed  by  their  intrigues 
and  collisions  ;  and  in  the  very  first  assembly  that  Lord  Bellamont  convoked 
at  New  York,  —  except  a  unanimous  address  of  thanks  to  him  for  his  speech, 
on  the  state  of  the  province,  —  there  was  scarcely  a  single  measure  pro- 
posed, in  which  the  members  of  assembly  found  it  possible  to  agree.  The 
character  and  manners  of  Lord  Bellamont  were  happily  adapted  to  compose 
these  dissensions  ;  a  task,  which,  perhaps,  if  his  administration  had  proved 
more  durable,  he  would  have  wisely  attempted  and  successfully  accomplish- 
ed ;  but,  unfortunately,  the  circumstances  in  which  he  found  himself  placed, 
on  his  firH  arrival  at  New  York,  and  the  hne  of  conduci  which  he  was 


CHAP,  n.] 


FACTIONS  IN  NEW  YORK. 


45d 


:!:^r''H?;Tsrdti^:^^^^^^^  ^^  -««-  than  to  .Itlgate  the 

that  profligite  governorTenS^  aggravated  by  the  discovery  of 

self  fo  evSy  persoHho Tad  hlld^^^^^^^    ^  ^"''IV  ^"*  ^'^^^''^^^  it^ 

guished  by/n/share  of  L  bti^tVXtd"^  Ind  a'sTn  th"  'T  ''''''" 
comprehended  the  principal  adversarL  of  ?p;l'  ^/u-'"  **"'  «  «ss  were 
of  this  party  were^addiSonX  rev^veH  ^J:?  .t  •  '"^  'l''  ?"*>''  *^^  «P'"»» 
the  prosject  of  victoriou  ZrLaov  V.  J^^^.""  "r^""'  augmented  by 
land'eveWlIy  prevai.:d  soTrZ^a  Icur^^S  "  ^  'ft'T'  '"  ^^S" 
of  state  to  Lord  Bellamont  fFebruarv  I7nm  ""^^'^'.'^^  ^Y  the  secretaiy 
from  -  a  gracious  sense  of  the  fa  hS  servfcl's'S"?^-'  '^'l^^'  ^'^J^^^^' 
the  son's  claims  of  indemnification  mthtT  f^  suffenngs,"  desired  that 
sembly  of  New  York    X    oo„er  wL  ^^*^!  general  as- 

assembly,  of  which  a  great  maSnZ  •  °^^^'  l^'!^'  '^''^  "^^^'-e  the 
Leisler,^d.an  a  resolutirwaTr  £  :^^^^^^^^^  '^'  ^T^'  ^i  y-'"? 

pounds  to  be  levied  on  the  pro^^llVZ'SoO     ""  °'  °"^  ^'°"^'^'^ 
Liord  Dellamont  had  now  obtainpH  n  nnr^^^r.t 

cumstances  and  condition  ySYorkPdL''*^"''';''"''  ^'!,'^  *^  "^- 
ance  he  had  suffered  from  the  nLtl^Il  /  -^  resentment  and  disturb- 

his  sovereign's  honor  wer^soLeXwnr^^^^  ^'  °^^'"  «»'* 

to  have  suiided      BuUhrinlT:L  w^^^^  ^"PP°««d 

cessor  of  Bellamont,  was  prepossessed  ^1^?^  f  I  '"""^  ^^^^^  '"^■ 
accounted  partisans  of  ?LScTrfFnlnd/rr'  ^^^?"««,  they  were 
pate  a  favorable  change  ^thS  Sat  on;  &  Jh  ^^'^^^^  '''''^^  '°  «"*'*^'- 
party,  at  the  head  of  which  wT/NanZth??    .    ^^""^''^  ^^''^  '  ^^"^  ^his 

above  all,  to  Lord  Cornbury,  on  whose  favor  their  hopes  of  victory  and  veni 
!!!^ll?^!:^r!^^  friends  had  procured  to  be  enacted  in  1 69  f 

Bellamont  at  Boston     Xnfen  tho  LnZJ*  ""'•"''  "'"e''  *'!'""«  »''«  »''««'"'=«  "^  Lord 

England,  refused  "von  theJ^lSLrTe^^''^^'"°'' '"  e°n^«™ity  with  instructiona  from 
mixon  rSd  rH  t  ^     t1.         sJiglitest  relief  or  assistance  to  these  unhappy  adventurers      Old- 

S  Sjamation-  4Sn-  '°^"'  «"^""r  *""^''"  ^°'''  ""-^  New  Sand  had 

Holmes,"  ''  '"'''''^^^'^S  »''  «:urrosponaonce  wiih.or  assistaDcc  to,  the  Scottish  colony. 


454 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


to  curb  their  own  adversaries,  and  winch  subjected  to  the  pains  of  treason 
^very  person  endeavouring,  by  force  of  arms,  or  olhermse,  to  M  the 
neace,  welfare,  and  quiet  of  tlie  king's  government.      1  hough  the  attorney- 
ceneral  of  New  York  delivered  \n  writing  his  solemn  op.mon  that  the  ad- 
§resse    contained  nothing  criminal  or  illegal,  Nanfan,  findmg  the  solictor. 
Kenera  differently  minded,  urged  on  the  prosecution  ;  and,  after  a  trial  more 
fair  nerhaps   than  in  such  a  state  of  public  feeling  could  have  been  reason- 
bly  rxpecTed  Bayard  was  dragged  to  the  brink  of  the  pit  f-h  he  himsetf 
had  dug^or  others,  by  a  verdict  of  guilty  and  sentence  of  death. |    [March, 
1702  1     Aldermai  ftutchins  was  shortly  after  tried,  and  convicted  on  a 
similar  charge.     But  here  the  adversaries  of  Uie  prisoners  were  induced  to 
Zse      Though  the  law  on  which  the  charges  were  founded  was  illiberal 
and  unjust,  it  had  been  framed  by  the  prisoners  themselves  and  their  party, 
and  niver  yet  repealed  ;  and  though  the  convictions  proceeded  on  a  some- 
what  strained  application  of  it,  they  were  procured  by  no  signal  or  undoubt- 
Id  departure  fSm  the  ordinary  principles  of  judica    procedure  m  the  ad- 
minSion  of  penal  law.     The  prosecutors,  therefore,  had  not  incurred 
Tuch  guilt  as  to  confound  altogether  their  sense  and  humanity,  or  impenoijsly 
S  them  to  complete  what  they  had  begun  and  destroy  the.r  victims  while 
Slev  were  vet  in  their  power.     Happily  for  themselves  and  for  the  province, 
heyco^it  dtorepLethe  prisoners  till  the  king's  pleasure  should  be 
sc^ertainad.     But  IcJig  before  this  reference  to  the  crown  c^^^^^^^^ 
dished.  Lord  Cornbury  arrived  at  New  York  [May  3,  1702 J  .  and  not  ony 
caused  the  attainders  of  Bayard  and  Hutchins  to  be  reversed,  but  openly 
rearing  himself  the  head  of  their  party,  conducted  his  administration  with 
such  vToLce  and  partiality,  that  the  chief  justice  (who  was  dismissed  rem 
hU  office),  and  several  other  considerable  persons  of  the  opposite  faction, 

'-^::r^:Tht:C^^^^^  O^^^^  CWendon, 

possersed  not  one  of  the  qualities  by  which.his  distinguished  ancestor  was 
KctLized,  except  an     .aggeration  of  his  zeal  for  the  ch-ch  of  Lng  an^ 
and  his  intolerance  of  all  other  ecclesiastical  associations.    The  rest  ol  Lord 
Cornbury's  character  vvould  have  disgraced  more  estimable  qualities;  and 
seems  to\ave  formed  a  composition,  no  less  odious  than  despicable,  of  ra- 
nacUv  and  prodigality,  voluptuousness  and  inhumanity,  the  loftiest  arrogance 
L^the  mersTchica'ne.    Vhether  from  real  difference  •"  sentiment   or 
from  a  nSr  which  in  those  days  was  not  uncommon, -while  h.s  father 
adl^redCThe  cause  of  James  the  Second,  the  son  supported  the  preten- 
sions  of  Khg  WiUiam,  and  was  one  of  the  first  officers  vyhodeseiied  wi  h  h.s 
I  OOP    o  join  the  enterprise  which  produced  the  British  Revolution  ;  and 
baviSg  now  dissipated  his  substance   in  riot  and  debauchery,  and  bein 
o  Jlged  to  fly  from  his  creditors  in  England,  he  obtained  by  one  of  t  le  as 
acts  of  his  roval  patron's  administration,  the  government  of  New  York  as  a 
reward  of  lib  serVices.    This  appointment  was  confirmed  by  h.s  kinswoman, 
Q^n  Inne,  S  added  to_it  Sfeg^rnmentonV^^ 

.. :..J -  ^r  !«.«  aa  «rnU  na  fiu*.t.      Howell. 

'Oldmiion     Smith.    HovoeW's  State  Trmls 


CHAP.  11]  ADMINISTRATION  OF  LORD  CORNBURY. 


465 


been  recently  surrendered  by  its  proprietaries  to  the  cro^vn.  The  adminis- 
tration  of  Lord  Cornbury  ,s  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  production  of  an 
efiec    not  less  remote  from  h.s  own  intentions  than  from  the  expectations 

"  ini!.n/rr'7  ™'ShV^««r«b'y  suggest;  for  it  was  during  his  per! 
nicous  and  illiberal  sway  that  the  dissensions  which  we  have  seen  carried 
to  such  a  height  u.  New  York  came  to  be,  if  not  entirely  suppressed,  yet 
greatly  mitigated  and  reduced.  This  desirable  end,  which  was  rather  ob 
structed  than  advanced  by  the  only  respectable  governor  sent  to  New  York 
since  the  Revolution,  was  now  promoted  by  the  administration  of  a  succes- 
sor who  surpassed  even  Andros  m  his  bad  preeminence,  and  rendered  him- 
self more  universally  detested  than  any  other  officer  to  whom  the  .government 
of  this  province  was  ever  intrusted.  For  some  time  after  his  arrival  in  the 
colony,  the  majority  of  the  assembly,  composed,  by  his  influence,  of  the 
faction  which  had  recently  smarted  under  the  insolence  and  ascendency  of  a 
triumphant  rival,  adhered  with  unscrupulous  zeal  to  him  as  its  leader  and  pro- 
lector  ;  and  even  after  the  intolerance  he  began  to  exert  against  the  Pres- 
byteriaiis,  and  every  otlier  religious  society,  except  the  Protestant  Episcopa- 
lians, had  alienated  many  of  his  first  political  adherents,  he  found  their  iSss 
nearly  compensated  by  the  increased  attachment  of  those  who  now  regard- 
ed  him  as  their  ecclesiastical  ally.  ° 

Though  the  great  mass  of  the  inhabitants,  including  the  principal  families 
jn  die  province,  were  Presbyterians,  he  refused  to  permit  the  ministers  of  this 
persuasion  to  preach  without  special  license  from  himself,  —  which  implied 
that  they  officiated,  not  by  legal  or  natural  right,  but  by  precarious  iace 
and  indulgence.     On   one   occasion,  finding   that   in  a  township  in  Long 
Island  there  were  a  kw  Episcopalians  intermixed  with  the  Presbyterians! 
who  formed  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants,  and  had  built  a  parsonage  for 
their  minister,  he  fraudulently  contrived  to  get  possession  of  the  house,  and 
then  delivered  it  up  to  the  Episcopal  party.     Learning,  some  time  after, 
thattwo  Presbyterian  ministers  from  Virginia  had  preached  to  a  congregation 
in  New  York  without  his  license,  he  threw  them  both  into  prison,  and  after- 
wards brought  them  to  trial  for  a  misdemeanour  ;  but  although  the  iudge 
who  presided  at  the  trial  exhorted  the  jury  to  return  a  special  verdict,  m  or- 
der that  the  legal  rule  on  this  subject  might  be  finally  ascertained,  the  iury 
had  too  much  sense  and  honesty  to  intrust  the  liberties  of  their  country  to 
other  keeping  than  their  own,  and  without  hesitation  acquitted  the  prisoners. 
In  every  quarter  of  the  province,  the  governor  oflfered  his  assistance  to  the 
Episcopalians  in  usurping  possession  of  the  ecclesiastical  edifices  that  other 
sects  had  erected,  and,  to  the  disgrace  of  some  of  the  zealots  for  Episcopa- 
cy, this  offer  was  in  various  instances   accepted,  and  produced  the  most 
scandalous  scenes  of  riot,   injustice,   and  confusion.     But,  happily  for  the 
unfortunate  people  who  were  exposed  to  the  mischief  of  Lord  Cornbury's 
administration,  his  conduct  in  other  departments  of  government  soon  weak- 
ened his  influence  with  all  parties,  and  gradually  deprived  him  of  the  power 
of  instigaUng  any  portion  of  the  community  to  harass  or  oppress  the  rest. 
It  was  discovered,  that,  not  content  with  the  liberal  grants  of  money  which 
the  assembly  bestowed  on  him  for  his  private  use,  he  had  embezzled  large 
sums  appropriated  to  the  construction  of  public  works  and  the  defence  of 
the  province  ;  and  that,  unable  to  subsist  on  his  legitimate  emoluments, 
even  with  the  addition  of  official  pillage,  he  had  contracted  debts  to  every 

tradesman  whr»  urnnlfl  ianA  Kio^  ^^^A'.*    2-.J   _:i , i i   /?  -  i  .i.  i-. 


466 


EUATORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


by  the  terror  of  his  power  or  the  privilege  of  his  station,  which  exempted 
hitn  from  arrest.  Even  after  this  discovery  was  made,  he  contrived  to  havo 
some  more  of  tlie  pubHc  money  intrusted  to  his  hands,  by  alarming  the  as- 
sembly with  pretended  intelligence  of  an  approaching  invasion  ;  and  tho 
supply  thus  extorted  was  employed  with  as  httie  fidelity  as  he  liad  observed 
on  prior  occasions. 

In  vain  the  assembly  proposed  to  establish  a  board  of  auditors  to  contro? 
the  public  expenditure  and  account  for  it  to  themselves  ;  and  with  as  little 
success  did  they  transmit  a  reraonatrance  against  the  general  conduct  of  the 
governor  to  the  queen.     Their  application  to  her  Majesty  produced  no  other 
effect  than  some  private  instructions,  which  were  said  to  have  been  com- 
municated to  Lord  Cornbury  ;  their  proposition  to  control  the  public  dis- 
bursements was  disallowed  ;  and  when  they  insisted  on  a  scrutiny  of  the 
governor's  accounts,  he  warned  them,  in  an  angry  speech,  not  to  provoke 
him  to  exert  "  certain  powers"  which  the  queen  had  committed  to  him,  and 
advised  them  to  let  him  hear  less  about  the  rights  of  the  house,  as  the  house 
had  no  rights  but  what  the  grace  and  good  pleasure  of  her  Majesty  permitted 
it  to  enjoy.     By  such  declarations,  and  a  line  of  conduct  closely  conformed 
to  them,  he  succeeded  in  ahenating  all  his  adherents,  and  finally  in  uniting 
all  classes  of  the  people  in  one  common  interest  of  opposition  to  himself. 
When  he  dissolved  an  assembly  for  its  fidelity  to  the  public  interests,  he 
found  his  influence  no  longer  able  to  aflect  the  composition  of  the  assembly 
by  which  it  was  succeeded.    It  was,  perhaps,  fortunate  for  the  colonists  that 
they  were  compelled  to  endure  Lord  Cornbury's  misgovernment  for  a  num- 
ber of  years  [  1702  -  1708],  and  till  the  lessons  which  it  was  well  calculated 
to  teach  them  were  deeply  impressed  on  their  minds.     The  governor  had 
leisure  to  repeat  the  expedient  of  dissolving  intractable  assemblies,  and  the 
mortification  of  finding  every  succeeding  one  more  stubborn  than  its  prede- 
cessor ;  till  at  last  he  convoked  assemblies  which  absolutely  refused  to  vote 
the  smallest  supply  for  the  public  service,  except  on  condition  that  the  gov- 
ernor should  previously  account  for  all  his  past  receipts  and  disbursements  of 
money,  and  (which  was  impossible)  should  refund  all  the  sums  he  had  em- 
bezzled, —  preferring  even  an  extremity  so  inconvenient  to  themselves,  to 
the  continuance  of  this  corrupt  and  profligate  administration.     The  disso- 
lute habits  and  ignoble  tastes  and  manners  of  the  man  completed  and  em- 
bittered the  disgust  with  which  he  was  now  universally  regarded  ;  and  when 
he  aflfronted  public  decency  by  rambling  abroad  in  the  dress  of  a  woman, 
the  people  beheld  with  indignation  and  shame  the  representative  of  their 
sovereign  and  the  ruler  of  their  country. 

The  inhabitants  of  New  York  were  now  invited,  by  a  painful  but  salutary 
experience,  to  reflect  on  and  deplore  the  folly  and  mischief  of  those  dissen- 
«ions  that  had  once  enabled  such  a  wretch  to  enjoy  influence  among  them, 
and  successfully  to  incite  them  to  harass  and  maltreat  each  other,  that  he 
might  the  more  securely  pillage  and  oppress  them  all.  His  administration 
forcibly  taught  them  the  important  lesson,  that  divisions,  among  themselves 
were  profitable  only  to  the  person  who  ought  to  be  the  object  of  their  con- 
stitutional jealousy,  —  the  royal  governor  ;  and  that  union  among  themselves, 
founded  on  a  sense  of  common  interest,  and  maintained  by  the  exercise  of 
mutual  good-will  and  forbearance,  was  essential  alike  to  their  tranquillity  and 
independence.    This  lesson  was  not  addressed  to  them  in  vain  ;  and  though 

kindled  were  not  entirely  extinguished  for  many 


CHAP.  II.]        CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  NEW  YORK, 


w 


years,  they  never  again  reached  the  height  which  they  had  attained  at  the 
commencement  of  Lord  Cornbury's  administration.  This  worthless  per- 
sonage  contmued  for  a  number  6f  years  to  remind  the  people  by  his  pVes- 

T^u[!V  ""^P  ^T'^^'  '^^y  ^•^"^^'^  f'-""'  his  administration,  even  after 
ihey  had  obtained  a  deliverance  from  its  burden.  In  the  year  1708,  Queen 
Anne  was  at  last  compelled  by  the  reiterated  and  unanimous  complaints  of 
New  York  and  of  New  Jersey  (where  he  was  equally  odious)  to  supersede 
h.s  commission  and  appoint  Lord  Lovelace  his  successor  ;  and  no%ooner 
was  he  deprived  of  command,  than  his  creditors  threw  him  into  the  same 
prison  where  he  had  formerly  confined  the  victims  of  his  tyranny.  Thus 
dograded  from  office  by  his  public  crimes,  and  deprived  of  liberty  by  bis 

rrrlphHn'th'  •*'?''°"f  J^'  ^h'«  kinsman  of  his  queen  remained  a  prisoner 
for  debt  m  the  province  he  had  governed,  till  the  death  of  his  father,  by  ele- 
vating h.ra  to  the  peerage,  and  investing  him  with  the  dignity  of  an  hereditary 
legislator  of  Great  Britain  entitled  him  to  his  liberation^  He  then  returnS 
to  Kurope,  where  he  died  in  the  year  1723.» 

Both  before  and  after  the  British  Revolution,  the  province  of  New  York 
received  large  additions  to  the  number  of  its  inhabitants  from  all  the  various 
sources  of  emigration  which  were  generated  by  oppression,  poverty,  and  dis- 
content ,n  the  kingdoms  of  Europe.  The  pdor  found  here  a  cou^iry  where 
their  industry  was  highly  valued,  and  all  freemen  enjoyed  equal  rights,  — 
where,  instead  of  being  compelled  to  vie  with  each  other  for  the  boon  of 
ill-rewarded  employn»ent,='  their  services  were  eagerly  courted  by  the  rich, 
and  abor  conducted  them  with  certainty  to  ease  and  independence.  Among 
ihe  later  accessions  of  people  were  a  number  of  Protestant  refugees  from 
France  and  of  Presbyterians  from  Ireland.''  The  metropolis  of  the  prov- 
ince, which  m  the  year  1G78  contained  about  three  thousand  four  hundred 
inhabitants,  was  found  to  contain  nearly  double  that  number  in  1696  ;  and 
the  port,  which  at  a  former  period  owned  no  more  than  three  ships  and  eight 
sloops,  possessed  in  the  last-mentioned  year  forty  ships,  sixty-two  sloops, 
and  an  equal  number  of  boats.=  The  shipping  of  New  York  was  promofed 
not  merely  by  the  increase  of  its  inhabitants,  but  by  the  advantages  of  its  sit- 
uation,  which  enableji  it  to  conduct  nearly  the  whole  foreign  trade  of  Con- 
necucut  and  New  Jersey.^  The  total  population  of  the  province  amounted, 
m  1701,  to  about  thirty  thousand  persons.'  Many  of  the  first  English  col- 
onists who  repaired  to  this  province,  after  the  conquest  of  it  from  the 
Dutch,  remained  but  a  short  time  in  it,  and  sought  a  refuge  in  New  Jersey 
from  Uie  hostile  inroads  of  the  French  and  their  Indian  allies.  At  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  people  consisted  of  various  races,  —  English, 
bcotch,  Irish,  French,  and  chiefly  Dutch  ;  the  great  majority  being  Presby- 
terians and  Independents.  The  Dutch  congregations  continued  at  this  time, 
ru^f  J  r  '  ^°  acknowledge  subjection  to  the  ecclesiastical  authorities 
ot  Holland,  from  whom  their  ministers,  in  general,  derived  their  ordination 

Jr  f '"I'l!:  •  ""^""^  ''•^'**  ^"''f^ ^'"»»'««""  w.4«iWw7TJris  work,  Whkih  I  Jmve  frequently 
ITrll'  .if"  """"yp?""  publication  in  quarto.  It  contains  more  ample  and  precise  infor- 
r^lnl  .r.l.  ^5!r.P*"'l-^u"  "^ri^yn"?.  »nd,  like  it,  brings  down  the  history  an5  state  of  the 
work,     to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.    It  is  more  of  a  statistical  than  a  historical 

•  Bioaraphin  Brilanniea. 

'  See  Note  XX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
New^York.  'ihfd '^'  ''''**  *'">"»»"'l  palatines,  flying  from  persecution  in  Germany,  seUled  in 

•  Chalmors.  «  Smith.  7  Holmes. 
^01"    i-                                     58  MM 


468 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


to  sacred  functions.     The  Scotch  Presbyterians,  after  repeatedly  sohcuing 
a  charter  incorporating  their   congregation,  and  being  continuuUy  disap- 
pointed by  the  interest  and  opposition  of  the  Episcopal  party,  executed,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  grant  of  their  meeting-house  and 
of  the  cround  attached  to  it  to  the  general  assembly  ol  the  church  ol  Scot- 
land.    The  Episcopalians,  though  the  least  numerous  class,  enjoyed  a  char- 
ter of  incorporation  from  the  provincial  assembly  ;  and  the  nnnislcr  of  tiieir 
church  in  New  York  had  a  salary  of  one  hundred  pounds  a  year,  collected  by 
a  tax  on  all  the  inhabiltmis  of  the  city.    For  this  privdege  they  were  indebted 
to  the  exertions  of  Governor  Fletcher  ;  and  they  were  elated  by  it  to  sufh  a 
degree  of  presumption,  as  to  maintain  that  the  province  was  subject  to  the 
ecclesiastical  dominion  of  the  church  of  England,  and  that  tlieirs  was  Iht 
reliftion  of  the  state,  —  a  pretension  Uiat  excited  much  jealousy  ainong  all 
the  Dissenters,  and  was  passionately  disputed  by  them.    When  the  Episcopal 
clergy  became  more  numerous,  they  accounted  themselves  subject  iinmedi- 
ately  to  the  Bishop  of  London,  who  maintained  a  commissary  at  iNew  York. 
They  made  an  attempt  at  an  after  period  to  engross  the  privilege  oi  solem- 
nizing all  marriages  in  the  province,  but  found  themselves  unable  to  carry 
this  pretension  into  efiect.     Though  all  law  proceedings  m  the  provincial 
courts  were  conducted  in  English,  and  an  English  free  school  was  estab- 
lished in  1702,  the  Dutch  language  continued  long  to  prevail  among  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  people.     For  many  years  public  worship  was^cele- 
brated  in  ]:>utch  in  some  of  the  churches  ;  and  in  several  counties  |he  sheriffs 
often  found  it  difficult  to  collect  as  many  persons  acquainted  with  Eng  ish 
as  were  necessary  to  compose  the  juries  in  the  courts  of  law.     1  he  English 
that  was  generally  spoken  was  much  corrupted  by  intermixture  ot  Uie  two 

*"m  ^s^ubsistence  of  the  Dutch  language  was  less  advantageous  to  the 
province  than  the  permanence  of  Dutch  manners,  attested  by  the  sobriety  of 
deportment,  and  the  peculiar  attention  to  domestic  cleanliness,  order,  and 
economy,  by  which  the  descendants  of  the  original  colonists  of  INew  \ork 
were  long  distinguished,  and  which  their  example  commumcated,  in  no  slight 
decree,  to  the  other  races  of  European  setUers  with  whom  they  \yere  latterly 
associated.  A  printing-press  was  established  at  New  \ork,  in  the  year 
1693,  by  a  printer  flying  from  the  strange  occurrence  of  Quaker  tyranny 
and  persecution  in  Pennsylvania  ;  and  a  library  was  founded  under  the  gov- 
ernment of  Lord  Bellamont  in  the  year  1700.  But  the  schools  in  this 
province  were  inconsideiable^nj^lthough  jiejvealthier  families  obtained 

"r8mithrTbe"EngliBh;  Fremh,  and  Irish  coloni.tV  seem  to  havo  arquire.l  pretty  eurlv  a 
iiniforra  character.  The  stronger  nationality  and  more  rigid  inantien.  of  flie  Scotch  aided 
bvftcqucnt"c^eLion8  of  their  countrymen  from  Scotland,  pre»crved  t  her  national  pecnlmr. .« 
lon,e?  unirnSc^  unaltmd."  Bays  6wight,  "  the  character  which  they 

Shtwirthem.  They  are  industrious,  frugal,  orderly,  patient  of  hardship,  persevermR, 
nttaXd  to  government,  reverential  to  roliaioS,  generalfy  moral  and  often  pious  At  the 
Srae  t'me  tl!ey  are  frequently  unwarrantubYy  selfcompluM-nt,  rigid  in  »»""'«!'??•«'»'""«'""; 
bendiniTrn  the^r  opinions,  acquestered,  avari/ious,  ready  to  unchurch  tho*e  who  differ  from 
thnm    and  to  sav.  Doulitless  we  are  the  people."     Dwight  a  Travels.  ,      .•       ■ 

K  when  fntemarriages  and  the  co.nmon  influence  of  free  institutions  and  nationilns- 
JationXn  have  produced  uniformity  of  characteramong  all  the  ^^^f^^;^,;-;,!; -•';',  '^ 
the  peculiar  pedigre^  of  many  particular  districts  will  be  preserved  bv  their  names  In  one 
county  of  N^w  York,  almost  every  place  bears  the  name  of  an  risf.  saint,  city  county,  or 
Inountain  \  neighbouring  district,  originally  i.lanted  by  New  EnglnndcTs,  is  divided  into 
SeTand  .Tttlements  faring  the  n^esot^Unanimity,  Frugality,  Sobriety,  Enterprse 
LTd  the  like  7d  wight)  It  maP  be  hoped  that  the  rccolfection  of  such  names  as  these  h«t 
will  impreMac"rrJpondingbiJon  U.i  sentimonU  and  character  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 

region. 


CHAP.  II.]        CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  NEW  YORK. 


459 


valtialile  instructors  for  their  children  among  the  numerous  Trotostant  refu- 
gees from  France,  the  great  bulk  of  the  people  were  strangers  even  to  the 
first  rudiments  of  science  and  cultivation,  till  the  era  of  the  American  Rev- 
olution.' 

If  Britain  had  pursued  a  wiser  policy  towards  this  and  her  other  Ameri- 
can proymces,  she  might  have  obtained  from  their  resources  a  considerable 
diminution,  if  rot  an  entire  removal,  of  the  burden  of  her  poor-laws.  But 
various  circumstances  contributed  to  disguise  or  diminish  the  attractions  by 
which  the  colonial  territories  invited  the  resort  of  the  industrious  poor. 
The  pract:.-,e  of  transporting  felons  to  America  brought  this  country  into 
disrepute  with  many  whose  information  was  not  sufficiently  exact  to  acquaint 
them  witli  the  insignificant  amount  of  the  evil,  and  the  great  preponderance 
of  the  advantages  by  which  it  was  counterbalanced.  The  historian  of  New 
York  has  ascribed  to  this  cause  the  dearness  of  labor,  and  the  increased 
importation  of  slaves  which  began  to  take  place  in  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Another  obstruction  to  the  colonization  of  tliis  prov- 
ince by  the  free  poor  arose  from  the  practices  of  many  of  the  governors, 
who,  in  order  to  promote  the  royal  interest  in  the  assembly,  were  permitted 
to  make  large  grants  of  land  to  their  partisans  and  dependents,  by  whom  it 
was  agam  farmed  out  at  exorbitant  rates  to  the  cultivators,  or  retained  in  a 
vacant  and  unproductive  state  in  the  hope  of  a  future  rise  in  it.s  value  from 
the  general  progress  of  culture  and  population." 

The  provincial  oigans  of  government  in  New  York  were  the  governor, 
the  council,  and  the  assembly.  The  governor,  appointed  by  the  king,  was 
commander-in-chief  by  sea  and  land,  and  received  from  the  provincial  rev- 
enue a  salary  of  about  one  thousand  five  hundred  pounds,  together  with  per- 
quisites amounting  to  as  much  more.  The  counsellors  were  appointed  by 
the  crown,  but  might  be  suspended  by  the  governor.  They  received  no 
salaries,  and  acted  as  a  privy  council  to  the  governor,  besides  performing  the 
same  legislative  and  judicial  functions  as  the  English  House  of  Lords.  The 
niembers  of  assembly  (elected  by  freeholders  possessing  lands  or  tenements 
improved  to  the  value  of  forty  pounds  3)  had  a  daily  stipend  for  their  attend- 
ance ;  and  to  thein,  in  conjunction  with  the  council  and  the  governor,  was 
committed  the  privilege  of  enacting  the  provincial  laws,  which  were  required 
to  be  analogous  to  the  jurisprudence  of  England.  The  laws  were  commu- 
nicated to  the  English  privy  council  within  three  months  after  their  enact- 
ment, and  might,  at  any  time  after ^  be  annulled  by  the  king.  The  governor 
was  empowered  to  prorogue  or  dissolve  assemblies  at  his  pleasure  ;  to  ap- 
point judges  ;  to  collate  to  all  vacant  ecclesiastical  benefices  ;  and,  with  the 
advice  of  the  council,  to  make  grants  of  land,  to  be  held  of  the  crown  by 
soccage  tenure.^  Besides  subordinate  courts  of  law,  there  was  a  supreme 
court  at  New  York,  of  which  the  chief  justice  received  a  salary  of  three 
hundred  pounds  a  year.  From  its  judgments  an  appeal  was  competent,  in 
causes  involving  more  than  one  hundred  pounds,  to  the  governor  and  council, 
and  in  causes  where  more  than  three  hundred  pounds  was  at  stake,  to  the 

'  Oldmixon.  Smith,  fhomas'a  History  of  Panting.  Winterbotham.  Warden.  Gram's 
Memoirs  of  an  Jlmerican  Lady,  &c.  Mrs.  Grant's  descriptions  of  American  manners  ore,  in 
general,  entirely  fanciful  and  erroneous. 

'  Smith.  "  The  governors  were,  many  of  them,  laAd-jobbers,  bent  on  making  their  fortunes; 
and  being  invested  with  power  to  do  th'is,  they  either  engrossed  for  tiiemselves,  or  patented 
Hway  to  their  particular  favorites,  n  very  great  proportion  'of  the  whole  province."  Winter- 
botiiam. 

uSWa  Of  .riccff  xOTK  JftrHi  luSl  io  1713. 


460 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  V. 


king  and  the  privy  council  of  England.  Much  uncertainty  prevailed  in  the 
administration  of  civil  justice,  from  ignorance  and  difference  of  opinion  as 
to  the  extent  to  which  English  statutes  and  decisions  should  be  admitted  to 
operate  as  rules  or  precedents.^  ... 

By  a  law  passed  in  1700  for  the  purpose  of  checking  the  missions  of 
the  Jesuits  among  the  Indians,  it  was  decreed  that  every  Jesuit,  or  other 
Catholic  priest,  coming  voluntarily  into  the  province,  should  be  subjected 
to  perpetual  imprisonment,  and,  in  case  of  escape  and  recapture,  to  the 
punishment  of  death.     Slaves  (by  a  law  passed  in  1702),  except  when 
assembled  for  labor,  were  forbidden  to  meet  together  in  greater  number 
tlian  three,  —  a  regulation  which  proved  insufficient  to  prevent  a  formidable 
insurrection  of  these  unfortunate  persons  in  the  year  1712.     Masters  were 
enjoined  by  law  to  baptize  their  slaves,  and  encouraged  to  do  so  by  a  pro- 
vision that  their  baptism  should  not  entitle    them  to    freedom.     Indeed, 
manumission  of  slaves  was  discouraged  by  a  heavy  fine.     Slaves  were  dis- 
nualified  from  bearing  testimony  in  criminal  cases  against  any  but  slaves ; 
d  no  negro,  Indian,  or  mulatto,  even  though  free,  could  acquire  the  prop- 
y  of  houses  or  lands.     Any  negro  or  Indian,  conspiring  the  death  of  a 
white  man,  was  capitally  punished.     Even  though  baptized,  slaves  were  not 
considered  to  be  properly  comprehended  in  the  denomination  of  Christians ; 
for  by  an  act  passed  in  1702,  and  confirmed  in  1708,  there  was  offered  a 
reward  of  twenty  shillings  to  every  Christian,  and  half  that  sum  to  fevery 
Indian  or  slave,  killing  a  wolf  in  the  provincial  territory.     In  some  of  the 
colonial  settlements  of  the  Dutch  (particularly  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope), 
the  treatment  of  their  slaves  has  been  distinguished  by  the  most  barbarous 
cruelty.    But  milder  manners  and  less  Inhuman  laws  prevailed  at  New  York, 
where  extreme  severity  was  inflicted  only  at  second  hand,  by  selling  unruly 
and  troublesome  negroes  to  the  planters  of  Jamaica.     Various  laws  were 
made  from  time  lo  time  against  selling  ardent  spirits  to  the  Indians.     The 
extortions  of  usurers  were  repressed  by  an  act  passed  in  1717,  restricting 
the  lawful  interest  of  money  to  six  per  cent.     This  was  repealed  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  when  the  exaction  of  eight^ygr  cent,  was  permitted." 

—  -    .     Smith. 


>  Smith 


Laws  o/JW»f  York  from  1691  to  1718. 


BOOK    VI. 


NEW  JERSEY. 

^jLltel^TiLTedVLKjri^^^^^^^  Carteret. -- Liberal  Fra^e  of 

-Arrival  of  the  first  Governor'^Ld  SetuTrs  ftorPnrin^^^^  '^n*^  '"'""'*  '*»  ^''^  J«"«y- 
in  the  Colony. --Renovation  of  tl^TitK  N«W«,  *  '^V"^'*'**?'?'''  ""•*  Disturbance, 
of  York. -Situation  of  the  Quakers    nEnirknHl?^"^^^^  »"ke. 

ince  to  Quakers-Partition  of  the  ProviSttt.T.  ?h^  of  Berke/ey's  Share  of  the  Prov- 
Quakers  from  England  to  West  Jersey  !L  En  J^^r^Z  *'^«"  """^  Carteret.  -  Emigration  of 
strnnce  of  the  Quaker8-caLa?h/|Tw„r  ?  ''"^"A?'^'''*^"''®  °f  York.-Remon^ 
First  Assembly  of  West  Je«ey-iTheKr"'^^°'\°*^^iS^  i^'^^'y  '»  b«  recosnized.^ 
appointed  «ovUor.--EmSon  thTm^Sl^  Jersey  -Robert  fiarclay- 

ifecond  against  the  Proprietary  60^^^- dlnSf  K  T^'^^^?"'  °^  James  the 
Slate  ofl^e  Proprietary  V.overnment™Turr1^«r„fh  p^'  -^  Revolu^on.  -  Inefficient 
-and  Reunion  of  East  and  Wes^Jcrsefl  ron«.?Lt«  ^7  VJ''''SL^?'«?^ ''^  *•»«  ^'"^^ 
-Administration  of  Lord  Cornbury   "lute  & K  Co? "ny  '^^'""'^  Government. 

Of  all  the  national  societies  in  which  mankind  have  ever  been  ..mt«H 
tliere  .s  none  (except  the  fallen  conunonn-ealth  of  IsS  '  whicrcl  boatl 

America.  AJinost  all  these  provincial  setUeraents  have  been  founded  bv 
men  whose  prevailing  motives  were  zeal  for  the  advancement  7retious 
truth,  for  the  security  of  pohtical  freedom,  or  for  tha  enlarSment  o?  Z 
resources  and  renown  of  their  country ;  aid  all  have  beenTSd  for  a 
considerable  share  of  their  early  population  to  the  sheU^  S  they  af- 
forded from  evil  or  ecclesiastical  tyranny.  The  successfoj  ShSnt 
tlZlT  "V^-"' ''  '  Srand  and  mteresting  monument  of  hurneneSr 
and  fortitude  ;  for  it  was  not  accomplished  without  a  cenerorand  herS 

Tdfbl  iicU°of  nt'T  T''  °'  ^™  naturf  aJr  I'tZ! 
Sv  Jersev    Sed^  danger,  and  distress.      The  colonists  of 

:lil   r  !X'  '  .T  ^^^""  proximity  and  friendly  relation  to  older 

olonial  settlements  and  from  other  advantageous  peculiaJiUes  nThe^  S^„ 
t.on,  were  exempted  from  much  of  ibe  hardship  which  elsewlire  atLS 
■n  so  many  instances,  the  foundation  of  civilised  society  in  Nonh  America 

metcraTmu^^^^^^^^^  'T^'f^  ^  5"^*  P^°P°^^°°  ^^^^'^  to  tlSs  terriory, 
vere  such  as  must  be  acknowledged  to  reflect  the  highest  honor  on  tlieir 
enterprise,  and  to  ennoble  the  origin  of  New  Jersey.  ' 

by  die'  Cr^.f  \Y*''''  l^''  «PP«»ation  belongs  was  first  appropriated. 
t)nheJ^.lVofjv^      settlements  an  account  has  already  beea  given  in 

.0  tmciVrrmffan'c?  bitT^fS^^ 

Egypt,  the  opinbrsLul.  havofi^tsoTunru^^^^^^^^  '^"'  of  the  Jewish  emigrant.  ftSm 
one  of  the  tribes  of  !=rne!  ThU  o  ?„i^m-  t  •  '  ^^^  *"^T  '"*'"'"''  ^"^  ♦'•^  offspring  of 
"ot  without  its  u^,  ifitenld  to  abate  t&ni  'f  T^T^  ^^  ^'^  '*''""«  F«»'«'>i'it'e«)  was 
oftho  possession  of  an  esDorialdp^^iVb^^^^^^^  pnde  somatimea  engendered  by  a  belief 

Knglani  divines  and  wL^mTn.ntnfr  '^f.  ^'^'"^Jf"'- .  H  was  early  adopted  by  the  New 
^lLv,gZdTXLdTtlZTuZ\r^^  ""^^    TT'."^  ""«*  ability,  in  a  treatise  by  one 
embraced  by  &„  p'J„  S^A.'^!?^'  T^  ^"""^^  ''r'J^  '^""'^    '»  *««  afterward* 
guished  wrLrs.     8e"   irrolaton^oil'    "^  »"??»"«♦'  ^y  him,  and  by  many  other  di»ti» 
-<•  '-'--•    '-  °  ,!!.'2,!r."'i""  '°  """  <="^'?»'»  «"bject,  the  Appendix  to  Stowe's  translatiot 


of  Jahn's  Hutinrt, «, 


uu* 


462 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  y\. 


.      , .  , „r  Mp.v  York.     It  was  included  in  the  province  to  which  this 

toXvelfn  -^^^^^  Netherlands,  and  had  received  a  ew  Dutch 

C'^SwedLh  settlers  at  the  period  of  the  conquest  of  the  Dutch  colony 
r  ♦^^  Fndish      Preparatory  to  this  enterprise,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
Xrlesihe  Second  g^^^^^^    a  charter  of  African  territory  [20th  Mavch, 
?6641    including  the  whole  of  the  Dutch  occupation  to  h.s  brother  James, 
Duke  of  York;  and  as  the  king,  in  conformity  with  h.s  pretension  to  an 
Antecedent  rTgh,  which  the  intrusion  of  the  Dutch  could  neither  extinguish 
nor  suspend  thought  himself  entitled  to  bestow  h.s  grant  before  the  territory 
Ts  actS  reduced  to  his  dominion,  the  duke,  m  like  manner,  regarded  h,s 
Tvestiture  as  completed  by  the  charter,  and  proceeded  to  exercise  t.  e  powers 
irconferred  on  him,  without  waiting  till  he  Ld  attained  actual  possession  of 
hrsoil      His  charter,  though  much  less  ample  m  its  endowments  than  the 
char  es"  which  were  previously  granted  to  the  proprietaries  of  Maryland  and 
Sina  resembled  these  in  conferring  the  province,  and  the  powers  of 
?ove  nminnn  the  proprietary  and  "  his  assigns.-    Various  instances  both 
L  the  Sry  of  the  Carolinas  and  of  New  Jersey,  demonstrate  that  m 
LformUy  wUh  this  expression,  the  proprietaries  regarded  their  functions  less 
ara  trSInas  an  absolute  property,  subject  to  every  act  of  ownership, 
^d    n  pa  Jrcular  to  mortgage  and  alienation  ;  and,  accordingly,  tne  sove- 
::fgntyP  large  provinJ^ft^^^^^^^^^^^ 

ffifbilrT:^^^^^^^^  Revolution  that  the  Mity 

Kee  transactions  was  disputed  ;  but,  although  the  mjnistersot  Warn 
AeSd  maintained  that  they  were  inconsistent  with  the  law  of  England, 
which  recoSii^^d  an  hereditary  but  not  a  commerc.al  transmission  of  office 
Id  nower^hT  point  was  never  authoritatively  determined.  Ihe  evil  m 
Access  of 't  me,  produced  its  own  remedy.  The  succession  and  multiph- 
En  of  prrr  e?aries  occasioned  so  much  inconvenience  to  themselves, 
that  sooneH?  later,  they  were  glad  to  bargain  with  the  crovwi  for  a  sur- 
that,  soo""°V^\;  2  . /nations'",  and  both  in  Carolina  and  m  New  Jersey, 
Ihfe^^^cis^'Tf  ttTotr^^^^^^^^^  materially  contributed  to  abridge  the 

ntVrL tarpC'TJ  LTeTfTroprietaiy  rights  and  functions  was  af- 
foJed  bv  the  Duke  of  York,  in  his  cinveyance  to  Lord  Berkeley  and  S.r 
George  fclrteret  of  a  portioi  of  the  territory  comP-h^dfin  the  ^^^^^^^^ 
rhnrter  which  he  had  recently  procured  for  himself.  If  he  had  deterred 
charter  ^1"^"  "^  nau  j  ,  ^^   j  ^  possession  of  the  country, 

Ho;7ar"S;  di^iiniUon  of  .bis  portion  migh,  bo  calcula.cd  .o  aUccL  .ne  ... 


BOOK  VI.]      SALE  TO  BERKELEY  AND  CARTEHeT.  ^^ 

,Vas  misunderstood  by  the  "eK  But  ntT'^'^'^  "'  completely  as  it 
Nichols  did  not  scruple  to  assert  that  .h^n  '"^^^""^  P"'"'^^'  <^°^«"^1 
and  Carteret  were  induced  to  Ike  the  nu^rr"  ^H^^''  t^  ^''^'^^y 
successful  candidate  for  tL  pSent  whl^  the  Duklf  v'f  l''"^  '^  """ 
that  he  revenged  his  disappoiLent  by  ins  tati^ftLl  .  .•  ^^'•"''^'  '"^ 
quisition  which  he  was  aware  would  grLtneTeda  ^L  '''/°  '!?  T 
duke's  domain.     Be  this  as  ir  mnv  tvl  /  "^P'^^^'ate  the  remamder  of  the 

ve:,  lUtle  creditable  to  ei  htTthe  Lw-"'''k°"  '^''  ^"^"^^'  ««  '»  ^«« 
tl,e'sequel  disadvantageous  to  thel  boT         "^'  '"^'^^^  '"  ^*'  P^^^^^  i« 

adjacent  to  New  England  'lyTns  we  ward  .f  T  n'''!^?''.'^"*  i^^^*  °f  ^^"^ 
Jeast,  south  ^r^Aest^yll,^^^^^^^  on 

on  die  north  by  the  forty-first  decree  and  for Hp  h  l"  '  f      ^  ,  V^'f  "^^re  ; 
coa^pliment  to  Carteret,  who  hadSnded  the  i  LT^^^^^^       ^''''''^•'-     J" 
Long  Parliament  in  the  civil  war  thTduL  Ul  \?    ^^'u- ^  "gainst  the 
aa.ne%f  Nova-C«sarea,  or  Ne  rj^rsev    1h  h^^^^^^         on  th.s  region  the 
evjry  right  and  privileg;,  and^U  t^^^oC'ofc^^^^^        whicirhr 
self  possessed  under  his  charter  from  the  crown  f    '"'"^"^'  ''^'''^  ^^  ^'m- 
Havmg  obtained,  in  this  manner,  the  sovereignty  of  New  J^rsev    th« 
first  care  of  the  proprietaries  was  to  invite  the  report  of  inhabitants  ^i  the 
province  ;  and  their  exertions  for  this  purpose,  though  pursued  whhmorl 
eagerness  than  perseverance,  disclosed  some  share  of  polEal  saSv    T 
those  colonial  territories  which  present  to  adventurers^o  Xrfn?  nro^nec^ 
of  sudden  enrichment,  and  which  must  owe  their  cultivation  ?o  the  steadv^ 
terpj-ise  and  industry  of  permanent  settlers,  the  strongest  attractions  are  suT 
phed  by  hbeial  provisions  for  the  security  of  the  civil  and  relidrs  S^^^^^ 
mankind.    The  recent  h  storv  of  Npw  Vnaio„^  u„a  a        '*^"S'o"s  ngms  ot 
attractions  address  themS  1^1  ngly  to^^^^^^^^^^ 

ad  that  their  operation  IS  so  forcible  as  to  overpower  the  tempS  even 
of  superior  climate  and  soil.  That  the  useful  lesson  thusTftCded  to  Ihe 
tlT  1  't"'f  '"''  "^'  disregarded  by  the  courtiers  of  ChaVles  he 
Second  has  already  appeared  from  some  parts  of  the  history  of  Carolina 
and  .s  still  more  plainly  manifested  by  the  first  measures  hatVere  pir  ued 
by  the  proprietaries  of  New  Jersey.  They  hastened  to  composirdZwish 
a  system  of  institutions  for  the  government  of  the  province  :  and  affhet 
object  was  to  exh.bu  a  political  fabric  that  should  appear  generaUy  desirabl 
and  advantageous,  they  succeeded  in  framing  a  project  wh.\.h  Sed  a  verv 
avorable  reception,  and  would  have  better  deserved  it,T  he  proprietaries 

colpeliolT^?^^^^^^^        "  ^"^^'"^  P°P"'«^'«^-     ''  --'  indeerrsfng 
Dmpeution  which  these  proprietary  governments  engendered    '  in  which 

sovereigns  and  legislators Jound  it^  their  mterest  to  vie  with  eich  other  in 

«cc«.ion  to  the  de8«n  of  dS?ln^,h„fr'«"f'^*'''l"''^  ?"'*•''''>' '»'"'  Carteret  of  any 
ortbe  navy,  public  money  wiU.out" legaT wn/rani.    11^^:^"""""""  ^'  "*"*"«'  "'  ''^'"*"'"'^ 


m> 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VL 


the  uroduction  of  models  of  liberty,  and  m  tendenng^to  the  acceptance  of 
theiSects  the  most  effectual  securities  against  arbitrary  power.  What- 
ever doubts  may  be  entertained  of  the  dignity  6f  their  motives  or  the 
sinceritv  of  their  professions,  and  even  supposing  (as  we  reasonably  may) 
rat  thL  professions  were  mere  expedients  to  obtain  a  temporary  popu- 
aritv,  and  quite  •  uncomiected  with  enlarged  or  liberal  views  of  pohcy  and 
lovernment,  the  measures  which  the  various  proprietaries  actually  adopted 
L  pursuance  of  their  purposes  proved  highly  beneficial  to  tlie  provinces  of 
Nor^h  America,  and  cherished  in  the  minds  of  the  colonists  a  warm  attach. 
mertoToUtical  freedom,  and  an  habitual  conviction  of  their  right  to  it. 

ThJ^iLtrument  which  was  now  published  by  Berkeley  and  Carteret  gave 
assuT^nce  to  all  persons  who  might  seUle  m  New  Jersey,  that  the  province 
Tould  be  ruled  only  by  laws  enacted  by  an  assembly  in  which  the  people 
werrrepresented,  and  tb  which  the  power  of  making  peace  or  war,  together 
wUh  m7ny  other  important  privileges,  was  confided.     In  particular,  it  was 
o  onSly  stipulated  by  the  proprietaries,  "  for  the  better  security  of  tlie 
ESs  innhe  said  province,' that  they  are  not  to  impose,  nor  «#r  io  k 
Impoud,  any  tax,  custL,  subsidy,  taUage,  assessment,  or  any  other  duty 
St  oever,  upon  any  color  or  pretence,  upon  the  said  province    and  m- 
haSSl  thereof,  other  than  what  shall  be  imposed  by  the  authority  and 
conseTof  the  general  assembly."     By  anodier  clause,  of  equal  importauce, 
Uwas  provided,  that  "  no  person,  at  any  time,  shall  be  any  ways  molested, 
puSid,  disqu  eted,  or  called  into  question,  fpr  any  difference  in  opinion  or 
See  n  matters  of  religious  concermnent,  who  does  not  actually  disturb 
Zm  peace  of  the  province  ;  but  all  and  every  suoh^person  and  persons 
ZyTi^  time  to  Ume,  ana  at  all  times,  freely  and  fuUy,  have  and  enjoy 
hb  Jnd  their  judgments  and  consciences  in  matters  o(T^h&on,  they  be- 
•hTviSrtl^emJves'peaceably  and  quietly,  and  not  using  tbs  l^rty  to  hcen- 
tiousLs,  nor  to  the  civil  injury  or  outward  disturbance  of  others  ;  any  law, 
sZte,  or  clause,  contained,  or  to  be  contained,  usage  or  custom,  of  the 
r^tlm  of  Englani  to  the  contrary  thereof  in  any  wise  notwithstanding." 
TbTimport^rthese   expressions  could  not  be   misunderstood;  and  as 
tW  were  promulgated  wiJhout  censure  or  disallowance  from  any  quarter,  ,t 
^^be  adSS  that  the  colonization  of  this  province  was  undertaken  on 
rLurwKJe,  whicli  the  setUers  were  entitled  to  credit,  of  ^.r  being  coni- 
;jeSy  e^mpted  from  the  iurisdiction  of  the  English  P-^«--^  ^^^f  J 
£e  imposiuon  of  taxes  and  the  regulaUon  of  eccles.asUcal  affairs.     The  ad- 
^nis™  ation  of  the  executive  power,  together  with  the  prerogative  of  afiinn- 
ngor  rejecting  the  statutes  of  the  provincial  assembly,  w^  ;;«f '^ed  ^  !»'« 
^opriiiles.  ^To  all  persons  resorting  to  New  .Jersey  with    he  intenUon 
S  setUine  in  it  there  were  tendered  allotments  of  land,  proportioned  to  the 
earl  neso    their  arrival  in  the  province,  and  to  the  numbers  of  their  m- 
den^d  servants  and  sIcw^b  ;  and  for  these  allotments  they  were  required  to 
afa  quUrent  o?  a  halfpenny  per  acre  after  the  year  1670,  and  to  maintain 
^e  able-bodied  male  servant  for  every  hundred  acres  m  their  posse^.on 
Ts  the  quiirents  were  deemed  the  private  estate  of  the  proprietaries,  .t 
was  dackred  that  all  public  ex  ocnses  should  be  defrayed  by  generd  contr.. 
Son      Suc^^^^^^^  political  constitution  of  New  Jersey.  New  pro 

visions  were  added  to  it  from  time  to  Ume,  by  ^f  "X^^^P^^^/X" S: 
and  the  vfhole  code  was  denominated  by  the  people  The  Law  of  the  ton 
cessions,  and  regarded  by  them  as  their  great  cliaiiter,  ana  as  pC3»e«i% » 


BOOK  VI.] 


CARTERET  ASSUMES  THE  GOVERNMENT 


465 


X;rr„1r4:ai;i„t^^^^  ^-  „ot  bemg  subject 

dence  and  equity  of  Phinn  Sri?  K  '°"  '^^l  suggested  by  the  pru- 
by  the  proprietaries,  and  w^ho  withont  „  T  '^^  ^^^^  governor  appointed 
to  respect  the  rights  of  the  aLTSl  „r{-'^'''''''ri  ^'■°'"  ^^  conslituents 
propel- to  obtain  their  acquiescence  b  t^^T'!'^^'^'  province,  judged  it 
their  titles  to  the  severS  dTtS  v£  ^te^tcttd'^^Th^  ^^^^ 
ries  had  the  wisdom  to  approve  this  nnlir.\r  «  I  ^^''^"P'ed.  The  propneta- 
the  rule,  that  all  lands  shJuTd  be  P  XsJ'f  o"m  T",  T''  f ^^'i  ««tablished 

Nic?o?s,ThralltLtI;L^^^^^^^^^  by  Colonel 

lion  of  the  whole  terr  torv  rrSplpH  K  ,?"  ,.  °^^°''^'  ^^'^  administra- 
quainted  with  the  dukerasSem  t,  ^  ^"^  ^"''J'"^  ^'"'^  >'«t  ""««- 
the  design  of  colonizing  the  dTtrict  ?h.  'k  t^  '"^-  ^^"^^^*'  ^'  ^^'^^^ 
granted  licenses  to  various  person  to  ^^l  "^  ."'^"''^^',  ""^  *°  '^^'  ^^^ 
original  inhabitants  of  Ne  v  Jersev  Tht  ^"''f,''''  °^J""^  ^^"^  ^^^  «b. 
formed  in  the  eastern  par  of  the  ^t'^rZr  l  ""'"• '°'""'^'P^  "'^^«  ^P^edily 
Island,  who  laid  the  foSndat^on  ol'  vilT.&  ""^r"'•'  "*^'^«^  from  Long 
away  and  Nichols,  S  el^ertated  ff^:  n'"'  W?°dbridge,  and  Piscat? 
stowed  on  it  the  nLe  of  Albania  in  rZ  °P'- '""  f  '^'  ^^S'^"'  be- 
enjoyed  by  his  master.     Lt  hisTon.,  ^?™"^7?^^^\°"  ^^  one  of  the  titles 

ofVe  du/e's  possessions  treooK^^^^^^^^^^ 

action  which  passed  it  to  its  new  nrnn.^1.  ^^       ^  intelligence  of  the  trans- 

already  pursued  gave  r Le  to  diirf  rplT' r'  '"?  '^'  '"^^^"''^^  ^^^  h«d 
between  the  settlers  whose  estSshment  f^h  I!^  '^'  ^''^P'''^^  °^  ^^^  «°i^ 
taries  who  subsequentl/cTaiS  S^!n  '''^  ^f^T '"^  ""^  ^^^  ProP"«- 
of  the  province  ?or  itaThalf fc^^^^^^^^^  ^'^  P-e 

remonstrance  to  the  Duke  of  Ynrt  S\l  ."^^^  addressed  an  earnest 
statistical  divisions,  and  of  SisjS  from  h;'"^^"'''^/^  ^>^  ™"'^'P'y'"S 
tinguished  above  a  I  the  re  t  by  trferdl^  of  •t''''"i  ^^r^'"  "  P^^''°"  '^'«- 
of  its  rivers,  and  the  richness  of  n  ^  n.  ^i  "'/«'  './^e  .nmodiousness 
to  revoke  a  grant  so  pr^Tc  al  to  L  nT  •  '.  '"^  't^'  ^''  "^^^^  ^^e  duke 
tually  ensuel,  that  th^^lt^^^^^^^  fat  ac 

vacant  territory  would  disannnmt  ti,«:.  ^  •      <-arteret  to  colonize  a 

them  in  expenses  frl  whfch  tlv  7  •^''P^^'^t.ons  of  profit,  a^d  involve 
gather  any  LneficiaT  fruh      Tl^«  ^  '""''^^  P"^^""'>^  ^«"W  hope  to 

some  impfesslofoT  he  Id  of  he' dukf "  hi  "r"^  ^^  '^^^  P^° '-^^ 
induce  him  to  revoke  the  erant  ^\lht  I   .     ^''^'"''J'  '"''  insufficient  to 

VOL.    I.  sf  "'■     ^-  ^""^'^     ^''"»'»«»-  " 


I  I 


466 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


^.s.rs  and  privations  which  ^ed  ^o -^^^^\^t^iS:;:^„^ 
,„ost  of  the  other  A^^^"^";  P^^^n  part^cd^^  considered  a  circun. 

of  <^«'«7^^^i°J!l:^„t^,TdurTng  the^infancy  of  their  settlement  ;,though, 

stance  "^  "^/-^'V?™  less  favorably  regarded  by  them,  as  having  con. 
in  process  of  time,  it  was  less  »»vora«»y      h  /  j^  ^^^^  ^g.^^^^^ 

tributed  to  prevent  the  rise  °f'\^°"jX^_'^S^^^L  the  other  colonists 
still  more  effectual  encouragement  to  ^eir  ^rad^^^  transporting  the  arts  and 
of  North  America,  they  ^"J^y^^.  tje  adva^t^e  oi  tra    P        6  ^^^^^ 

habits  of  industry  from  a  .f  °^5^4  «"°^^^\^^^^^  the  fresh  bosom  of  a 

were  carried  to  a  high  I!>^^h  f  ;™Provem^^^^^ 

fertile  and  unoccupied  region,  which  affor^^^^^^^^^        mo  ^^  ^^^^  F  ^^^ 

and  more  ""'^^^^"^^^^^^^{..e^arded  by  a  g^^^^^  soil;  and  their  friendly 
grain  were  speedily  and  amply  rewarded  ^  ^^^.^  j^^^^^  .^  ^^_ 

relations  with  ^he  Indians  enabled  tliemw  p  ^^^^^  .^  peltry  with 

disturbed  tranquillity,  and  to  ^dd  to  them  a  oe  inhabited.      Their 

the  roving  tribes  by  whom  ^^e  "^hbo^r.n^^^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^ 

connection  with  the  sister  colony  ot  i>ew  i  o  ^  ^^  ^^^j 

benefit  of  the  alliance  ^h.ch  subsisted  be  ween  tbs^^^^^^^^  confederacy 

confederacy  of  the  Five  Nations  ;  and  as  ^h^  ^"""^^^'^J^^.^^,  its  inhabitants 
extended  to  all  the  tribes  in  the  ^'^^">^y  P^^'^' ^^^^  war.  Recommend- 
enjoyed  the  fehcity  of  an  ^f '•^^^rP^'Jf^/^^^^";^^^^^^  other  advantpg^s, 

ed  by  the  salubrity  of  '^.^^'^^.^^f'^" '^V''°  'wL  Too/ considered  a  very 
it  will  not  appear  surpnsmg  J/  ^^^e^^^^^^^^^  ^^^,    ^,j  J^ 

desirable  residence,  and  that  its  attractions  w  settlements  ob- 

with  higher  commendation  than  any  ot  Uie  omer  ^u 

Gained.  _  ,         . ,  ,i^   u,  „g  of  an  ample  revenue  from 

The  proprietaries,  stil  ^'^^  "P/^*  Sons  't^  circulate^he  intelligence 

their  province,  were  not  wanting  'Yx^IacI  and  occasionally  despatched 

of  its  advantages  both  m  Europe  and  An^eric^^^^^^^^  X       F^^  ^^^ 

from  England  vessels  freighted  ^^^Jf'^^^V^  But  the 

numbers  and  supply  the  wants  ^f.J^'^^P^t  of   heir  hopes  was  fated  to 
period  to  which  they  looked  for  ^^^^"/"^^^^^^  the  prov 

Semonstrate  the  fallacy  of  them  '..'^"f  jl'y^Xl  f  arrival  of  the 

i„ce  had  hitherto  P-^^^f  ^JlT  va?^^^^^^  coUence.    [March, 

day  when  the  payment  of  q">f'^e"\«  libute  excited  general  disgust  among 
1670.]  The  first  demand  of  «h's  t"bute  «^^^^^^^  5  inability  to  comply 
the  colonists,  who  expressed  ."™7«,."f '"'"S^t  Sers,  who  had  occu- 
with  it.  A  party  among  them,  >"f^"^"S^f,f„^fNTcioTs  refused  to  acknowl- 
pied  their  lands  under  ^he.authority  of  Colonel  mchos^^  .^^^^  ^^.^^^ 

;,dge  the  title  of  the  propr^tanes  ;  »J^' '"  °PP°X°„"  i  ^as  easier  for  the 
,l,ey  had  obtained  for  ^hemseves  from  the    nd.an^^^^^^  ^^ 

governor  to  demonstrate  the  'llegahty  of  he^^  P^^^^  ma  ntained  an  inef- 
xvith  the  people  to  abandon  then,.  *  °^  *1^°  5;^p\73t„rier;  till  at  length  the 
fectual  stfuggle  to  enforce  the  l^l-T^/^^^^^^fJ^jS  L  found  it  impossible 
popular  discontent  broke  forO^^  ^,„g,,„d,  stripped  of  h 

to  withstand,     xle  was   cumpcnc  „„r.forrPf1  nn  a  natural  son  of  hir 

taction,,  »hicl,  the  colon,s.s  for.h«.*  ^^J^^^  ,^™,,i„„,  „„„  ab.,. 
George  Carteret  [November,  'f f ' '•^  "J"™,;" ,„  ,Ke  proprietarie., « « 
,ed.  DUa^po  m,ns  as  H^» -I7,  'J";?  ^."f^"  ,Lr  giverLr.  or.to  W; 
','r.:™;.ac"e  ht'iruieitation  "from  which  he  had  been  expeUe..     .» 


BOOK  VI.]     FRAUDULENT  VIEWS  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  YORK.  j^j 

Lw  Jersey  varoncerorlre^^^^^^^^    ?T'"^  *°  ^'^^  *^°"^'"'°"  ^^  H^jSt 
The  Dutch,  as  we  Zle  alreadv  1^^  5-r'"''i  °^  ^'^  Netherlands.? 
sition,  which  wLs  restored  lo  Great  Ltlh    .h  "°'  >°"S//tain  their  acqui- 
But  the  reestablishmentof  thenronS^^^^  [»674.] 

ritory  had  been  preS  Iv  d  vfn^i  '^      7  governments  into  which  the  ter- 
formaHty,  and  wL  ^t  atomnthpr  •t''^^'  ^°  ^^^"'^^  ««™«  additional 

which  th^se  jurisdiculsTr^orS    1,^^^^^^^^^^    To"'°h"  °/  t  i'^  ^^ 
been  suggested  of  the  validitv  nf  thl  ^  created.    Some  doubts  had  a  ready 

Duke  ofYork  a  a  tLe  whJn  he  Du^^^^^^  ±''''''  ^^'^^-^«  granted  to  th^ 
and  unchallenged  possession  of  he  ^ountrv  a'Th"'  '"^^^"^  a  peaceable 
knowledge  the  fofce  of  this  ob  ection  S  'r<f  .'  7^^^'  "''^^"'"S  '^  ^c- 
had  been  deliberately  embrac^  bv  h^:  T  *k  ^"^^  t?™  ^  Pretension  that 
prompted  by  his  own  imerest  to  rpJ.  'r''  '"'^  ^""^^'^'  ^^e  duke  was 
iVto  obLuct  tL  res      of  ^niir^^^^  "^'"1«  \^-bt  so 

seems  also  to  have  contributed  to  ZhTs  tlou^htf  to  Z*  "^""'^"^  'T' 
new  mvestiture.  The  remonstranop Af  P.i  ^i  nt-  u^^^  procurement  of  a 
the  grant  he  had  made  of  NerJeTsev  t^^^^^^^  '"™  *°  ''^''^ 

ings  of  dissatisfaction,  which  were  nm  ^1-^^^'^"?  ^•"^"'"^^  ^^"^  feel- 
which  these  proprietors  haHonlrrrr?  ^'T-'^^^  ^^  *^  ^^^'^^  institutions 
inhabitants  loL  th "y  atJrac  ed  to"ittoTr"'''  f^  -'^^  ""'^^^^  ^^ 
ever  were  the  motived  tha't  "^00^  tt^^^^^^^^ 
whether  he  scrupled  to  mmmh  th^  ;„;    ."     grdiincation  ot  his  wishes,  — 

bing  two  of  the  firmest  adherents  ofXfr  '^"^  '°T  't'  ^'^''°"°r  ^^  ^^b- 
the  law  or  the  kinTin  such T^n.  J-  ''"'^  ^°"^*^^  ^'^«  support  of 
that  he  entertained^a  desire  to  rCssts"lir;;;elf "  rf^'^'  ^'T  ^•^'' "^-* 
ry,  without  making  any  compensS  to  thp?  •  ?\^/^  •^"'"'"^  t^''^'^- 
Dutch  conquest  sLm^ed  to  Kfsh  him  w^hT  ""'^^  ^'^  'T'"^"^  "•  ^he 
objections  ?o  which  his  own  S  wn^  K'  *  PPPortun.ty  of  removing  the 
orfginal  defectiveness  anTto  IZhk-  '''''V^'''^^"'  '""'"'"S  '^  ^°"<'ess  its 
for  divesting  Se ley' and  CarL^^^^^^  '^'  '""'  '•'?^'  ^  ^^^^"^  F^^^^* 

grant  by  whlh  he  haj  belwe^k  ?^^^^^^^^^  ""''°"^  ^'^A  the 

indemnify  them  for  its  loss     Tt  1!  n??  i  T'u     '"^"^""g  any  obligation  to 
goished  the  propde  Iry  rkhts  and  ,K^t  H    ^'^  '• ''  '^'^  ^"^^^  ^^"^"^^t  «-tin- 

sey  that  he  had  hitheC  miimSf  fn  i^t^^^^^^^  Ne;v  .Ter- 

meditate  the  meanness  of  desnn  inVK;c  f  ^  a     r       "^  ""'"le  he  could  thus 
sold  to  them   he  wrnted  JZ       ^  h's  friends  of  a  property  which  he  had 

to  acknowledee  his  niirnn««=   i.l  ^^evv  Jersey.     Yet,  though  ashamed 

16751  •  ZTihSJ.r^       '■       Z^^  unwilling  to  abandon  them  fJanuarv 

Dou«W.  Sun^mary.    S.  S.UU~Cluar^. ^BU^vTcLiTTrT;;^- ' 


468 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


he  finally  consented  to  restore  New  Jersey,  he  endeavoured  to  evade  the 
he  final  y  ^onse  ^  ^.    engagement,  and  pretended  to  have  reserved 

3n  rIgilS  r^^^^^^^^^  i  which  Andros  seized  every  opportunity 

°^n't'he"besinning  of  the  year  1675,  Philip  Carteret,  returning  to  New 
Jersey  resumed  the  government  of  the  settlements  formed  .n  the  eastern 
nartoV  the  province,  from  which  he  was  expelled  about  two  years  before. 
C  inhabitants,  who  had  experienced,  in  his  absence  the  yoke  of  conquest 
and    he  severe   rule   of   Andros,   now  received   the.r  old  governor  wuh 

ff  :Sr:::i«S:p  peaceable^  ^X^^^^ 
wns  once  more  estabhshed  m  the  colony.  1  he  only  subject  oi  aisquiet 
hat  occurred  for  several  years  arose  from  the  arbitrary  measures  by  which 
And?03  from  "me  to  time  obtruded  the  un  ust  pretensions  of  the  Duke  of 
York  Go^en^r  Carteret,  in  the  hope  of  procuring  to  h.s  people  a  share 
of  the  e^inrwhTchthe  neighbouring  colony  derived  from  her  commercial 
ptsfand  r^ations,    endeavoured  to  estab^^^^^^^  o'^^ly  r^Std'Sl 

imtasTn^^ur^to^Ih^ua^'^  ofkw^^ork;  and,  by 

tempt,  as  an  injuiy  lu  »  ._j_j  :„  onnos  tion  to  his  mandates,  extin- 

rage,  he  en^eavoureu     y      _„„ernment ;  and  even  launched  into  such  ex- 
Jersey  ^"butary  to  h  s  own  goveg'men^^  ^^^  .^       ^^^^^ 

ToX^  yT    wVercVm^in^  proceedings  of  h^  deputy  were 

•  J.n  ?h^  duke  he  betrayed  the  same  indecision  and  duplicity  that  char- 

t  S?  Sir  George  Canere..  f  „.*"inr;err;.r  1-S 
mo  proprietary  J°'f  ,f  iTe' any  in  erest,  L  the  duke  aurmpled  to  »- 
^X  i'SVea-t  la'Ld^Wrp'ieS^dS'prerogative.  The  circu^staace. 
aSing  .fc  par.!..o,,  of  .he  teV.tory  compose  tl,e  tnos.  mterestmg  per- 

I  Doiigluss.     S.  Smith.     Chalmera.     Smith's  {[*"> J^'^j";^         ^^  jenity  (of  which  the  ira- 


BOOK  VI.] 


THE  QUAKERS. 


teresting  por- 


469 


experienced  so  raueh  "ddhion,! T/"  "  '™' '','?''.  ""=  R«'0"tion,  ,he,. 
iiient,  partly  occasioned  W  ih.  aL„  1        'evoiuuon.      J  his  severe  treat- 

and  ma'gistLes  en.erl'^it  he  1^^:  rof' he  o"t^'"""  "T"' 
part  provoked  by  the  frpn7v  „nT;  -?  ,        Quakers,  was  also    n 

Lsors  of  these  doctrLes  thought  n"^""?  ^^^"^h  many  of  the  pro- 

creed  of  their  advSes  r"^ro  K'  ''^""^'T  '^'^  ^^"^^"'Pt  ^^^  th« 
the  supreme  power  was  lodged  t  o'T'"'"  ^^  ''^^''>^'  '"  ^^^°««  ^ands 
obnoxious  by\he  progress  Sch  /l?pir^"^f  f"^^'"^^  additionally 

soldiers  of  the  Commonwealth  and  h.'  "^  "?l^"  '"^""^  ^^«  ^«^^r«" 
interposed  to  preventTbTdv  of 'th  ",  .'  'T?''  'V'^.''^'^^^  George  Fox 
forces  who  were  marchbf  to  suonrP^r'^' ^'°™  •'^'"'"S  the  parliamentary 
Cheshire.  They  Refused  to  .ui^'^/  ?  insurrection  of  the  royalists  'm 
were  imprisoned  by  he  maJIratef f  '  'I'  ^^''''r  °^  ^^'^''^  ^^ho 
peace,    or  eyen  to^restrain  t1  e  n  .?r«f  ^«f  ^^nds  and  disturbers  of  the 

Jlaces  began  to  insuHlTLttr&l^rer^^^^^^^^^      ^'°   '^  -->' 

onlJ^JjSthr^liSS^^Ilfr  '°  ^^-r^'^-tionof  a^^^^ 
but  eLouraged  t  fern  to  exuect      ^V^^^^'^P'f '"'^"t  of  another  prediction, 
situation.     Ck  fssued  a  rodain  o^  and  fajorable  change  in\heir  own 
the  peaceable  mS  of  o7^^^^^  ^^''^'''  disturbance  to 

a  deLnstration  re%:Ltfeo    wh  r^heVha^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
procure  from  h:s  predecessors  in  authority.     The^hooes  insnirpH  h    ./° 
altered  treatment  were  confirmed  at  the  Restoridon      Tn  iT"         uT  *^"' 

pon.  Gougi,  and  sfwell.  CromPwer™.lt  J^?,?^^  not  employ  hi«  sword  in  aid  of  his 
Snnce.  He  was  interrupted,  when  nVes^di  .Tin  nLnl.Ti "  ^'A^'  ^■''  "*^  ^"'-^'^^'^  ''='«f''va- 
I'e  had  a  message  from  L  Lord  to  t'^.c  Pro  fc^r'^  .i^"" 'i' '7,"  ^T^"'  ^^'"'  "•^'■''•""•^^d  'h-t 
l-r  stark  nakedlnto  a  chnrr.l.  v^h^JIH  !.,„„  l'"'-    ^^.'?- .  A"i^'«  ''eheld  a  female  Quaker  en- 


.-r  stark  nakedTnto  a    hurchwh    e  fe  ^S^<r  w  hh  h"^  ffi^'^  '^'"1''  "  '""""''^  ^' 
'  See  Note  XXI,  at  the  end  of  the  ^0^0,"^  L.s  officers  at  d.v.ne  worship 


Hume. 


470 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  Vl. 


ciates  in  multiplying  their  converts,  and  mtroducmg  into   the.r  society  a 
s  "tem  of  order  and  discipline  that  tended  to  curb  the  wild  spirit  winch  had 
JJanrorted  so  many  votaries  of  Quakerism  beyond  the  bounds  of  decency 
and  sobriety,  and  exposed  their  profession  m  so  many  pkces  to  reproach 
Tnd  per  section.     But  this  state  of  unmolested  tranquillity,  togeiher  with 
the  hope  of  seeing  it  perpetuated  by  law,  was  quickly  destroyed  by  a  v.o- 
ent  exKon  of  fury  and  fanaticism  from  a  different  body  of  sectarians. 
Lisomfpon^,  both  of  doctrine  and  practice,  the  f^*^  Monarchy  men,  or 
MlTenaHans,  bore  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  Quakers  ;  a  temporal  h,- 
era  chy  was  equally  odious  to  both  ;  and  both  rejected,  on  all  occasions, 
the  ceremonial  of  an  oath.     The  Millenarians,  however,  went  a  step  farther 
Ih  n  h  Zak  rs,  and  held  themselves  entitled  to  employ  force  for  tde  over- 
tow  of  every  temporal  supremacy  that  usurped  the  place  and  obstructec 
the  advent  of  U.at  spiritual  and  divine  dominion  which  they  eagerly  desired 

^"G::?,\^toron'"f;ontrary,  had  taught,  from  the  beginning  of  his 
mir^stryfthat  it  was  unlawful  to  employ  aught  else  than  spiritual  weapons 
for  the  promotion  of  spiritual  objects.     But  he  was  well  aware  that  he  had 
collected  around  him  many  of  the  wildest  and  most  combustible  spirits  m 
thTkinedom     and  the  exaggeration  and  distortion  of  h.s  own  principles 
exhlbUeTT  Ihe  de^eanour^lf  many  of  his  own  followers,  together  wub 
numberless  examples  among  the  other  sects  and  factions  of  which  the  times 
rreprolTfic   forcibly  taught  him  by  what  insensible  gradations  the  mmds  o 
men,  when  thoroughly  heated  by  religious  or  political  zeal,  are  transported 
Seyond  a  mere  censorious  estimate  of  institutions  host,  e  to  the.r  views  into 
the  conviction  of  an  especial  call,  or  plain  moral  obligation,  to  attempt  the. 
subversion.     It  was  therefore  with  no  small  alarm  that  Fox  learned  the 
proieot    vvhich  the  Millenarians  entertained,  some  time  prior  to  the  Resto- 
?atbn,  of  promoting  by  force  of  arms  the  establishment,  or  at  least  the  re- 
coSon,  of  the  Messiah's  personal  reign  upon  earth  ;  and  he  puWished, 
the  tim^    an  earnest  remonstrance  to  all  his  followers  on  the  un  awfulne 
odeSs,  which,  however  remote  from  their  distinctive  principles,  would 
nrove^he  feared   but  too  congenial  to  the  spirit  with  which,  m  many  in- 
Tnce;,  thefe  pHnciples  were'  associated.     But  his   exeruons    wha  eve 
effect  they  may  have  produced  on  his  own  followers,  failed  to  convince 
the  pubUc^that\here  was  any  radical  or  solid  distinction  between  the  Quakers 
and^the  Millenarians  ;   and  what  probably  contributed  to  •"c^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^^^ 
as  well  as  to  fortify  the  public  prepossession,  was,  that  the  Quakers  were 
encumbered  by  the^ccession  of  a  restless  band  of  partial  and  temporary  ad- 
h~s, "he  liLts  of  whose  faith  they  were  unable  to  ascertain  by  refere 
to  a  creed,  and  who,  flitting  from  sect  to  sect,  «f  ^^^  'llL  enoth  with 
flows  of  their  own  humor  and  caprice,  '^^"'j'";^  ^^^^  .  °"S  .en°»t 
any  one  to  infect  it  with  their  own  lev.ty  and  dishonor  it  with  a  share  ol 

^'^r^SS-that  broke  i^-h  among  tbe  Millennial.,  m^^^^^ 
year  of  the  restored  monarchy,  proved  exceedingly  P'^.^J"^',^  f  ^!°/,^'^^^^^^^ 
ests  of  the  Quakers,  not  only  fl-om  the  current  opinion  that  the  tenets  of 
the  two  sectarian  bodies  were  substantially.the  same,  but  f^^he  Plaus.b^ 
oretexts  that  were  afforded  to  the  adversaries  of  toleration,  and  the  pledge 
pretexis  mai  were  a  i  ^        „,„_„,«,i  ,i,ap  affronted,  determined  to  exact 

froin  an  classes  of  its  subjects.     The  Quakers  now  became  the  objects  of 


BOOK  VI.] 


THE  QUAKERS. 


471 


ns,  in  the  first 


pecuhar  jealousy,  frojn  their  refusal  to  give  assurance  of  fidelity  to  the 
.king  by  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance,  and  were  assailed  with  a  rigof  and  re- 

tev1v^r?«T«T''V!,^l^^'''^^  "^^«^  b^''""-''  ^-Perienced  in  England. 
Ihey  were  J^hrst  included  along  with  the  Millenarians  in  a  royal  procla- 
mation  which  forbade  either  of  these  classes  of  Dissenters  from  LsembHng 
under  pretence  of  worship  elsewhere  than  in  parochial  churches  ;  biu  t  ef 
were  soon  after  distinguished  by  the  provisions  of  an  act  of  parliament  tSt 
applied  exclusively  to  themselves,     fey  this  statute  it  was  enacted,  that  al 
Quakers,  refusing  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance,  and  assembling,  to  the 
number  of  five  persons  above  sixteen  years  of  ago,  for  the  purpose  of  dlv  no 
worship,  should   for  the  first  and  second  instances  of  such  offence   incur 
the  penalty  of  fine  and  imprisonment,  and  for  the  third  should  ehher 'abjure 
the   ea Im  or  be  transported  beyond  it.     Nay,  so  violent  and  vindict  ve  was 
the  jealousy  which  the  court  now  harboured  against  the  Quakers,  that,ln 
stead  of  employing  the  complaints  of  these  sectaries  as  the  hand  e  fo    a 
quarrel  with  the  obnoxious  province  of  Massachusetts,  it  was  determined  to 
stir  up  the  slumbering  enmity  of  the  colonists  against  them,  and  to  invite  the 
provmca  government  to  a  repetition  of  those  very  severities  which  had  been 
so  recently  prohibited.     For  this  purpose,  it  was  signified  to  the  governor 
and  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  by  a  letter  under  The  hand  of  the  k^ 
hat  his  Majesty,  though  desirous  that  liberty  of  conscience  should  be  granted 
to  all  other  religious  professors  in  the  province,  would  be  glad  to  hea?  that  a 
severe  law  were  passed  against  the  Quakers,  whose  tenets  and  practices  he 
deemed  mconipatible  with  the  existence  of  civil  government.     These  un- 
favorable sentiments  were  not  long  after  exchanged  bv  the  king  for  a  iuster 
estimate  of  Quaker  principles.    In  a  conference  which  he  granted  to  some 
of  the  leading  members  of  the  sect,  he  received  assurances  which  satisfied 
him  not  only  that  this  people  had  been  unjustly  confounded  with  the  Mil- 
lenarians, but  that  their  tenets  with  respect  to  municipal  government,  in- 
cluding an  absolute  renunciation  of  the  right  of  resistance,  were  such  as 
he  had  reason  to  wish  more  generally  diffused  through  his  dominions.    But 
this  alteration  in  his  sentiments  produced  no  relaxation  of  the  legal  severi- 
ties to  which  the  Quakers  were  liable,  and  was  attended  with  no  other  con- 
sequence  than  a  familiar  and  apparently  confidential   intercourse  between 
him  and  some  of  the  leaders  of  the  sectarian  body,  together  with  many  ex- 
pressions of  regard  and  good-will  on  his  part,  wliich  he  was  unwilling  or 
unable  to  substantiate.  ° 

In  the  persecution  that  was  now  commenced  against  all  classes  of  Dis- 
senters, the  Quakers  were  exposed  to  a  more  than  justly  proportioned 
share  of  seventy,  from  the  unbending  zeal  with  which  they  refused  to  con- 
lorm  even  m  appearance  to  any  one  of  the  obnoxious  requisitions  of  the  law, 
and  the  eagerness  with  which  they  seized  every  opportunity  of  openly  per- 
iorming  their  forbidden  practices,  and  signalizing  their  peculiar  gifts  of  pa- 
tient suffering  and  unconquerable  perseverance.  In  every  part  of  England 
the  Quakers  were  harassed  with  fines  and  imprisonments  ;  and  great  num- 
bers were  transported  to  Barbadoes  and  to  the  American  settlements,"  where 
they  formed  a  valuable  addition  to  the  English  population,  and  speedily 
lound  that  their  persecutors,  in  expelling  them  from  their  native  land,  had 
unconsciously  contributed  to  the  amelioration  of  their  lot.     Instead  of  the 

'  Jlnte,  Book  II.,  Chap.  IlT  ~~ ~ ■ 

•  In  one  ve«ei  aloiic,  which  was  despatched  from  England  in  March,  1664,  sixty  Quaker 
convicts  wore  shipped  for  America.    Williamson's  J^orth  Carolina.  ^  vtuaner 


472 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AM  F.RICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


wild  cntlmsiasta  who  formerly  rushed  with  frantic  zeal  to  New  England  in 
<iuest  of  per-secutioii,  there  was  now  introduced  nito  America  a  numerous 
body  of  wiser  and  milder  professors  of  Quakerism,  whose  views  were  con- 
fmed  to  the  enjoyment  of  that  liberty  of  worship  for  the  sake  of  which  liiey 
incurred  the  penalty  of  exile.     In  several  of  the  American  provinces,  us 
well  as  in  the  island  of  Harbadoes,  they  experienced  an   ample  toleration 
and  a  friendly  reception  from  the  masistrates  and  the  inhabitants  ;  and  even 
in  those  provinces  where  they  were  still  the  objects  of  su.spicion  and  rigor, 
Ihev  contributed  to  render  their  principles  less  unpopular,  by  deiiionstruung 
with  what  useful  industry  and  peaceful  virtue  the  profession  of  them  nii|^ht 
be   combined.     ContenM>d  whh  the  toleration  of  their  worship,  and   dili- 
Rcntly  improving  the  au vantages  of  their  new  lot»  many  of  these  exi  es  at- 
laincd,  in  a  few  years,  to  a  plentiful  and  prosperous  estate  ;  and  so  hir  did 
they  cairy  their  willingness  to  reconcile  their  peculiar  principles  with  the 
existing  ilistitutions  and  usages  of  the  countries  m  which  their  lot  vvas  cast, 
that,  innmny  instances,  they  united  a  profession  of  Quakerism  with  the  pur- 
chase  and  employment  of  negro  slaves.     Perhaps  the  deceitfulness  ol  the 
human  heart  was  never  more  strikingly  exhibited  than  m  this  monstrous  as- 
sociation of  the  character  of  exiles  for  conscience's  sake  and  the  profession 
of  universal  meekness  and  philanthropy,  with  the  condition  of  slave-owners 
and  the  exercise  of  tyrannical  power,     let  m  process  of  time  much  good 
was  educed  from  this  evil  ;    and  the  inconsistency  of  one  goneration  d 
Quakers  enabled  their  successors  to  exhibit  to  the  world  an  example  of  d.s- 
interested  regard  for  the  rights  of  human  nature,  and  an  honest  sacrifice 
to  the  requirements  of  piety  and  justice. 

The  principles  of  Quakerism  contmued  meanvvhile  to  propagate  them- 
selves in  Britain  to  an  extent  that  more  than  supplied  the  losses  occasioned 
by  the  banishment  of  so  many  of  their  professors.  Almost  all  the  odier 
Christian  sects  had  sustained  a  decay  of  piety  and  reputation,  from  the  share 
they  had  taken  in  the  passionate  disputes,  the  furious  struggles,  the  dark 
intrigues,  and  vindictive  severities  that  attended  the  evil  wars  ;  and  wlule 
the  Quakers  were  distinguished  by  exemption  from  this  reproach,  they  were 
not  less  advantageously  distinguished  by  a  rigorous  persecution,  of  which 
they  were  the  objects,  and  which  enabled  them  to  disp  ay,  in  a  remarkable 
degree,  the  pri.nitive  graces  of  Christian  character.  It  was  now  that  their 
cause  was  espoused  and  their  tenets  were  defended  by  writers  who  yielded 
to  none  of  their  contemporaries  in  learning,  eloquence,  or  ingenuity,  and 

who  have  never  been  equalled,  «^^:'«^»PP^««^»'^,^'  ^7"/,  r'^^'Snt'od 
scholars  of  the  QuiJcer  persuasion.  The  doctrines  that  had  h.thc'  flonlod 
loosely  through  the  sectarian  society  were  coUccted  and  reduced  to  in  «- 
derly  system ;  the  discipline  necessary  to  preserve  from  anarc'  v^  «:nd  re- 
strain the  fantastic  sallies  which  the  genuine  principle  of  Quakerism  i 
peculiarly  apt  to  suggest,*  was  explained  and  inculcated  ;  and  '"  the  nud  t 
of  a  persecution  which  drove  many  of  the  Presbyterians  of  Scotland  to 
despair  and  rebollion,  the  Quakers  began  to  add  to  the^r  zeal^andj-esolution 

"  '  Robprt  B^rH^  .,^C"^f  the  Mologyf'^  the  quukers  and  of  a  treatise  on  The  March,,  of 
,he  Rant7rs  has  d"v'  >rK.ps,  mo,  Tthan"  any  other  writer  ofhi.  persuHH.on  to  rcmler  Qnnk.r. 
frteKawfrs,  nas  u<r  ,j,        i^, '  Yet  tliis  eminent  person,  though  reniarkal)ly  distin- 

Zi;  Jfit^t"^  ";"  .:  -..nr««  J/hiH  Ider^tandhi;  and\hc  nedatenesB  ofhis  tcnp.^ 
S  S^ hl'^c^t,  %^  to  Quakerism,  betrayed  in  hi«  conduet  a  ^^  ^^^^^^^ 

i^SHr  tJlr  J^' jS^::r«rurr:t-rX;^^^^ 

impreHsion  oi  mc  ""7     '  ,  *.    .  .u.".!:..:-- „»ii   ,„  he  conceived  it  to  have  boon. 

lie  couid  uol  t>«j  easy  tiii  he  tiad  obeyed  iiic  divine  ca»,  as  nt.  cuui.-i>  -« 


BOOK  VI.] 


SALE  TO  FENWICK   AND  OYLLINGE. 


473 


that  mild  gravity  of  address  and  tranm.il  nroprioty  „f  thought  and  rondu.t  by 
wliirli  thoy  are  now  ahnost  univer.sally  cfmractomed  ^ 

Vet  was  It  long  before  the  wild  and  enti.isiastic  spirit  uhieh  had  distin- 
gmshed  the  me  o    the  soc.e.y  was  banished  ..urely  from  its  bosom  ;   and 
while  .t  contnuM-d  to  exert  „s  inHuence,  a  considerable  diversity  of  senti- 
ment  and  language  prevaded   a.nong    the   Uu.kers.'     This   diversity  Mas 
amn.fest,  an.ong  other  .nstanees,  in  the  sentiments  that  were    entertained 
with  regard  to  the  duty  ol  eonfronting  persecution.     While  all  the  Quakers 
reckoned  >     unlawlu     to   forsake  their  sectarian    observances   on  a  re  on 
ol   the  proh.b.t.on  of  the.r  oppressors,  there  were  many  who  esteemed 
no  less  a  dereliction  of  duty  to  abandon  their  country  for  the  sake  ,1'  a 
peaceful  enjoyment  of   those    observances   in  another   land.     Considfrin" 
Uimkensm  as  «  revival  of  primitive  Christianity,  and  themselves  appointed 
to  repeat  ».,.    orlunc.  ol  tde  first  Christians,  and  to  g.in  the  victo  y  ove 
a  carnal  world  by  evincing    the   fortitude-  of  martyrs,  they  associated  the 
sacces.  of  the.r  .ause  vv.th  the  infliction  and  endurance  of  persecution  ;  and 
doem<.l  1  he  retreating  f^rom  a  scene  where  this  evil  impended  over  them  to 
one  wnerc  they  might  be  exempted  from  it  equivalen!   to  the  desertion  of 
the  con  est  11.  which  the  j.revalence  of  truth  or  of  error  was  to  be  decided. 
Ihe  toleration  of  their  principles   seemed   to  be  less  the  object  of  their 
desire  than  the  victorious  spread  of  them  ;   and  the  success  of  Quakerism 
in  iMig  and  they  reckoned  incomplete  without  the  downfall  of  the  established 
hierarchy.-'     But  there  were  otliers  of  more  moderate  temper  and  more  en- 
hghtened  piety,  who,  willing  fully  to  sustain   the  character  of  the  primitive 
Christians,  justly  deemed  this  character  no  way  inconsistent  with  that  conduct 
which  was  expressly  prescribed  to  the  objects  of  their  imitation,  in  the  divine 
direction,  that,  when  persecuted  in  one  city,  they  should  flee  to  another. 
Disturbed  m  their  religious  apsemblies,  harassed  and  impoverished  by  fines 
and  imprisonments,  and  withal  continually  exposed  to  a  violent  removal  from 
their  native  land,  as  the  consequence  of  a  line  of  conduct  which  they  held  it 
their  duty  to  pursue,  —  they  were  led  to  meditate  the  advantage  of  a  vol- 
untary expatriation  with  their  families  and  their  subitance,  and  naturally  cast 
tiicir  eyes  on  that  transatlantic  realm,  which,  notwithstanding  the  severities 
once  inflicted  on  their  brethren  in   some  of  its  provinces,  had  always  pre- 
sented an  asylum  to  the  victims  of  persecution.    Their  regards  were  farther 
directed  to  this  quarter  by  the  number  of  their  fellow-sectaries  who  were 
now  established  in  several  of  the  North  American  States,  and  the  freedom, 
comlort,  and  tranquillity  which  they  were  reported  ther»  to  enjoy.^ 

Such  vvas  the  situation  of  the  Quakers  at  the  time  when  Lord  Berkeley, 
alarr.icc'  by  the  insubordination  of  the  planters  of  New  .Jersey,  and  dissat- 
isfied with  a  possession  which  seemed  likely  to  realize  the  forebodings  of 
Colonel  Nichols,  offered  his  share  of  the  province  for  sale.  He  soon  re- 
ceived the  proposal  of  a  price  that  was  satisfactory  from  two  English 
Quakers,  nainedJ_WickaiidByllin^  1674,  in  accord- 

'  See  Note  XXII.,  tit  the  end  of  the  volunie!  ~ — 

nJnll'Jn^''"''*  /f^''"?  "^ !'"'  ^"J'"'"''  '»1«^«  '»  presotvcd  011  nccount  of  a  debate  wiiich  took 
pace  in  one  o(  th.j  .l.ur.-hes  of  L-.mlon  between  ,m  English  l.ishop  and  a  party  of  these  wilder 
m.ir''  •;^,^"«'?^«';"""'  "'•'"  willnigly  accepted  the  bishop's  rash  challenge  to  a  public  dis- 
n  wl  ■  ,.  1"  f«'«»t«^v«SHhorl,  and  soon  degenerated  into  a  reciprocation  of  sciurifous  abuse, 
in  winch  the  b.sl.op  findmff  himself  by  no  means  a  match   for  his  opponents,  took  to  flight 

T,:Z''yT''r  '"  fl'"   "!'!'"  ^^  "  '""''  "*■  ^""''«'-«.  vociferating  at  his  heels,  »  The  hirefing 
nietn !  the  hireling  flieth !  =  '  6 

'  Gough  and  Se  well's  llislory  of  the  Qimliers.    Neal's  Uislory  of  the  Puriianf, 

VOL.    I.  60  '      NN* 


474 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


ance  with  their  desire,  conveyed  the  subject  of  the  purchase  to  the  first- 
mentioned  of  these  persons  in  trust  for  himself  and  the  other.     l?envvick 
anoears  to  have  been  unworthy  of  the  confidence  imphed  m  this  arrange- 
ment    A  dispute  soon  arose  between  ByUinge  and  him  with  regard  to  their 
respective  proportions  of  interest  in  the  territory  ;  and,  to  avoid  the  scandal 
of  a  lawsuit,  the  two  parties  agreed  to  submit  their  pretensions  to  the  judg- 
ment of  William  Penn,  who  now  began  to  occupy  a  conspicuous  place 
among  the  leaders  and  champions  of  the  Quaker  society.     Penn  found  it 
easier  to  appreciate  the  merits  of  the  case  than  to  terminate  the  controver- 
sy •  for,  after  he  had  pronounced  an  award  in  favor  of  Bylhnge,  it  required 
the  utmost  exertion  of  his  address  and  authority  to  induce   lenwick  to 
comply  with  it.     Yielding  at  length  to  the  solemn  and  earnest  remonstrances 
of  Penn,  Fenwick  consemed  to  abandon  his  unjust  plea  ;  and  in  the  year 
1675,  with  his  wife  and  family  and  a  small  troop  of  Quaker  associates,  he 
set  sail  from  England,  and  established  himself  in  the  vyesteni  part  of  New 
Jersey.     But  Byllinge  was  now  no  longer  in  a  condition  to  profit  by  the 
adjustment  of  the  dispute.     He  had  sustained  such  losses^  m  trade,  that 
it  iecame  necessary  for  him  to  divest  himself  of  the  whole  of  his  remam.ng 
properly  for  the  indemnification  of  his  creditors  ;  and  as  the  most  valuable 
Sart  of  this  property  consisted  of  his  New  Jersey  purchase,  he  was  natu- 
rally led  to  desire  that  its  administration  should  be  confided  to  the  same  em- 
inent person  whose  good  offices  had  recently  contributed  to  ascertain  and 
preserve  it.     William  Penn,  after  some  deliberation,  agreed  to  undertake 
This  duty,  and,  in  conjunction  with  Gawen  Laurie  and  Nicholas  Lucas,  two 
of  the  creditors  of  Byllinge,  assumed  the  direction  of  their  constituents 

share  of  New  Jersey.  ,  ,     .  .  .^^    . 

The  first  care  of  Penn  and  his  associates  was  to  obtain  a  partition  ot 
the  provincial  territory  between  themselves  «ind    Sir  George   Carteret; 
and  as  all  parties  wf.re  sensible  of  the  disadvantage  of  a  jomt  property,  the 
division  was  accomplished  without  difficulty.      The   eastern   part  of  the 
province  was  assigned  to  Carteret,  under  the  name  of  Last  New  Jersey ; 
the  western,  to  Byllinge's  assignees,  who  named  their  moiety  West  New 
Jersey.     The  administrators  of  the  western  territory  then  proceeded  to 
divide  it  into  a  hundred  lots,  or  proprieties ;  ten  of  which  they  assigned 
to  Fenwick,  and  the  remaining  ninety  they  proposed  to  sell  for  the  bcnetit 
of  the  creditors  of  Byllinge.     Their  next  and  more  important  concern  was 
to  frame  a  political  constitution  for  the  future  inhabitants  of  the  prov  nee, 
which  was  promulgated  under  the  title  of  concesmns,  or  terms  of  grant  and 
agreement,  to  be  mutually  embraced  by  the  vendors  and  purchasers  of  the 
territory.     This  instrument  adopted  the   provisions   formerly  enacted  by 
Berkeley  and  Carteret  for  the  exemption  of  the  colonists  from  all  taxes  but 
such  as  their  oun  provincial  assemblies  should  impose  on  them,  and  tor 
the  security  of  religious  freedom  ;  the  clause  by  which  this  latter  provis^n 
was  introduced  being  prefaced  by  a  general  declaration,  "that  no  men,  no 
number  of  men,  upon  earth,  have  power  to  rule  over  men  s  consciences  n 
religious  matters."     It  was  appointed  that  the  people  should  meet  annually 
to  choose  one  honest  man,  for  each  propriety,  to  sit  in  the  provincial  as- 
sembly ;  that  "these  elections  be  not  determined  by  the  comnion  and  con- 
Led  way  of  cries  and  voices,  but  by  putting  balls  into  balloting  boxe   to 
be  provided  for  that  purpose,  for  the  prevention  of  all  partiality,  and  Nvhere- 
by  every  man  may  freely  choose  according  to  his  own  judgment  and  honest 


fiOOK  VI.] 


CONSTITUTION  OP  WEST  JERSEY. 


476 


intention  ;  and  that  every  member  of  assembly  should  be  allowed  a  shil- 
ling a  day  during  the  session,  ^Uhat  thereby  he  may  be  known  to  be  the 
mvant  of  the  people.''  That  the  representatives  of  the  people  should 
receive  wages  or  salary  from  their  constituents  was  a  principle  adopted  from 
the  beginning  m  almost  every  one  of  the  North  American  States  ;  and, 
assuredly,  never  in  the  world  were  constituencies  more  adequately  repre- 
seated  or  more  faithfully  served.  Every  male  colonist,  it  was  announced, 
sliould  enjoy  the  capacity  of  electing  and  being  elected  to  sit  in  these 
assemblies,  which  were  vested  with  the  power  to  make,  alter,  and  repeal 
laws,  and  to  nominate,  from  time  to  time,  a  committee  of  assistants  to  carry 
the  existing  laws  mto  execution.  It  was  declared,  that  no  man,  except  by 
the  verdict  of  a  jury,  should  be  arrested,  confined,  or  deprived  of  life,  lib- 
erty,  or  estate.  Imprisonment  for  debt  was  disallowed  ;  and  a  bankrupt, 
after  surrendering  his  estate  to  his  creditors,  was  to  be  free  from  theii 
claims,  and  entitled  again  to  exert  his  industry  for  behoof  of  himself  and 

f  ^  ,  .  '?  ,^"  °"*''"^  °^  ^^^  composition  that  forms  the  first 
essay  of  Quaker  legislation,  and  entitles  its  authors  to  no  mean  share  in 
the  honor  of  planting  civil  and  religious  liberty  in  America.  "There  " 
said  lenn  and  his  colleagues,  in  allusion  to  this' fruit  of  their  labors,  «\ve 
lay  a  foundation  for  after  ages  to  understand  their  liberty  as  men  and  Chris- 
tians, that  they  may  not  be  brought  in  bondage  but  by  their  own  consent ; 
Jor  we  put  the  power  m  the  people."^ 

The  publication  of  this  instrument,  which  its  authors  accompanied  with 
a  special  recommendation  of  the  relative  territory  to  the  members  of  their 
own  religious  fraternity,  produced  an  immediate  display  of  that  diversity  of 
sentiment  which  had  recently  been  manifested  in  the  Quaker  society.     Of 
these  sectaries,  many  prepared  with  alacrity  to  embrace  the  proposals  of 
the  trustees,  and  expressed  the  most  exaggerated  expectations  of  the  free- 
dom, prosperity,  and  happy  repose  that  awaited  them  in  the  new  settle- 
ment ;  while  others  regarded  with  jealousy,  and  even  stoutly  opposed,  a 
secession  which  they  considered  pusillanimous  and  discreditable.    To  mod- 
erate tiie  expectations  of  the  one,  and  to  appease  the  jealousy  of  the  other 
ot  these  parties,  Penn  and  his  colleagues  addressed  a  circular  letter  to  the 
members  of  their  society,  in  which  they  solemnly  cautioned  them  against 
leaving  their  country  from  a  timid  reluctance   to  bear  testimony  to  their 
principles,  from  an  impatient,  unsettled  temper,  or  from  any  other  motive 
mterior  to  a  deliberate  conviction  that  the  Lord  of  all  the  earth  providen- 
tially opened  their  way  to  New  .Jersey,  and  sanctioned  their  removal  thither, 
lliey  were  admonished  to  remember,  that,  although  Quaker  principles  were 
clienshed  and  cultivated  in  the  province,  only  Quaker  safeguards   could  be 
interposed  or  relied  on  for  their  preservation  ;  and,  in  particular,  that  the 
religious  toleration  which  was  to  be  established  must  exclusively  depend 
lor  Its  continuance  on  the  aid  of  that  Being  to  whose  will  they  believed 
It  agreeable,  and  must  never  be  defended  by  force  or  violence  against  the 
arm  ol  an  oppressor.     To  this  admonitory  letter  there  was  annexed  ^  De- 
fcnphon  of  West  Mw  Jersey,  for  the  information  of  intending  colonists, 
m  which  some  trivial  exaggerations  that  had  been  reported  of  the  good 
qualities  of  the  soil  and  climate  were  corrected,  —but,  in  the  main,  a  most 
inviting  representation  of  the  region  was  conveyed.     This  publication  was 
COTainJyjwUntended  to  reprps?  the   ardor  oj"  Quaker  einlgration  ;  neither 
'  S.  Smith.     Chalinors.     Chtkson' fMemoirsqjrPenn.  "* 


476 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


had  it  any  such   effect.     Numerous   purchases   of    colonial  estates  were 
made  by  Quakers  in  various  parts  of  England  ;   and  m  the  course  o.  the 
vear  IGn/upwards  of  four  hundred  emigrants  of  this  persuasion  transported 
memselve   to  West  New  Jersey.     Many  of  these  were  persons  of  affluent 
e  taTeTwho  carried  with  them  their  children  and  sei-vants  ;  and  along  vv.  h 
tl  Im  were  sent  a  board  of  conmiissioners,  appomted  by  Penn  and  h.s  col- 
eaTues  to  make  partition  of  the  lands,  and  engage  the  acquiescence  and 
fSshin  of  the  Indians.     While  the  ship  that  earned  out  the  first  do- 
achmem  of  these  emigrants  lay  in  the  Thames,  on  the  poin   of  sa.lmg,  u 
happened  that  Charles' the  Second  was  passing  by  m  Ins  pleasure-bar^e. 
Observinga  number  of  Quakers  on  board,  the  king  caiue    abngs.de  the 
vesse     and  inquired  whither  they  uoie  bound.     Informed  of  their  dest.na- 
lion,  he  askedV  they  were  all  Quakers  ;  and,  being  answered  in  the  affir.na- 
tive   invoked  a  blessing  upon  them  and  departed. 

On  their  arrival  in  America,  the  emigrants  very  soon  discovered  that  the 
danger  of  an  arbitrary  encroachment  on  their  r.ghts  and  libut.es  had  not 
been  suggested  to  them  in  vain.     A ndros  summoned  them  to  acknou ledge 
the    overlignty  of  his  master,  the  Duke  of  \ork  ;  affirming  tha    h.s  own 
ffe  won  d  be^endangered,  if  he  should  venture    to  recognize   their  mde- 
pendence  without  an  express  order  from  that  prince.     When  they  remon- 
strated against  this  usurpation,  Andros  cut  short  the  controversy  by  point- 
nf  to  his    word  ;  and  as  this  was  an  argument  which  the  Quakers  were  .n- 
c?p  cilatedZm'retorting,  they  submitted  for  the  present  to  h.s  v.oe„ce 
and  acknowledged  themselves  and  their  territory  subject  to  the  Uuke  ot 
York    dll    he  Lue  of  an  application  for  redress,  which  they  transnu  ted 
to  Eng  and^^   They  were  compelled  for  some  time  to  endure  the  hardships 
LSble  from  the  occupation  of  a  desert  land.     But  these  hardships  v;e.e 
urmounted  by  industry  and  patience  ;  and  their  fi^^^st  settlement,  to  wh.rb 
hey  gave  tl7  name  o^f  Burlington,  soon  exhibited  a  thriving  appearance 
nnd  irreplenished  with  inhabitants  by  successive  arriva  s  of  additional 
Quiker  eSan^s  from  the  parent  state.    [1678.]     It  was  observed  m  th.s 
astnos^oTthe  other  infant  settlements  in  America,  that  the  success  o 
nd'iS  colonists  was  in  general  proportio.ied  to  teor.g.nahu^^^^^^^^^^ 
their  condition,  and  the  degree  of   reliance  which   they  pUcea  on  liie  re 
source  of  t2  own  unassisted  industry.     Many  who  emigrated  as  servants 
we  e  more  prosperous  than  others  who  imported  a  considerable  substance 
donrwith  R  em^     Inured  to  personal  toil,  they  derived  such  ample  gains 
fl^t    as    peTdily  enabled  them  to  rise  above  a  state  of  servitude    and 
cXat'e  land  on  their  own  account ;  while  the  others,  subsisting  too  !on 
o      he     t^p^^^^^     stock,  and  relying   too  far  upon  the    ured  labor  o     . 
noor   were  not  unfrequently  themselves  reduced  to  penury.     Ihe  fir      x 
'T^:,=  nfthP  colonists  to  procure  themselves  a  livelihood  were  lacihtated 
rvXe  f  i  ndir  s   stn  e  ^of  the  Indians;  hut  a  hostile  attack  was  soon 
tlLatened  byThese  savages,  who,  in  consequence  ot  a  dangerous  ep.de..ic 
tint  broke  out  a^'ong  them,  accused  their  neighbours  of  having  treacherously 
ttd    iTm  the  small-pox.     The  danger,  however,  was  averted  by  the  .n    • 
sold  ^'^'\'''i     .       If      1     3^gu,ea  his  countrymen  that  their  forclatheb 

rixi»y 


BOOK  VI.]  PRETENSIONS  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  YORK. 


477 


Sir  George  Carteret,  the  proprietary  of   East  Jersey,  died  in  1679  • 
hav,ng  derived  so  l.ttle  benefit  from  his  American  territorV,  that  he  found 
,t  necessary  to  convey  it  by  testamentary  bequest  to  trustees   who  were  in- 
structed  to  d.spose  of  it  for  the  advantage  of  his  creditors      The  exemption 
u-h.ch  this  district  was  permuted  to  enjoy  from  the  dominion  of  the  Duke 
of  York  increased  the  discontent  with  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  neidi- 
bonrmg  region  of  West  Jersey  endured  an  authority  from  which  their  right 
to  be  exempted  was  equal  y  clear.     They  had  never  ceased  to  importune 
,hc  duke  for  a  redress  of  this  grievance  ;  and  were  at  length  provoked  to 
additional  warmth  of  complaint  and  urgency  of  solicitation  by  a  tax,  which 
Andros,  m  the  exercise  ol  his  master's  pretended  sovereignty,  attached  to 
the  importation  of  European  merchandise  into  West  Jersey.    Wearied  with 
die  continual  importunity  of  these  suitors,  rather  than  moved  with  a  sense 
of  honor  or  equity,  the  unjust  prince  consented  to  refer  the  matter  of  their 
complaint  to  certain  commissioners,  by  whom  it  was  finally  remitted  to  the 
juridical  opinion  of  Sir  William  Jones.   [1680.]     The  remonstrance  pre- 
sented  in  beha  f  of  the  colonists  of  West  Jersey,  on  this  occasion,  was 
prepared   by   William  Penn,  George   Hutchinson,  and  several  other  co- 
adjuors,  chiefly  of  the  Quaker  persuasion,  and  breathes  a  firm,  undaunted 
spin  of  liberty,  worthy  of  the  founders  of  a  North  American   common- 
wealth.        Thus,    then,"  they  msisted,  after  a  narrative  of  the  titles  hir 
which  the  territory  had  been  transmitted  to  them,  "  we  come  to  buy  thdt 
moiety  which  belonged  to  Lord  Berkeley,  for  a  valuable  consideration  ; 
and  in  the  conveyance  he  made  us  powers  of  government  are  expressly 
granted  ;  for  that  only  could  have  induced  us  to  buy  it ;  and  the  reason  is 
plain,  because  to  all  prudent  men  the  government  of  any  place  is  more  in- 
viting than  the  soil.     For  what  is  good  land  without  good  laws  >  the  better, 
the  worse.     And  if  we  could  not  assure  people  of  an  easy  and  free  and 
safe  government,  both  with  respect  to  their  spiritual  and  worldly  property, 
-that  IS,  an  uninterrupted   liberty  of  conscience,  and  an  inviolable  pos- 
session of  their  civil  rights  and  freedoms,  by  a  just  and  wise  government, 
-a  mere  wilderness  would  be  no  encouragement;  for  it  were  a  madness  to 
leave  a  tree,  good,  and  improved  country,  to  plant  in  a  wilderness,  and 
there  adventure  many  thousands  of  pounds  to  give  an  absolute  tide  to  an- 
other  person  to  tax  us  at  will  and  pleasure."     Having  adverted  to  the  argu- 
ment in  support  of  the  duke's  usurped  authority,  they  continued  :  — ''  Natural 
nght  and  human  prudence  oppose  such  doctrine  all  the  world  over  ;  for  what 
IS  It  but  to  say,  that  people,  free  by  law  under  their  prince  at  home,  are  at 
his  mercy  m  the  plantations  abroad  >  And  why  ?  because  he  is  a  conqueror 
tliere  ;  but  still  at  the  hazard  of  the  lives  of  his  own  people,  and  at  the 
cost  and  charge  of  die  public.     We  could  say  more,  but  choose  to  let  it 
drop.     But  our  case  is  better  yet  ;  for  the  king's  grant  to  the  Duke  of 
t^ork  IS  plainly  restrictive  to  the  laws  and  government  of  England.     Now 
the  constitution  and  government  of  England,  as  we  humbly  conceive,  are 
so  lar  from  countenancing  any  such  authority,  that  it  is  made  a  fundamental 
m  our  constitution,  that  the  king  of  England  cannot  justly  take  his  sub- 
jects   goods  without  their  consent.     This  needs  no  more  to  be  pioved 
ihan  a  principle  ;  it  is  an  homeborn  rierht.  ^pohrnA  tn  Kp  law  u.-  AUrpva  otof- 

SmTthi 


I  I 


478 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI 


utes  "  "  To  dve  up  this,"  they  added,  "  the  power  of  making  laws,  is  t. 
utes.  Au  e,iv^    *^  »  .  ;„  ooll    nr  nthpr  resign,  ourselves  to  the  will  of 

chnnge  U,e  f '""Xfitof '  rorundar  Sr,  we  buy  Bolhing  of  the 
n'^If-nS  .he  irt  „"  an  S;=dis.Sed  eolonmng  ;  and  .hat,  as  Enilish- 
™e„  'w  Ano  tmSon   but  rather  expectation  of  some  increase,  of  those 

freedomrand  prlvileg..  Enjoyed  in  our  own  ■="-7:  '^''^f /ato,'""-; 
"       ,^  ^     .   ° ,    .      .Ug  j„5  sentium,  the  law  oi  nations ,  ana  it 

^'"  \1Z  ^iUa  ^t  to  con^vert  them  to  Christianity,  to  expel  instead 
would  be  an  ill  argumeni  lu  cunvci  fountrv  he  theirs 

of  mirchasine  them  out  of  those  countries.  It,  then,  tne  couniry  oe  treiis, 
k  is  not  th?  duke's  ;  he  cannot  sell  it;  then  what  have  we  bought:" 
'  To  conclude  this  point,  we  humbly  say  that  we  have  not  lost  any  part 
of  our  Syby  easing  our  country  ;  for  we  leave  not  c>ur>ing  nor  our 
^Lernment  by  quitting  our  soil ;  but  we  transplant  to  a  place  given  by  the 

Sr  W  Z'^^e  o^-L^geTci::  -ITn^d  that  latilude  bounded  by  these 
vmtAt   for  the  eood  of  the  adctnturer  and  planter.  ,..,,. 

In  a  sub  equent  pi.  of  their  pleading,'  they  remark  that  "there  ,s  no 
end  of  this  Twer!  for  since  L  are  by  As  precedent  assessed  wuhom 
anv  law  and  thereby  excluded  our  English  right  of  comtnon  assent  to  taxes, 

Se  "'ThrrrtrlpCrn".!;^  f™»  U  ;obe,ter,bu.  fro^  gooj 
rS    T^Ms  sort  of  coud  e.  has  destroyed  I^X'T^l^^^TJ^t 

"p^^pl^'s^riefcr^  ered,  we'-ruX  V"> 'f  *era  cat,  he,  in  ,l,ei, 
people  s  jeaiousieb  ^  introduce  an  unhmited  govern- 

SrthanToth^o    xacran^^^^  tax  from  Enghsh  planters,  and 

^continue  it  after  so  many  repeated  complaints  ;  and  on  the  contrary,  .f 
iLre  can  be  any  thing  so  happy  to  the  duke's  present  affairs,  as  the  oppor- 

rlio^:^iLd''-=iuSe-^^^^^^^^^^^ 

large,  il  Uie  ^rown  si  u  ,'    g  •  ;  j,  ^ourt,  and  to  the  coimsel- 

L^'sTfleZkfof^ork,  it  vas^^^^^^^^^^  with  the  most  triumphant  success, 
^  T?/e  commtsioners  o'whom  the  case  was  referred  were  constrame  u, 
nronounce  tS  judgment  in  conformity  with  the  opinion  of  Jones,  '  hat, 
L  the  erant  to  Birkeley  and  Carteret  U  reserved  no  profit  or  junsd.c  .on 
the  leS"v  of  tlie  taxes  could  not  be  defended."  In  compliance  with  this 
iSii^,  the  duke  without  farther  objection  resigned  all  his  cOaims  on 
West  Jersey  [August,  1680],  and  in  the  amplest  terms  confirmed  lb  a  - 
signment  oFthis  p^rovince  to 'its  new  propi;ietaj^ies^  An^^^""^ 

•nrichcfl  with  «ome  display  of  legal  ^^n^'^*  K^;,  f  P^*-^™  nf  S^  ^^  g'v'n 

tory.  It  i8  remarkable  t Imt  Chalmers  han  it  T|"a  l\nn  concurred  in  the  presentation  of 
.n ^abridged  and  very  .•nadeq""';?  I'Z "t  m  V  bo  fa  riy  p  ^sumcd  that  he  assisted  in  its  com- 
Uie  pleaSing  is  undcn.able  and  •  ««>^«  "'"X  "  „^'',„y  ^  of  his  modern  biographers  have  in- 
nosition.     But  that  he  was  the  sole  nuthoi  ot  it,  as  sonu.  "'^'1^,  .^^^   ^^^  the  silirhtest  rcsem- 

iinuated.  is  rendered  extremely  improbauic  by  ..^  ^'^V ''•.•"• " 

Mrcc  is  discoverable  to  any  of  hi.  acknowledged  producLon. 


BOOK  VI.]  FIRST  ASSEMBLY  OF  WEST  JEKSEY. 


479 


of  this  concession  extended  with  equal  and  manifest  application  to  East 

fT/frtir?  r  °°"  '  n  '  '  ''"'^''  ''^'^'^  '"  ^«^°^  ^  the  representatives 
f  Z^Zr'J  °'^'  ^"?'''-  [September,  1680.]  Thus  the  whole 
of  ^exv  Jersey  was  promoted  at  once  from  the  condition  of  a  conquered 
country  to  the  rank  of  a  free  and  independent  province,  and  rendered  in 
poll  ical  theory  the  adjunct,  mstead  of  the  mere  dependency,  of  the  British 
empire  The  povyerful  and  spirited  pleading,  by  which  this  benefit  was 
gained,  derives  additional  interest  from  recollection  of  the  conflict  then  sub! 
sisting  in  England  between  the  advocates  of  liberty  and  the  abettors  of 
arbitrary  power  It  would  not  be  easy  to  point  out,  in  any  of  the  polit- 
ical  writings  or  harangues  of  which  that  period  was  abundantly  prolific,  a 
more  manly  and  intrepid  exertion  for  the  preservation  of  liberty  than  we  be- 
hold  in  this  first  successful  defence  of  the  rights  of  New  Jersey.  One 
of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  the  plea  which  the  colonists  maintained 
was  the  unqualified  and  deliberate  assertion,  that  no  tax  could  be  iustly 
imposed  on  them  without  their  own  consent  and  the  authority  of  their  owj 
provincial  assembly  The  report  of  the  commissioners  in  their  favor" 
and  the  relief  that  followed,  were  virtual  concessions  in  favor  of  this  prin- 
cip  e,  which  m  an  after  age  was  destined  to  obtain  a  more  signal  triumph 
m  the  national  independence  of  North  America. 

West  Jersey  now  filled  apace  with  inhabitants  by  the  accession  of  nu- 
merous  settlers,  of  whom  a  great  proportion  still  continued  to  be  Quakers. 
Byliinge,  who  received  from  his  fellow-proprietaries  the  appointment  of 
governor,  not  finding  it  convenient  to  leave  England,  granted  a  deputation 
of  his  functions  to  bamuel  Jennings,  by  whom  the  first  representative  as- 
sembly of  West  Jersey  was  convoked.   [Nov.,  1681.]     In  this  assembly 
there  was  enacted  a  code  of  Fundamental  Constitutions,  together  with  vari- 
ous laws   for  the   protection   of  property  and  the  punishment  of  crimes. 
By  the  I-  undamental  Constitutions,  the  assembly  was  empowered   to  ap- 
pomt  and  displace  all  persons  holding  offices  of  trust  in  the  province  ;  and 
the  governor  was  restrained  from  proclaiming  war,  or  contracting  any  en- 
gagement obligatory  on  the  State,  without  the  assembly's  concurrence,  and 
^ora  withholding   his  assent  to  any  of  its  ordinances.     Assemblies  were  to 
be  annually  convoked  ;  and  no  assembly  was   to  have  pgwer  to  impose  a 
tax  which  should  endure  longer  than  a  year.     Of  the  laws  that  were  en- 
acted on  this  occasion,  the  most  remarkable  feature  is  a  provision,  that  in 
all  criminal  cases,  except  treason,  murder,  and  theft,  the  person  aggrieved 
should  have  power  to  pardon  the  offender,  whether  before  or  after  con- 
demnation, —  a  provision  of  very  questionable  expediency,  but  probably 
intended  to  prevent  the  Christian  requirement  of  forgiveness  of  injuries  from 
being  evacuated,  as  in  most  countries  is  practically  done,  by  the  supposed 
municipal   duty  which   engages   a   man   to  avenge,  in   his   capacity  of  a 
citizen,  the  wrong  which  as  a  Christian  he  is  commanded  to  forgive.     It 
was  ordained  (with  departure  equally  wise  and  just  from  the  practice  in  the 
parent  state)  that  the  landed  property  of   every  inhabitant  should  be  re- 
sponsible for  his  debts  ;    marriages  were  appointed  to  be  solemnized  by 
justices  oi  the  peace  ;  for  the  prevention  of  disputes  with  the  Indians,  the 
sale  ot  spirituous  liquors  to  them  was  strictly  prohibited  ;  and  for  the  en- 
couragement of  poor  but  industrious  laborers,  who  obtained  the  means  of 
emigrating  from    Europe   by  indenting  themselves   as   servants   to  more 
■•a.  SuiiiJj.    Froud.    Chalmers,  SMe  Papers,  apud  eundem 


480 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


uu.r  «l=,ntPrs  every  such  servant  was  authorized  to  claim  from  his 
""'tr^fte  eipirvTf  his  indenture,  a  set  of  implements  of  husbandry, 
"  m  n  ar  iclS  of  Spparel,  and  ten  bushels  of  corn.  To  obstruct  the  resort 
n?  worthless  and  vicious  persons  to  the  province,  a  law  was  framed,  re- 
a  urr^  every  new  settler,  under  pain  of  a  pecuniary  fine,  to  give  saUsfactory 

'LoTonrm^les    cS  sotr  life.    Vrom.this  period  till  the 

person  01   Didui  government,  the  provmcial  assembly  contin- 

ueTto  be  annX  co^^^^^^^^  It  did  not'alwafs  confine  itself  to  the  exer- 
pUp  if  the  ample  powers  with  which  it  was  constitutionally  endowed  ;  for 
when  BvllinKe  soon^after  proposed  to  deprive  Jennings,  the  deputy-governor, 
Jf  his  oCfthe  assembly  interposed  to  prevent  this  measure ;  declaring  that 
Jenler^aie  satisfaction  to  the  people,  and  desiring  him  to  retain  h.s  sif 
uat  on^  The  rule  and  ordinary  practice  of  the  constitution  however,  was 
^ha  the  council  of  assistants  loShe  governor  were  nominated  by  the  as- 
ei;  ;  Sthe  proprietaries  appointed  the  governor  ;  and  he,  with  the 
consent  of  the  proprietaries,  named  his  own  deputy.  ,^. 

Ininltra ton  in  East  Jersey  was  embittered  by  a  renewa  of  the  disputes 
rraHL  rendered  hL^  fiigitive  ^^J^J^^:;^  ]Z^ 

IntrTalfordtordt^^  ^  P^' 

materias  01  Qis€o  r    .      ^^^^^^  benefit  which  it  conferred, 

t^To  partes  sS^^^^^^  t'o  debate^vith  extreme  virulence  and  perU- 

nacitvw^hether  this  instrument  or  the  proprietary  concessions  nl664shoud 
f  l-aXrJ  n,  the  basis  of  the  provincial  institutions.  Disgusted  with  these 
be  regarded  as  the  *?»?•«  °;\7P  ^^^  utely  to  derive  either  emolu- 

Lee  for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder  ;  and,  closing  with  the  proposals  of  Wu- 
•^^    ;^.n^^eKdusive  of  the  inhabitants  of  certain  remote  and  scattered 

;  ^Tlfo^h  Pen'n" "is  became  ^'^^Vr^-'^V' ^t^:Tn{^Z^^^^^^^^  He^hS 

concerns  fnd  wUh  tho«e  of  West  Jer^y  w- Ijencc^^^^^^^  ^.^  .^^^^^^^  „, 

now   uc»tuircd  lor  niinscii  tiic  p.--' ' j--- 

divcrted  his  attention  from  New  Jersey. 


BOOK  VI.]  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  EAST  JERSEY. 


481 


land,  and  Lord  Drummond  of  G.lston,  the  secretary  of  state  for  that  kine- 
dom.'  In  favor  of  these  twenty-four  proprietaries  the  Duke  of  York  exe- 
cuted his  third  and  last  grant  of  East  Jersey  ;  on  receiving  which,  ?hey  an 
pointed  a  council  or  committee  of  thei/  o^vn  number^o  whom  all  he 
unctions  of  the  proprietary  power  were  intrusted.  [March,  1682.1  To 
facilitate  the  exercise  of  their  dominion,  they  obtained  from  Charles  the 
Second  a  royal  letter,  addressed  to  the  existing  governor  council  7nd  in 
habitants  of  the  province,  unfolding  the  title^rhe  ^  ^^^^^^^^^^^ 

rs iti^oii^^^^^^^^^^^^^    -'  -^"^^ «"  persons^oVir obei:i: 

tar.es),  the  inhabitants,  by  a  diligent  improvement  of  the^  ocS  advEs" 
had  genenly  attained  a  flourishing  and  prosperous  estate.     C  g  eatej 
number  of  them  were  emigrant/  from  New  England,  or  the  descendams  of 
New  England  men;  and  their  laws  and  manne^rs,  in  some  particulars   dis 
closed  traces  of  this  ongm.     The  punishment  of  death  was^enounced  by 
law  against  children  striking  or  cursing  their  parents.     Adulterers  were  sub^ 
jected  to  flogging  or  banishment.     Fornicadon  was  i)unMed,  at  the  dis- 
cretion  of  the  magistrate,  by  marriage,  fine,  or  flogging.     Nigl  twalkinj 
or  revelling  abroad  after  nine  o'clock  of  the  evening,  Sposed  the  oSer^ 
to  a  discreuonary  pumsliment.     A  thief,  for  his  first  offence,  was  aSed 
to  restore  three-fold  the  value  of  what  he  had  stolen  ;  in  case  of  friquent 
repetition  of  gu.lt,  he  might  be  capitally  punished,  or  reduced  to  slavery 
There  was  no  law  for  the  public  support  of  religion ;   but  every  tovSp 
mam  tamed  a  church  and  minister.     -  The  people,"  said  the  firs^t  govern^ 
eputed  to  them  by  their  Quaker  sovereigns,  "are  generally  a  soberTpro- 
fessing  people,  wise  m  their  generation,  courteous  in  their  behaviour  Cd 
respectful  to  us  ,n  office."    So  happily  exempt  were  they  from  the  most 
ord.nary  and  forcble  temptation  to  violence  and  dishonestyf  that,  accorXg 
to  the  same  testimony,   there  was    not  an  industrious  man  aiong    hem 
i^^  .^^"^  hands  could  not  assure  him  a  state  of  decent  competence,  Z 
V  n  of  ease  and  plenty.^    If  we  might  rely  implicitly  on  the^pinion  of 
thi   observer,  we  should  impute  the  dissensions  that  had  previously  occurred 
m  he  province   to  the  folly  and  mismanagement  of  Carteret  and  his  a  so 
aes  m  the  goyermnent.     But  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  blame 
those  dissensions  was  more  equally  divided  between  the  people  and  their 
rulers.     A  headstrong  and  turbulent  disposition  appears  to  have  prevailed 
^ong  some  classes,  at  least,  of  the  inhabitants  ;  various  riots  and^d'Itu  b- 

TZ"  Tn    ["''^  '"?"  ""^^^'^^  "^^  government ;  and  the  utmost  exer- 
tionsot  Quaker  prudenre_  andpatience  were  required  to  compose  them. 

JZo^»lt^!?A™.-*';^°,,*:f..r-°"'="f  •'»',  "■»•>.  •'•j  |'"«  I')^  r™  .WmX^ 


VOL.    I. 


61 


00 


4P? 


mSTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


A  hw    enacted  about  four  years  after  this  period,  reprobates  the  frequent 
occun'encrof  quarrels  and  cf.allengos,  and    interdicts  the  nihab.tants  from 

wearine  swords,  pistols,  or  daggers.'  tj  u  .f  «„.  i       r 

Amon^  the   new   proprietaries  of  East  Jersey  was  Robert  Barclay  of 
[THe    a  Scottish  gentleman,  who  had  been  converted  to  Quakerism,  and,  m 
dX'ce  of  his  adopted  principles,  had  pid^hshed  a  series  of  works  that 
eained  the  applause'and  admiration  of  all  Europe.     Esteemed  by  scholars 
S  philosopKers  for  the  extent  of  his  learning  and  the  commandmg  force 
peietrating  subtlety  of  his  judgment,  he  was  endeared  to  the  members 
7hi    religious^fraternity  by  the  liveliness  of  lus  zeal,  the  purity  of  his  char- 
cter   and  the  services  rendered  by  his  pen  to  their  cause.      1  hesc  services 
on^i'sted  rather  of  the  literary  celebration  which  he  gave  to  the  Quaker 
loc  rines   than  of  any  deeper  impression  of  their  influence  upon  mankind. 
'  of  iTwr    ngs  in  g/neral  are  much  more  calculated  pleasingly  to  entertam 
niu   dazzTe  the  understanding,  than  to  produce  solid  conviction,  or  sink  into 
7e  hear  ?    To  the  king  and  the  Duke  of  York  he  was  recommended  not 
OSS  by  his  distinguished  fame  and  his  happy  gemus  and  address,  than  by 
Se  pHnciplcs  of  passive  obedience  professed  by  that  sect  of  which  he 
as  Considered  a  leader  ;  and  with  both  the  royal  brothers,  as  well  as  with 
eveSo    the  most  distinguished  of  their  favorites  and  mimsters,  he  main- 
3  t?e  most  friendly  and  ^miliar  intercourse.     Inexplicable  as  such  a 
oalUion  of  uncongenial  characters  may  appear,  it  seems  at  least  as  str,n;5e 
mo  al  phenomenon  to  behold  Barclay  and  Penn,  the  votaries  of  universal 
"tolmUon  a  d  philanthropy,  voluntarily  associating  m  their  labors  for  the 
-  ucaS  ^    happiness  of  an  infant  community  such  mstruments  as  Lord 
iSh  and^ther  Ibettors  of  royal  tyranny  and  ecclesiastical  persecution  in 

^  BvThe'urianimous  choice  of  his  colleagues,  Robert  Barclay  was  appoint- 
ed the  firs   governor  of  East  Jersey  under  die  new  proprietary  admm.stra- 
lion    r  Tu  y,  1C83.1      So  high  wa/  the  refute  which  he  enjoyed,  and  so 
n^ch  advantage  w  s  anticipated  from  his  ^superintendence  of  the  colony, 
hat  his  commission  bestowed  the  office  on  him  for  life;  and  vyhde  it  dis- 
uSised  wXhis  personal  residence,'^  authorized  him  to  nominate  his  own  dep- 
^r    Bu    the  e^xpectations  which  produced  or  attended  h.s  elevation  were 
d  sann^in ted  by  the  result ;  his  government  (like  that  of  Sir  Henry  Vane  in 
MSusetts(  was  brief  and  iltfated,  and  calculated  rather  to  lower  than 
,o  advance   S  illustrious  reputation.     The  most  signal  and  beneficial  event 
oKs  presidency  was  the  elnigration  of  a  considerabe  number  of  h.s  coim- 
^vmen^the  Scofel,^  jLey,-a  measure,  which,  however  congenial 

^^ay  applS  to  tl  e  circumstances  of  that  oppressed  and  persecuted  peo- 
lo   theT  were  not  persuaded  to  adopt  but  by  dint  of  ""'^Vq 'Trwlr! 
njortunity      For,  ahhough  a  vast  majority  of  thf.people  of  Scotland  wee 
Sfc     with   the  Episcopal  establishment  which  their  king  had  forced 
ortS,  an    great  numbers  were  enduring  the  utmost  rigors  of  tyranny 
rhek  resistance  to  it,  it  was  found  no  easy  matter  to  persuade  them  to 
.^ek  belief  from   their  sufferings    h.    a   distant    and    perpetual  exile  fiom 
their  native  land.^     In  addition  to  the  motives   iojnn^v^^njM±^ 

-rsTsiidThT— 7—  "-'1^-  I^^^^^  ?^^tirrepl-dV„d"cricd  hU  family 

3  Oldniixon  is  mistaken  m  asserting  V'^»  f  ^^  'jLHersev     Soon  aAcr  his  appointment, 

S.  Smith's  Hiaiory.  ,, .      ^         ^r  gcotligh  emigrants  con- 

*  llowbeit,  wo  have  seen  {anle,  Book  IV.,  t-imp.  11.;  u  """h 

C  i 


BOOK  VI.] 


INCITEMENTS   TO  EMIGRATION. 


483 


ottish  emigranu  con- 


severities  exorcised  by  Lord  Perth  nnH  tKo  «fi  i     •  • 

ed  to  supply,  the  influenrp  nf  n      i         j     P^''"  ^^'^^  ministers  contribut 

cessfullylfp  o7ed  in  prevauL^  vTt  7th"^  "'^'''  ^'""■'^*'  ^"'^^^^^  "'^^  «"^- 
in  East  Jersey  ;  and  S'uhe  l^n  H"  ,  '  ^"""^1^^"  ^°  ^^^^P^  «"  a^/l"'" 
Barclay's  natU  col  y  of  A^et^  ^'  '  f  °^  '"^'S'"""'''  ^'"^%  ^0". 
the  pui-pose  of  rendSg  the  Wh'  '''''"  ''^^""  'Tf"""'^-  ^^^84.]  For 
state  of  the  colonlrte  Lrv  an^th^^^  ZT  ^'r^^^Y  ^^.^^-"^^^d  with  the 
citing  them  to  remove  thheT  it  wa  nrnfn  '.  u  '?  '"^^'^"^  «"«'  «nd  of  in- 
lish  I  historical  and  s  a  Sal  aJconn  3  '.  ^  '*''  Proprietaries  to  pub- 
which  tiie  prevailing  obiec  ion,  TnZ'       '  "'  T"'\^  Preliminary  treatise  in 

resource  eJinbiterraro  e  fe  ^raSf  hS  ^'  '°T^^'^^'  «"^  ^^'''^ 

were  generally   dispose^r  regard  i       f  that  m  ;vhich  the  Scotch 

avowed  authorship  V  this  perfinrp  n'T  undertaking  the  entire  or 
knowing,  that,  as  a  Quaker  ^hif I^'  f  fi"^  ^''  P^'^^^^ly  deterred  by 
of  which  werelLde  on'rJn.io  T  'I  '^-  ^^P"'^'"  objections,  some 
wit!)  the  bulk  of  hircoulvmfn  L  "n '''''u  °"''  ^^"''^  «"d  little  favor 
himself  with  all^ions  toTl  e  TxTslin^  ''  ^^  unwillingness  to  entangle 

have  characterizeTL  a  m  tner  SacC'^r""'  f 'f^  '^^  '^^"''^  ^^^^^^^ 
,  and  to  Lord  Perth  and  Xrs  of  h  in  ^  •  "'^  *°  "'  "^"  conscience 
tually  at  the  time  ad^ninS  e  Sg  „  LoZd  2  "1^"^'  V"  "^  ^^■ 
banishment  to  the  plantations  on  eve  y  person  whTd'  "l"  \^7  '"^'"'^".S 
dence   when  required,  against  the  freT/en^eTs^of  loL^^^^f  ^°  ^'^^  •^^'- 

Balv:r;'hirs^^^^^^^^^^        -^  pubhshe  ;tf..^^^^^^^  of 

assistance  ;  and,  indeedTe  inen  nuk    'f  T^'^r'  '^'*  ^'  contributed  some 
not  wholly\he'compl;bn  ofT^^^^^^  ^'XfV'T  ''  T 

production^t)f  a  Scottish  ffentlpmnn   P„  ^  vvas  published  as  the 

he  title  of  TheMn^^lnfTT^'     *'°'S^  ?*'°*  °^  Pitlochie,  and  bore 
rmrin^'S-lf    Frl  tr^^  «//Ae  Province  0/  k./  JVe^ 

few  men  flourish  best    furnished  wi^     1  T  •°"'  '"«"'•  civil  state,  where  a 

kn!t  of  S""'"'^  J"'"''  '"^  ^^•^^''°"  ^«  ^^^^  ^^^'^'^o"  good     and  the 
Uk  ng  m  of  large  countries  presents  a  natural  remedy  as^ainst  covetousnes 

^d,^^!!^^  e,foug\  Jhho^I  wronro; 

tract  toNew  Jereey!"^'       '*"^'^**'"'*'"'  ^''"'""''^'^  '''°'«  t''"^"  whom  Quakers  desired  to^at: 


484 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


1  [BOOK  VI. 


iniurv  to  his  neighbour."     The  heads  of  ancient  families  were  exhorted  to 
cmbraQe  this  opportunity  of  cheaply  endowing  their  younger  sons  with  a 
more  liberal  provision  in  America  than  the  laws  and  usages  ol  bcoiland  en- 
abled th-m  to  bestow  at  home.'     In  reply  to  an  objection  which  had  been 
urced  iiiat  a  province  governed  by  Quakers  must  be  left  unprovided  of  the 
means  of  military  defence,  it  was  stated  that  several  of  the  proprietaries  and 
many  of  the  inhabitants  did  not  belong  to  the  Quaker  persuasion,  and  that 
J'ast  Jersey  already  possessed  a  militia  of  600  men.     The  argument  de- 
rived from  the  severities  inflicted  by  the  British  government  on  the  Presby- 
terians  is  handled  in  a  very  courtly  style.     "  You  see  it  is  now  judged  the 
interest  of  the  government  altogether  to  suppress  the  1  resbyterian  piinci- 
i)les  •  and  that,  in  order  thereto,  the  whole  force  and  bensd  of  the  law  ol  this 
kingdom  are  levelled  at  the  effectual  bearing  them  down  ;  that  the  rigorous 
Duttincr  these  laws  in  execution  hath  in  a  great  part  ruined  many  of  tliese, 
who  irotwithstanding  thereof  find  themselves  in  conscience. obliged  to  retain 
these  principles  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  Episcopacy  is  by  the  same  laws 
supported  alid  protected.     I  would  gladly  know  what  other  rational  mcdiuin 
can  b"  proposed,  in  these  circumstances,  than  either  to  comply  with  the 
government,  by  going  what  length  is  required  by  lavv,  in  conforming;  or  to 
retreat,  where  by  law  a  toleration  is  by  his  Majesty  allowed.    Such  arctreal 
doth  at  present  offer  itself  in  America,  and  is  nowhere  else  to  be  found  in  his 
Maksti's  dominions^'    What  an  encomium  on  America,  at  the  expense,  of 
every  other  portion  of  the  British  empire  !     The  work  contains  a  minute 
account  of  the  climate,  soil,  institutions,  and  existing  settlements  of  Last 
.Tersey,  and  an  elaborate  panegyric  on  its  advantages  in  all  these  particu- 
lars     As  a  farther  recommendation  of  the  province  to  the  iavor  ot  the 
Scotch,  Barclay  [1G85],  displacing  a  deputy  whom  he  had  appointed,  of 
his  own  religion's  persuasion,  conferred  this  office  on  Lord  Neil  Campbell, 
uncle  of  the  Marquis  of  Argyle,  who   repaired  to  East  Jersey,  and  re- 
mained there  for  some  time  as  its  lieutenant-governor. 

The  efforts  of  Barclay  and  his  colleagues  were  crowned  with  success.  A 
jrreat  many  inhabitants  of  Scotland  emigrated  to  East  Jersey,  and  enriched 
\merican  society  with  a  valuable  accession  of  virtue  refined  by  adversity, 
and  of  piety  invigorated  by  persecution.  The  more  wealthy  of  the  bcot- 
lish  emigrants  were  noted  for  the  accompaniment  of  a  numerous  retinue  oi 
servants Imd  dependents  ;  and,  in  some  instances,  they  incurred  the  expense 
<,f  transporting  whole  families  of  poor  laborers,  whom  they  established  on 
tiieir  lands  for  a  term  of  years,  and  endowed  with  a  competent  stock  ;  re- 
ceiving in  return  one  half  of  the  agricultural  produce.  _ 

But  Tames  the  Second  now  ascended  the  British  throne  ;  and  practically 
inverting  the  magnanimous  sentiment  that  has  been  ascribed  to  a  I'rench 
monarch,  he  deemed  it  unnecessary  for  a  king  of  England  to  respect  the 
engagements  of  the  Duke  of  York  ;  nor  could  all  his  seeming  friendship 

"MtVlH^rtliiT^vT*^' was  reaarded  or  not,  it  is  certiiiii,  tlmt,  both  before  and  nfter  Uie  prcs- 
,  Mt  no  iod  rUnv  "a dels  of  titled  families,  both  it,  Knjjlund  and  Scotland,  resorted  to  Aiuen- 
: ::,  &e  ^r" ^diSuishod  republican  heroes  and  palrloU  have  sprung  from  the  transplanted 

"'."sU\'''''w<fn'itf '^S^SmX'The  convulsions  tlmt  preceded  the  assassination  of  De 

Wilt  i  the  t   u  "ph   of  tic  Prince  of  Orange  in  Holland  drove  many  respectable  Dutch 

J.m^lierirom  tl  oir    u  tve  land.     Most  of  theso%xil,.s  retired  to  North  America.    Sonmans,  a 

Z  C  of  U.o^ta  eVfiH  had  proceeded  to  I'.nglan.l  with  this  view,  when  he  was  over- 

"k  "n  by  So  slguinary  fury  of  the  o'range  fa.nion,  an^l  n.urdered  by  their  emissaries,  as  he  was 

'?.  .' "    .     ..■'      I.'.  -1.      /\..-l...    ;_  tl>«  ....n.lil.oiirhnn(l  nt    I. 

rniiiig  wiUi    iloDon    u.irc:aT  iiic -.x-mn-!,  .f!  3 

ever,  finally  reached  New  Jersey.    H.  Smith. 


!.nndon.  His  family,  how- 


1  [BOOK  VI. 


BOOK  VI.]   SURRENDER  OF  THE  EAST  JERSEY  PATENT. 


485 


for  Barclay,  together  wuh  all  the  influence  of  Lord  Perth  and  the  other 
courtier  propr.etancs,  deter  him  fro.n  including  New  Jersey  in  the  de  1 
which  he  had  ormed  of  annulling  the  charters  and  constitutions  of  the  S" 
loan  CO  onies  [1686J.  A  real  or  fictitious  charge  of  smuggling  was  preferred 
to  the  hnghsh  court  against  the  mhabitants  of%he  Jerstys  ;  and  the  minTs- 
ters  of  James,  readily  seizing  this  handle,  without  farther^iremony  caused 
yymso(  quo  warranto  to  be  issued  against  both  East  and  West  New^erscv 

oTlt';?  nvl  n-  «"°'-"^y-S«"«^«l  to  prosecute  'them  with  the  utmost  stretch 
of  legal  expedition  ;  ass^n.ng,  as  the  explanation  or  apology  of  their  con- 
due  ,  he  necessity  of  checking  the  pretended  abuses  '^  in  a  country  which 
ought  o  be  more  dependent  on  his  Majesty."  Alarmed  at  this  demons  ra 
tion  the  proprietaries  of  East  Jersey  presented  a  ren,onst  n  to  tl  e  ktg, 
n.  which  they  remmded  h.m  that  they  had  not  received  the  grant  of  the 
province  as  a  benevolence,  but  had  acquired  it  by  purchase,  and  were  en! 
couraged  to  do  so  by  the  assurances  of  protection  wluch  they  received  from 
himseit  ;  they  declared  that  they  had  already  sent  thither  several  hundreds  o? 
people  n-om  Scotland  ;  and  that  they  were  willing  to  correct  whatever  might 
be  found  amiss  in  the  conduct  of  aifairs  within  the  province,  and  particular- 
ly.  If  It  would  be  satisfactory  to  his  Majesty,  would  now  require  their  provin- 

fl  I'fT^r^  \^T  '^ru""'"  regulations  against  smuggling  that  were  es- 
tablished at  iNew  1  ork.  They  entreated,  that,  if  any  change  should  be  made 
-n  ho  condition  of  their  province,  it  might  be  confined  to  a  union  of  East 
and  West  Jersey  in  one  jurisdiction,  to  bo  ruled  by  a  governor  whom  the 
king  might  select  from  the  body  of  proprietaries.  [1687.]  But  James  was 
inexorable  ;  and  to  their  remonstrance  returned  no  other  answer  than  that 
he  had  determined  to  unite  the  Jerseys  with  New  York  and  the  New  En<r. 
land  fetates  m  one  general  government  dependent  on  the  crown  and  admin- 
istered by  Andros.  Finding  it  impossible  to  divert  him  from  his  arbitrary 
purpose,  the  proprietaries  of  East  Jersey  were  so  far  deserted  of  spirit  and 
dignity,  as  not  only  to  abandon  a  hopeless  contest  for  the  privileges  of 
their  peop  e,  but  even  to  facilitate  the  execution  of  the  king's  designs  against 
them,  as  the  price  of  his  consenting  to  respect  their  own  private  property 
in  the  colonial  soil.  [April,  1688.]  They  made  a  formal  surrender  of  their 
patent  on  this  condition  ;  and  as  James  agreed  to  accept  it,  the  prosecution 
ot  the  quo  warranto  process  was  no  longer  needed  for  East  Jersey,  and 
was  even  suspended  with  regard  to  the  western  territory.  Seeing  no 
resistance  opposed  to  his  will,  the  king  was  the  less  intent  on  consummating 
his  acquisition  ;  and  while  the  grant  of  the  soil  to  the  proprietaries,  which 
was  necessary  for  this  purpose,  still  remained  unexecuted,  the  completion 
i  1  u"  ^^'^"  ^^^^  arrested  by  the  British  Revolution, i 

Although  the  proprietary  governments  in  New  Jersey  were  preserved  for 
a  time  Irom  dissolution  by  this  event,  they  never  afterwards  possessed  vigor 
or  e/hciency.  Robert  Barclay,  who  seems  to  have  retained  during  his  life 
the  government  of  East  Jersey,  died  in  1690  ;  but  no  traces  of  his  admin- 
istration are  to  be  found  after  the  year  1688  ;  and  from  thence  till  1692,  it  is 
asserted  by  Chalmers  that  no  frame  of  government  at  all  existed  in  New 
Jersey  The  peace  of  the  country  was  preserved,  and  the  prosperity  of 
Its  mJiabitants  promoted,  by  their  own  honesty,  sobriety,  and  industry.  Al. 
most  all  the  original  proprietaries  of  both  provinces  had  in  the  mean  time  dis 
posed  of  their  interests  to  recent  purchasers  ;  and  the  nronrietarv  associa- 


S.  Smith.    Chalmers. 


00 


406 


HI8T0RV   OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[DOOK  VI, 


lions  became  se  numerous'  and  so  fluctnatmg,  that  their  pohcy  vvns  deprived 
of  nroner  concert  and  steadiness,  and  their  authority  obtained  neitlier  the 
rcsuee    nor  tlie  afreclion  of  the  people.     The  appointment  of  new  propri- 
etarv  covernors  in  1G92  proved  the  commencement  of  a  series  oi  disputes, 
Intrieuos,  and  vicissitudes  of  ofTice,  which  in  a  commomv^alth  more  popu- 
s  or  less  virtuous  would  probably  have  issued  m  civil   war  and  b  ood- 
led      The  government  of  New  York,  which,  on  account  of  its  dependence 
on  the  crosvir,  was  encouraged  by  King  William  to  arrogate  a  prcniinonce 
over  the  neighbouring  chartered  colonies,  reckoned  this  a  favorable  oppor- 
uniity  of  reviving,  and  even  extending,  its  ancient  pretensions  m  INew  Jersey, 
vhose  inhabitant.'  learned  with  equal  surprise  and  indignation  that  the  asscMu- 
blv  of  New  York  had  included  them  in  a  taxation  which  it  imposed  on  Us 
own  constituents.     This  last  attempt,  however,  was  not  more  successful 
than  the  previous  instances  in  which  New  Yoi;k  made  similar   eflorls   to 
usurp  an  undue  authority.     A  complaint  to  the  Knghsh  government  on   lie 
s^    L  was  referred  to  the  crown  lawyers,  ->-^^»'y.-f,'^"  ;;!;';""'     '^ 
uroduced  an  abandonment  of  the  pretensions  of  New  Yoik.«  [June,  1G'.)7.] 
'At  length  the  disagreements  between  the  various  propriclanes  and  tlK.Mr  re- 
pective  adherents  attained  such  a  height,  and  w^ere  productive  of  so  umeh 
clibin  and  confusion,  that  it  was  sometimes  difTicult   if  not  impossible   for 
he  people  to  ascertain  in  which  of  two  or  more  r^al  pretenders  to  author- 
ty  the  legal  administration  was  truly    vested.^     Numerous  complaints'  o 
lie  itonvenience   occasioned    by  this  state  of  matters  [1700]    were  ad- 
d  es  rby   he  inhabitants  of  the  Jerseys  to  the  British  court ;  and  the  pro- 
pietarts^hemselves,  finding  that  their  seigniorial  functions   ended  only  to 
d   tu  b  the  harmony  of  the  provincial  community  and  to  obstruct  their  own 
emoluments  as  owners  of  the  soil,  hearkened  wdhngly  to  an  overture  froin 
11^0  English  ministers  for,-,  surrender  of  their  powers  of  government  to  the 
crown    [Anril,  1702.]    This  surrender  was  finally  arranged  and  accoiu- 
£  ed  in  the  commencement  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  -ho  straig  mv.y 
reunited  East  and  West  Jersey  into  one  province,  and  committed    he  go^- 
ernment  of  it,  as  well  as  of  New  York,  to  her  kinsman,  Edward  Hyde, 

^^Tt^comiSion  and  instructions  which  this  nobleman  received,  on  his 
departure  foin  England,  present  an  abstract  of  the  political  state  of  New 
Jersey  from  the  resumption  of  its  charter  till  the  termination  of  its  conn c 
o  Lwit  the  British  einpire.  The  provincial  government  was  appointed 
lo  consist  of  a  .ovnrnoJand  Uvelve  counsellors  nominated  by  the  crown, 

ure  by  tho  threat  of  an  oxpons.ve  suit  w.h  » '«  "^ont  of      rS  ^''^ 

^"'&i^±r!!r:::^rrSt.i;oi:rs:d\:*i.^^^^ 

rcfU^rtoackliowfedge  that  these  poweri  ever  h-gally  belonguU  lo  thorn. 


BOOK  VI. ] 


CONSTITUTION  OF  NEW  JERSEY. 


487 


nnd  of  a  house  of  nssemblv,  ronsistinn;  of  twenty-four  members  elected  by  the 
people.      J  he  sessions  of  this  assembly  were  hold  nlternutely  in  Kust  and  in 
West  Jersey.     No  persons  were  canable  of  voting  for  representatives  in  the 
assembly,  but  colonists  po4«sessing  a  hundred  acres  of  land,  or  personal  prop- 
erty to  the  value  of  fifty  pounds  ;  and  none  were  eligible,  but  colonists  pos- 
sessmg  a  thousand  acres  of  land,  or  personal  property  worth  five   hundred 
pounds.      Ihe  laws  enacted  by  the  council  and  asseuibly  were  subject  to 
the  negative  ol  the  governor  ;  but  if  approved  by  him,  they  were  to  be;  im- 
mediately transmitted  to  England,  there  to  be  finally  affirmed  or  disallowed 
by  the  crown.      Iho  governor  was  empowered  to  suspend  any  of  the  mem- 
bers ol  council  from  their  functions,  and  to  supply  vacancies  in  their  num- 
ber ;  and,  with  consent  of  this  body,  to  constitute  courts  of  law,  to  appoint 
all  civil  and  niililary  officers,  and  to  employ  the  forces  of  the  province  in 
hostilities  against  public  enemies.     To  the  assembly  there  was  conununi- 
cated  the  royal  desire,  that  it  should  im|)ose  taxes  suflicient  to  afford  a  com- 
petent salary  to  the  governor,  to  defray  the  salaries  of  its  own  members  and 
of  the  members  ol  council,  and  to  stij)port  all  the  other  provincial  establish- 
ments and  expenditure  ;  tlie  prescribed  style  of  nil  money  bills  being,  tiiat 
the  sums  contained  in  them  were  granted  to   the   crown,  with  the  humble 
desire  of  the  assembly  that  they  might  be  applied  for  the  benefit  of  the 
province  ;  and  all  moneys  so  raised  were  to  be  paid  into  the  hands  of  the 
receiver  of  the  province,  till  the  royal  pleasure  should  be  signified  with  re- 
gard to  their  actual  distribution.     1  he  former  proprietaries  of  New  Jersey 
were  confirmed  in  their  rights  to  the  estates  and  quitrents  which  they  had 
previously  enjoyed  ;    and  none  but  they  and    their  agents    and    surveyors 
were  permitted  to  purchase  lands  from  the  Indians.     Liberty  of  conscience 
was  assured  to  all  men,  except  Papists.     Quakers  were  declared  to  be  eligi- 
ble to  every  municipal  office  ;  and  their  affirmation  was  accented  in  lieu  of 
the  customary  oaths.     The  governor  was  invested  with  the  right  of  presen- 
tation to  all  ecclesiastical  benefices.     lie  was  required  to  extend  particular 
favor  and  patronage  to  all  ministers  of  religion  in  connection  with  the  church 
of  England,  and  to  "take  especial  care  that  God  Almighty  be  devoutly  and 
duly  served."    It  will  excite  more  regret  than  surprise,  to  see  combined 
with,  and  almost  in  immediate  sequence  to,  this  disjday  of  royal  zeal  for  the 
interests  of  religion'  and  the  honor  of  God,  a  requisition  to  the  governor, 
that,  in  promoting  trade,  he  should  especially  countenance  and  encourage 
the   Royal   African  Company  of  England,  —  a  mercantile  association  that 
had  been  formed  for  the   piratical   purpose  of  kidnapping  or  purchasing 
negroes  in  Africa,  and  selling  them  as  slaves  in  the  American  and  West 
Indian  plantations.     It  was  declared  to  be  the  intention  of  her  Majesty  "  to 
recommend  unto  the  said  company  that  the  said  province  may  have  a  con- 
stant and  sufficient  supply  of  merchantable  negroes  at  moderate  rates  "  ; 
and  the  governor  was  required  to  compel  the  planters  duly  to  fulfil  what- 
ever engagements  they  might  contract  with  the  company.     He  was  fartlier 
directed  to  cause  a  law  to  be  framed  for  restraining  inhuman   severity  to 
slaves,  and   attaching  a  capital  punishment  to  the  wilful  murder  of  them  ; 
and  to  take  every  means  in  his  power  to  promote  the  conversion  of  these 
unfortunate  persons  to  the  Christian  faith.     Jill  printing  was  prohibited  in 
the  province  without  a  license  from  the  governor.     In  all  lawsuits  where 
the  sum  in  dependence  exceeded  a  hundred  pounds,  an  appeal  was  admitted 

'  See  iS'otu  XXIV.,  ut  liie  end  of  the  volume. 


488 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


from  the  provincial  courts  to  the  governor  and  council  ;  and  when  it  ex- 
ceeded two  hundred  pounds,  a  fartlier  appeal  was  competent  to  the  privy 

council  of  England.*  .  ,  •  o 

The   instructions  to  Lord  Cornbury  contam  reiterated  protestations  of 
the  queen's   sincere  desire  to  promote  peace,  good-will,  and  contentment 
among  her  American  subjects  ;  but  this  desire  accorded  as  ill  with  the  dis- 
position and  qualifications  of  the  individual  to  whom  she  remitted  its  accom- 
plishment, as  her  professed  anxiety  to  mitigate  the  evils  of  slavery  did  with 
her  actual  endeavour   to  diffuse    this  mischievous  institution  more  widely 
in  her  dominions.     Of  the  character  and  poUcy  of  Lord  Cornbury  we  have 
already  seen  a  specimen  in  the  history  of  New  York.     If  the  people  of 
New  Jersey  had  less  reason  to  complain  of  him,  it  was  only  because  his 
avocations  at  New  York  compelled  him  generally  to  delegate  his  functions 
in  the  other  province  to  a  deputy  ;  and  because  the  votaries  of  his  favorite 
institution,  the  church  of  England,  were  too  few  in  New  Jersey,  and  per- 
haps too  honest  and  unambitious,  to  afford  him  the  materials  ol  a  faction 
whose  instrumentality  he  might  have  employed  in  oppressing  and  plundering 
the  rest  of  the  community.     His    distinguished  name  and   rank,  his  near 
relationship  to  the  queen,  and  the  advantage  he  derived  from  appearing  as 
the  substitute  of  a  government  which  had  become  universally  unpopular, 
gave  him  at  first  an  influence  with  the  people  of  New  Jersey,  which  a 
man  of  greater  virtue  might  have  rendered  conducive  to  their  felicity,  and  i 
man  of  greater  ability  might  have  improved  to  the  subjugation  of  their  spirit 
and  the  diminution  of  their  liberty.     But  all  the  illusions  that  attended  his 
outset  among  them  were  speedily  dispelled  by  acquaintance  with  his  charac- 
ter and  experience  of  his  administration.     From  the  period  of  Ins  appoint- 
ment till  the  recall  of  his  commission,  the  history  of  New  Jersey  exhibits 
little  else  than  a  detail  of  the  controversies,  now  long  forgotten,  m  which 
he  involved  himself  with  the  provincial  assemblies  ;  and  a  display  of  the 
spirit  and  resolution  with  which  these  assembhes  resisted  his  arbitrary  vio- 
lence, condemned  his  partial  distribution  of  justice,  and  exposed  his  fraudu- 
lent misapplication  of  the  public  money.    To  none  of  the  inhabitants  was  his 
administration  more  oppressive  than  to  the  Quakers,  who  were   harassed 
with  numerous  prosecutions  for  refusing,  in  conformity  with  their  religious 
tenets,  to  assemble  at  the  musters  of  the  provincial  militia.     Though  he 
was  unable  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  a  parly  in  this  province,  he  pre- 
vailed, partly  by  bribery  and  partly  by  intimidation,  on  some  of  the  provin- 
cial counsellors  to  subscribe  an  address  to  himself,  commencing  in  these 
terms  :  —  "Your  Lordship  has  not  one  virtue  or  more,  but  a  complete 
accomplishment  of  all  perfections,"  —  and  expressing  the  most  loyal  abhor- 
rence of  the  factious  stubboifnness  of  their  fellow-colonists.    This  ridiculous 
production,  which  he   termed  The  Humble  Address  of  the    Lieutenant- 
Governor  and  Council  of  New  Jersey,  proved  satisfactory  to  the  British 
government,  and  enabled  him  for  some  years  to  defy  the  hatred  of  tlie  colo- 
ny.    But  at  length,  after  repeated  complaints,  the  queen  was  compelled  to 
sacrifice  him  to  the  universal  indignation  he  had  provoked  ;  but  not  till  he 
had  very  effectually,  though  most  unintentionally,  contributed,  by  a  whole- 
some discipline,  to  awaken  and  fortify  a  vigorous  and  vigilant  spirit  of  liberty 
in  two  of  the  colonies  which  were  most  immediately  subjected  to  the  influ- 
ence of  the  crown.     He  .vas  superseded,  in  1708,  by  Lord  Lovelace,  who 
— —  J  srSn7itlK 


BOOK  VI.]      CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  NEW  JERSEY. 


489 


testations  of 


was  at  the  same  time  appointed  his  successor  in  the  government  of  Ne\r 
York.i 

The  attractions  which  the  neighbouring  province  of  Pennsylvania  pre- 
sented to  the  Enghsh  Quakers,  and  the  cessation  which  the  British  RevokK 
tion  produced  of  the  severities  that  had  expelled  so  many  Protestant  Dissent- 
ers from  both  England  and  Scotland,  prevented  the  popiJlation  of  New  Jersey 
from  advancmg  with  the  rapidity  which  its  increase  at  one  period  seemed  to 
betoken.  Yet,  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  province  is  said 
to  have  contained  twenty  thousand  inhabitants,  of  whom  twelve  thousand  be- 
longed to  East,  and  eight  thousand  to  West  Jersey .^  It  is  more  probable 
that  the  total  population  amounted  to  about  fifteen  thousand  persons.  Of 
these,  a  great  majority  were  Quakers,  Presbyterians,  and  Anabaptists.  The 
militia  of  East  Jersey  amounted,  at  this  period,  to  1,400  men.  There  wen.^ 
two  ministers  of  the  church  of  England  in  the  province  ;  but  their  followers 
were  not  sufficiently  numerous  and  wealthy  to  provide  ecclesiastical  edifices.' 
'Hew  Jersey  is  said  to  have  witnessed  an  unusually  long  subsistence  of  vari- 
eties of  national  character  among  its  inhabitants.  Patriotic  attachment  and 
mutual  convenience  had  generally  induced  the  emigrants  from  different  coun- 
tries to  settle  in  distinct  societies  ;  a  circumstance  which  promoted  among 
them  the  preservation  of  their  peculiar  national  manners  and  customs. 
Kalm,  the  traveller,  has  preserved  a  very  agreeable  picture  of  the  rural  life 
and  domestic  habits  of  his  countrymen,  the  early  Swedish  colonists  of  New 
Jersey  and  Delaware.  They  are  said  to  have  been  less  tenacious  of  their 
national  peculiarities  than  the  Dutch,  and  to  have  copied. very  early  the 
manners  of  the  English.  Notwithstanding  some  symptoms  of  a  turbulent 
and  refractory  disposition  which  were  evinced  by  a  portion  of  the  East  Jer- 
sey population  during  the  subsistence  of  the  proprietary  government,  a  much 
more  reasonable  and  moderate  temper  seems  to  have  generally  character- 
ized the  people  of  both  parts  of  the  united  province  ;  whereof  a  strong  tes- 
timony is  afforded  in  the  harmony  which  attended  their  union  by  the  act  of 
the  crown  in  1702,  and  which  even  the  mischievous  agency  of  such  a  pro- 
moter of  discord  as  Lord  Cornbury  was  unable  to  disturb.  Though  sep- 
arated from  each  other  by  differences  of  religious  denomination,  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  eastern  and  western  territories  were  assimilated  by  the  habits 
of  industry  and  frugality  peculiar  alike  to  the  national  character  of  the  Scotch 
and  to  the  sCiCtarian  usages  of  the  Quakers  ;  and  the  prevalence  of  these 
habits,  doubtless,  contributed  to  maintain  concord  and  tranquillity  among  the 
several  races  of  people.  Yet  they  were  always  distinguished  by  the  steadi- 
ness and  ardor  of  their  attachment  to  liberty,  and  a  promptitude  to  asseit 
those  generous  principles  which  had  been  interwoven  with  the  earliest  ele- 
ments of  political  society  in  New  Jersey.  It  is  disagreeable  to  remember 
that  this  manly  appreciation  of  their  own  rights  was  not  always  accompanied 
with  a  proportionate  consideration  of  the  rights  of  others.  Negro  slavery 
was  established  in  New  Jersey  ;  though  at  what  precise  period  or  by  what 
class  of  the  planters  it  was  first  introduced,  we  have  not  now  the  means  of 

'  S.  Soiitli.  "  I  confess,"  says  Oldinixon,  in  the  second  edition  of  his  worlj,  "  it  gives  me  a 
groat  ileal  of  pain,  in  writing  this  liistory,  to  see  what  sort  of  governors  I  meet  with  in  llic 
plnnt.itions.'.' 

'  Warden's  ostiniato  of  the  population  is  much  lower.  Ho  says,  that,  until  the  pence  of 
Utrecht,  in  17i;5,  New  Jersey  never  possessed  more  than  16,000  inliabitants.  Hut  ids  account 
of  this  province  displays  great  negligence  and  inaccuracy.  Holmes  reports  the  population 
iu  hiivr.  amounted  to  15,000  in  the  year  IVOI. 

'  Oldmi.xon. 


VOL.    I. 


62 


490 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VI. 


ascertaininc.  In  spite  of  the  royal  patronage  which  we  have  beheld  tins 
baneful  system  receive,  it  never  attained  more  than  a  very  msigmficant  prev- 
alence throuehout  the  territory.  Even  the  Quakers  in  this  provmce,  as  well 
•IS  in  Pennsylvania,  became  proprietors  of  slaves  ;  but  their  treatment  of 
Ihem  was  generally  distinguished  by  a  relenting  tenderness  and  humanity  ; 
-nd  so  early  as  the  year  1696,  the  leading  members  of  the  Quaker  socieiy 
of  New  Jersey  united  with  their  brethren  in  Pennsylvania  m  recommending 
(though  ineffectually)  to  their  fellow-sectaries  to  desist  from  the  employment 
or  at  least  from  the  forther  importation  of  slaves.  This  interesting  subject 
will  demand  more  particular  consideration  in  the  history  of  1  ennsylvania. 

New  Jersey,  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  had  been  for  some 
time  in  possession  of  an  increasing  trade  ;  but  of  the  extent  of  it.  cornmerce 
at  this  rJeriod  no  accurate  esUmate  can  be  fbn.^       Ihe  expom  horn  he 


Portnsa  ,  and  the  uanary  isies.-     iJiuiuu,  >*......-  ^ r  V,    T     » 

provin^ce;  was  published  in  1686,  remarks,  that  the  town  of  B"rlmgU)n  even 
hen  gave  promise  of  becoming  a  place  ol  considerable  trade.      Ihe  state- 
ness of  the  public  edifices,  and  the  comfort  and  elegancy  of  the  private 
duellings  that  composed  this  town,  are  highly  commended  by  a  writer  whose 
account  of  the  province  was  published  about  ten  years  later  Umn  the.work 
of  Blome.     It  possessed  already  a  thriving  manufacture  of  linen  and  wool- 
bn  cloth.^    This  manufacture,  which  was  also  introduced  at  an  early  period 
iato  Pennsylvania,  so  soon  aroused  the  jealousy  of  the  parent  state,  that  in 
the  year  1699  an  act  of  ,.arliament  was  passed  proli.bu.ng  the  exportation  o 
woo  and  woollen  manufactures  from  the  American  colonies,  under  a  pend- 
ly  of  five  hundred  pounds  for  each  violation  of  the  law,  m  addition  to  the 
forfeiture  of  the  offending  ship  and  cargo.*  •  j   .u    •  i,  v.    . 

t  is  alleged  by  some  writers,  that,  till  a  very  late  period,  the  inhabitants 
of  New  Jersey  betrayed  a  general  neglect  of  education,  together  u.ih  a 
oarse  indifference  to  all  improvement  in  the  arts  of  life,  and  particularly  in 
tiieTr  system  of  agricultural  labor.     This  reproach  has  been  applied  more 
e  ^c  al lyT^  the  descendants  of  the  Dutch  settlers      Yet  the  college  of 
Princeton  was  founded  so  early  as  the  year  1738  ;  the  people  have  always 
enjoyed  a  high  reputation  for  piety,  industry,  economy,  and  good  morals; 
and  no  coloi^al  community,  ev'en  in  iXorth  America,  has  witnessed  a  wider 
SusL,  Pmong  all  classes  of  its  inhabitants,  of  the  comforts  and  conveni- 
ences of  life. »     It  has  been  noted  as  a  singular  peculiarity  m  the.r  manners, 
that  women  in  this  province  engrossed  for  a  long  time  a  considerable  share  in 
e  practice  of  the'medical  art,  and,  except  in  cases  of  great  d.Oicuhy   nd 
importance,  were  the  only  physician^wlKmijhejnlmbimnt^^ 

'""a^Bb-n^  ?rTJoS.^t'romas,  who  wa«  fan.ir.nr  wi.h  .he  ^^^^^^\;^,^;^^i,Z:, 


BOOK  VI.]      CIVIL  AND  DOMESTIC  STATE  01    NEW  JERSEY. 


491 


This  usage  reminds  us  of  that  romantic  system  of  manners,  during  the  prev- 
alence ot  which  the  softness  of  female  service  was  so  often  blended  with 
the  ministrations  of  medical  science  by  the  high-born  damsels  who  graced 
the  age  ot  chivalry.  ° 

It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance  for  the  inhabitants  of  New  Jersey,  that 
the  conterminous  Indian  tribes  were  inconsiderable  in  number,  and  almost 
always  willing  to  cultivate  iriendly  relations  with  the  Europeans.  The  grav- 
ity, simplicity,  and  courtesy  of  Quaker  manners  were  particularly  agreeable 
to  those  savages.  Samuel  Smith,  the  historian  of  this  province,  has  pre- 
served an  account  of  a  visit  paid  by  an  aged  Indian  king  to  the  inhabitants 
of  Burlington,  m  the  year  1682.  Being  attacked  during  the  visit  with  a  mor- 
tal distemper,  the  old  man  sent  for  the  heir  of  his  authority,  and  delivered  to 
him  a  charge  replete  with  prudent  and  reasonable  maxims.  Thomas  Budd, 
a  Quaker,  and  one  of  the  proprietaries  of  the  province,  was  present  on 
this  solemn  occasion,  and  "  took  the  opportunity  to  remark  that  there  was  a 
great  God  who  created  all  things  ;  that  he  gave  man  an  understanding 
of  what  was  good  and  bad  ;  and  after  this  life  reicarded  the  good  with  bles- 
sings, and  the  bad  according  to  their  doings.  The  king  answered.  It  is 
very  true  ;  it  is  so  ;  there  are  two  ways,  a  broad  and  a  strait  way ;  there 
are  two  paths,  a  broad  and  a  strait  path  ;  the  worst  and  the  greatest  number 
go  in  the  broad  ;  the  best  and  fewest  in  the  strait  path.  This  king,  dyin^^ 
soon  afterwards,  was  attended  to  his  grave,  in  the  Quakers'  burial-place  in 
Burlington,  with  their  national  solemniti'-s,  by  the  Indians,  and  with  tokens 
of  respect  by  many  of  the  Enghsh  setvlers."^ 

In  the  year  1695,  the  governor's  salary  in  East  Jersey  was  one  liundred 
and  fifty  pounds  ;  in  West  Jersey,  two  hundred  pounds.  From  the  year 
1702,  when  the  two  provinces  were  united  and  surrendered  to  the  crown, 
till  the  year  1738,  the  government  of  New  Jersey  was  always  committed  to 
the  same  individual  who  enjoyed  the  corresponding  authority  at  New  York  ; 
and  during  that  period  the  salary  attached  to  the  office  of  governor  in  New 
Jersey  was  six  hundred  pounds.*^ 

tended  the  elective  franchise  in  New  Jersey  to  women.  The  N^^^e^^women,  however, 
showed  themse  yes  worthy  of  the  respect  of  their  countrymen,  by  generally  declining  to  avail 
tiiemselyes  of  this  preposterous  proof  of  it.  Yet,  according  to  the  statement  of  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau  in  her  work  entitled  Society  inAmmca,  a  number  of  New  Jersey  women  actually  at- 
tended elections  and  gave  their  votes.  The  law  that  invited  such  absurdity  was  repealed  a 
few  years  after  its  enactment.  "  I  do  not  believe,"  says  Dr.  Dwiglit,  "  that  a  single  woman, 
bond  or  free,  ever  appeared  at  an  e  ection  in  New  England  since  the  colonization  of  the  coun- 
try. It  would  be  as  much  as  her  character  was  worth." 
'  Oldmixon.    S.  Smith.  2  g  gnjjtl,. 


BOOK    VII. 


PENNSYLVANIA   AND   DELAWARE 
CHAPTER    I. 

Birth  and  C'laracter  of  William  Pcnn.— He  solicits  a  Grant  of  American  Territory  from 
Charles  the  Second.  —  Cliarter  of  Pennsylvania.  —Object  and  Meaning  of  the  Clauses  pe- 
culiar  to  this  Charter.  —  English  and  American  Oninions  thereon.  —  1  enn  s  Policy  to  ncoiile 
hid  Territories.  — Emigration  of  tluakers  to  the  Provmce.  —  Letter  from   1  enn  to  the  In. 


Duko  of  York  to  Penn  — who  sails  for  America- his  lovful  Reception  there. -ISumerous 
Emigrations  to  the  Province.  — First  Legislative  Assembly.  —Pennsylvania  and  Delaware 
united  —Controversy  with  Lord  Baltimore. —  Treaty  with  the  Lidiuns.  — Second  Assem- 


bly_new  Frame  of  Government  adopted. —  Pluludeli.hia  tounded.  —  1  omi  s  Return  lo 
England  — and  Fmewell  to  his  People. 

William  Penn,  so  renowned  as  a  patriarch  and  champion  of  the  Qua- 
kers,  and  a  founder  of  civilized  society  in  North  America,  was  the  $or.  of 
that  naval  commander,  who,  under  the  protectorate  of  Cromwell,  enlarged 
the  British  dominions  by  the  conquest  of  Jamaica.  [October  14,  1644.] 
This  was  the  first  colony  that  England  acquired  by  her  arms,  rsewlork 
was  the  next  :  for  Acadia,  though  conquered  in  the  interim  by  CromweH's 
forces,  did  not  then  become  an  English  settlement,  and  was  surrendered  by 
Charles  the  Second,  soon  after  his  restoration.  It  is  another  example  of 
the  strange  concatenation  of  human  aflairs,  that  the  second  instance  of  tlie 
acquisition  of  a  colony  by  the  British  arms  should  have  been  the  means  ol 
introducing  the  son  of  the  first  conqueror  as  a  Quaker  colonist  and  a  preacher 

of  peace  in  America.  „  ,    .  ,  ,      ,       ,    ,  ^     c 

His  father,  who  attained  the  dignity  of  knighthood  and  the  rank  ot  an 
admiral,  was  the  descendant  of  a  respectable  English  family.  Devoting  him- 
self to  the  naval  service  of  his  country  in  the  commencement  of  the  civil 
wars,  he  espoused  the  cause  of  the  parliament,  and  subsequently  adhered  to 
the  fortunes  of  Cromwell.     From  a  humble  station  in  the  service  of  these 
authorities,  he  was  p.-omoted  to  a  dignified  and  important  command  ;  and  m 
the  war  with  Holland,  he  cooperated  in  the  achievements  and  partook  ilie 
renown  of  the  illustrious  Admiral  Blake.    He  gained  the  esteem  of  the  1  ro- 
tector,  and  retained  it  till  the  failure  of  the  expedition  which  he  conducted 
a-'ainst  St.  Domingo.     It  is  asserted  very  confidently  by  some  historians, 
and  oarticidarly  by  all  the  Quaker  writers,  that  this  disaster  was  occasioned 
by  tlie  fault  of  Venables,  who  commanded  the  land  forces,  and  could  not 
fairly  be  attributed  to  Admiral  Penn  :  but  Cromwell,  who  understood  military 
afiai'rs  better  than  these  writers  can  be  supposed  to   have  done,  was  so  far 
from  acquitting  the  admiral  of  blame,  that  he  imprisoned  him  m  the  i  ower, 
and  never  afterwards  intrusted  him  with  any  public  employ.'      Ihis  cu'- 
cumstance,  perhaps,  contributed  to  the  favor  which  he  enjoyed  at  court  alter 
the  Restoration  ;  when  he  scrupled  not  to  accept  title  and  employment  trom 
a  governnieiil  liiat  sngmatizcd  tiic  sriviet- m  uHKn  t.e  >.«^  ^}u\...u..i,^^ 
~  ~  '  Lord  Clarendon  a  Life,    llolmeg. 


CHAP.  I.] 


WILLIAM  PENN. 


493 


mmand  ;  and  in 


gaged,  by  the  insults  u  heaped  on  the  memory  of  Blake.i  It  is  alleged  of 
l,„n  by  Bishop  Burnet,  that  he  earned  the  friendship  of  the  Duke  of  Yoik 
w.th  whom  he  commanded  at  sea  in  the  Dutch  war  of  1665,  by  dcxterouslv' 
ouabuig  th.s  pnnce  to  avoid  a  renewed  action  with  the  encmy^  fleet,  wi  h- 
outhavag  seemed  to  dechne  it.  Other  writers,  and  especially  thos^  who 
profess  the  tenets  or  patronize  the  fame  of  his  son,  have  affirmed  that  the 
.dmii-a  owed  his  favor  with  the  king  and  the  duke  to  no  other  recommenda! 

TA   W.l  ^Hn         r  n""'"'  ^"^"/  '"'^  "^'^"'^^-     H«  ^^«s  impeached,  in 
166S,  by  the  House  of  Commons,  for  embezzling  prize  money     but,  fiim 

some  unexplained  circumstance,  the  impeachment  was  permitted  to  drop.^ 
The  favor  which  he  enjoyed  at  court,  whatever  might  be  the  source  of  it, 
was  so  considerable,  as  to  aulhonze  the  most  ambitious  hopes  of  the  ad- 
vancement of  his  son,  and  proportionally  to  embitter  lus  disappoimment  at 
beholding  the  young  man  embrace  a  profession  of  faith  which  not  only  ex- 
cluded lis  votaries  from  offic.a  dignity,  but  exposed  them  to  the  severity  of 
penal  law  the  displeasure  of  churchmen,  and  the  derision  of  courtiers.  The 
younger  Penn  s  predilection  for  Die  Quakers,  first  excited  by  the  discourses 
cf  one  of  their  itinerant  preachers,  was  manifested  at  the  early  age  of  six- 
teen, with  so  much  warmth  and  impetuosity,  as  to  occasion  his  expulsion 
nom  the  University  of  Oxford.  His  faUier  endeavoured  to  prevail  with  him 
10  abandon  principles  and  manners  so  ill  calculated  to  promote  his  worldly 
graiideur  j  and,  finding  arguments  ineffectual,  resorted  to  blows,  and  even 
banished  fum  from  his  house,  with  no  better  success.  Along  with  the  pe 
ciiliarities  of  Quakerism,  the  young  convert  had  received  the  first  profound 
impression  w  iich  he  ever  experienced  of  the  truth  and  importance  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  and  both  were  for  ever  uiseparably  blended  together  in  his  mind 
he  treatment  he  underwent  from  his  father  tended  to  confirm  his  belief 
tliat  Quakerism  was  a  revival,  of  that  pure  and  primitive  Christianity  which 
was  fated  to  occasion  the  division  of  households  and  the  dissolution  of  the 
strongest  ties  of  natural  affection.  At  last,  the  admiral  devised  a  metliod 
of  sapping  the  principles  which  he  could  not  overthrow  ;  and,  for  this  pur- 
pose,  sent  his  son  to  travel,  with  some  young  men  of  quality,  in  France^ 
then  the  gayest  and  most  licentious  country  of  Europe.  This  device,  which 
reflects  little  credit  on  the  parental  concern  by  which  it  was  prompted,  was 
attended  with  apparent  success.  Quakerism  and  Christianity  were  checked 
alike,  for  a  time,  m  the  mind  of  Penn,  who  returned  to  his  gratified  father 
with  the  maimers  of  an  elegant  gentleman  and  the  sentiments  of  a  man  of 
pleasure.      Cut,Jwvjngj;epjwed^_thc  year  166^,  to  Ireland,  in  order-  to 

'  In  alluding  to  tlie  J.istory  and  character  of  his  father,  William  Penn  is  divided  bctwoon  a 

naurnl  elation  at  his  republican  honors,  and  an  unwillingness  to  have  Iiim  considered  an  aeso- 

.latc  of  rcpubl.oons  and  antagonist  of  royalty.     "From  a  lieutenant,"  says  the  son,  "he 

tssml  througn  all  the  ennnent  offices  of  sea  employment,  and  arrived  to  that  of  generalabout 

he  thirtieth  year  of  his  age;  in  a  time  full  of  tlio  biggest  sea  actions  that  anyl.istory  inen- 

ons;  and  when  neither  bribes  nor  all.an.o,  flivor  nor  allSction,  but  ability  only,  could  promote." 

I!  adds  however,- "He  was  engaged  both  under  the  parliament  and  king;  but  not  ns  an 

actorin  the  domestic  troubles;  his  compass  always  steering  him  to  eye  a  national  concern, 

nd  no    Hitestme  wars.    II.s  service,  tlicrcfijre,  being  wholFy  foreign,  lie  may  be  truly  said  t.l 

T!  ,'."«^°""jry.  ;«"'"  than  either  of  these  interests,  so  far  as  they  were  distinct  from  each 

i'       Jn     ^  ""'"'■y  "S  P"l^>s>jhania.     Oldmixon  (2d  edition)  thus  characterizes  thv  »J. 

iniral :  —    1  0  was  a  strong  Independent,  and  so  continued  till  the  Restoration  ;  when,  finding 

IS"  ri  Iftle  oVyoI-*^'  "'""■  '""'"' '"  ""^  ^""''■^  ""''  ^'  P""^^  "'^''  ^'"« 
'  Howell's  Slate  Trials. 

'  To  reconcile  this  well  authentic  ated  conduct  of  the  admiral  with  the  interest  which  ftua- 
I  ler  writers  have  displayed  in  defence  of  his  reputation,  it  is  neceiffeary  to  remember  that  fc« 

PP 


494 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


inspect  an  estate  that  belonged  to  his  family  in  this  country,  it  was  here  again 
Kte  to  meet  with  the  same  itinerant  preacher  ^v^o  had  exerc.sed  so  much 
fluence  o^  him  six  years  before,  at  Oxford.     H.s  former  designation  o 
hd  was  now  reproduced  with  deeper  conviction  and  increased  zeal  and 
enorKy  ;  and  speedily  elicited  from  him  a  public,  solemn  and  resolute  pro- 
Sn  of  his  espousal  of  the  principles  and  practices  of  the  Quakers      In 
ab  were  his  father's  instances  once  more  repeated,  and  the    emporal  dig- 
nWes  which   eemed  only  to  wait  his  acceptance  pressed  ^vJth  fond  and  pa- 
"hedc  earnestness  on  his  regard.     It  was  even  m  vain  that  the  admiral, 
despairs  of  farther  concession,  restricted  his  solicitation  to  such  a  slender 
aespaiing  o    m.  ^^^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^  uncover  his 

fr/in  th  ;;  sencVof  ?h:  kin  the  Duke  of  York,  and  his  parents.  Penn's 
eve  was  now  elevated  to  the  contemplation  o  objects  so  glorious  and  ex- 
ahed  as  to  eclipse  the  lustre  of  earthly  grarideur  and  dissipate  the  illusions 
of  temporal  distbction;  and  his  resolution  (hardened  by  an  early  experience 
of  mXonment,  and  other  legal  severities)  was  wound  up  to  such  a  pitch  of 
fi  mX  anHntensity,  that  he  refused  to  lay  even  a  single  gram  of  incense  on 
wharhe  deemed  aLuihallowed  altar  of  human  arrogance  and  vanity.  He 
now  devoted  all  the  large  resources  of  his  capacity  to  the  defence  and  prop- 
Son  of  the  Quaker  tenets,  and  sacrificed  his  temporal  ease  and  tnjoy- 
me?to  the  niustration  of  the  Quaker  virtues, -wUh  a  success  tha^  has 
Sd  for  him  a  renown  more  brilliant  and  extended  than  the  amb'tibu  o 
his  fler  ever  ventured  to  hope,  or  the  utmost  favor  of  h.s  sovereign  could 

'"it  TuK  be  easy  to  figure  a  more  interesting  career  than  that  which  is 
exhbUed  in  the  greater  portion  of  his  subsequent  life.     He  travelled  over 
many  part    ofESrope,  and  even  extended  his  personal  labors  to  America ; 
Lnd  Everywhere,  from  the  courts  of  Germa^  pr  nces  to  the  encampments 
of  Indbn  savages,  we  find  him  overcoming  evil  by  good,  and  disarming 
human  vblencelnd  ferocity  by  gentleness,  patience,  and  piety      In  his  ex- 
terior  appearance  and  address,  were  combined,  m  an  unusual  deg  ee,  a  ven- 
erable dEy  and  gravity  of  aspect,  with  a  frank,  cheerful  simphcity  of  man- 
ner and  a  Xle  of  language  fraught  with  plainness,  vigor  and  good-humor. 
His' face  wa    a  very  uncommon  one,  and  its  lineaments,  though  by  no  means 
fine    werlfar   from  unpleasing,  and   were   rendered  by  tlie.r  peculiarity 
more  deeply  and  lastingly  imprlssive.      With  the  general  corpulence  which 
h"s  frame  aUaTned  as  he  advanced  in  years,  his  face  underwent  a  propo  - 
tiona  enLrgement  of  its  dimensions  ;  and  while  his  eye  expressed  consi  - 
erate  thought  and  strength  of  undej;^nding,jhe_ann>luud^an^^ 

I'roud.     Clarkson.  .        .       ,_, <-.i,„  „„„n»  mnvftrt  was  not  at  first  entirely 

appears  tliat 


It  must  be 
unexceptionable 


considered,  also,  that  the  demeanour  of  the  young  convert  was  not  at 
b7e"^'tto,d;nixon-saccountofPennsexpu^^^^^^^^^^ 


account  ot  renn  s  expuisiun  n"—  ^-"-•-,  — rr 

i;irfir;r;;"p=ofQ7akeri^^^^ 

"  He  was  k  student  at  Christ  Church,  6xon.,  ^'»'«n  ^n  "  J^.^^  Sbo  custom  of  ancient 

tlipir  heads."    Oldmixon  (2(1  edition).  i„j  o„fl.,  M,ith  thn  wishes  of  hij 

'"^Lr.  is  no  account  of  Winian^Pennhav.ng  ever  com^^^^^^^^  „^„^„ 

father  aa  to  enter  into  the  army      Vet  1  nave  seen  ""  ""P^-   ^.F    _,  ,^„  „„„  „p  iwfintv-lwn 
of  his  descendant  at  Stoke^in  BuckingUdBisnirc,  rcprcscru.ns  x,»..,  « „ 

■Uired  in  complete  armor. 


CHAP.  I.] 


WILLIAM  PENN. 


495 


of  the  rest  of  his  features  seemed  to  indicate  an  habitual  tranquillity  of  soirit 
A  mmd  so  con  emplat.ve,  and  a  life  so  active, -such  a  mhctu  e  of  S: 
ness  and  reso  ufon,  of  patience  and  energy,  of  industry  and  genius,  of  Toff; 
piety  and  profound  sagacty,  -  have  rarlly  been  exemplified  in  the  records 
of  human  character.    The  most  pious  and  the  most  voluminous  he  was  a^o 

01  Quakerism  ,  and,  at  the  same  time,  next  to  George  Fox,  the  most  in- 
defatigab  e  muKster  that  the  Quakers  of  Britain  have  ever  possesseTH; 
contrived  to  exh.bu  at  once  the  active  and  passive  virtues  su  table  to  a 
champton  and  a  confessor  of  Quakerism  ;  and  the  same  prisons    hat  wit! 

"fht  ^n  r  Tk  '"^T^  ^''  '^'  "^^''  °f  his  brethren  were^lso  he   cene 
of  h.s  most  elaborate  hterary  efforts  for  their  instruction.      AmonVo'her 
Quaker  pecuhar.taes,  h.s  writings  are  distinguished  by  a  tedious  prJlixty 
yet  not  much  more  so  than  the  productions  of  the  most  celebrated  contem- 
porary authors  of  different  religious  persuasion.     They  abound  w'thn^- 
merous  passages  replete  al.ke  with  the  finest  eloquence  and  the  mos"  fore 
ble  reasoning,  engagmg  benevolence  and  fervenJ  piety.     He  wT  deeply 
uifected  with  the  doctrinal  errors  of  the  Quakers  ;  yet  more  deeX  iSed 
with  the  spirit  of  divine  truth  than  many  who  profess  to  hold  it  devoid  of 
such  appendages  ;  and,  notwithstanding  the  tendency  of  these  doctrinal  er- 
rors to  lead  men  who  have  thoroughly  embraced  them  int^Lntic  and  in 
decent  excesses,  there  were  none  of  the  Quaker  leaders  who  contrTbuted 
more  signally  than  Penn  to  the  establishment  of  a  system  of  orderly  dUct 
pline  throughout  the  sectarian  society.     This  was  a  work  of  such  difficu  ty 
and  so  repugnant  to  the  sentiments  of  many  who  regarded  discipline  as  Tn 

hat  all  the  mfluence  of  Penn's  character  and  address,  and  all  thf  weight 

htZl^  ?"\^"  ^'^"'^rf  ^  ^"^^""Ss,  were  requisit'e,  and  indeed  hZ 
ly  sufficed,  to  its  successful  accomplishment.     Except   George  Fox,  no 

tier  individual  has  ever  enjoyed  so  much  authority  in  this  society,  or  so 
fully  sustained  the  character  of  a  patriarch  of  the  Quakers.  Tho^ugh  hi^ 
pnnciples  excluded  him  from  the  official  dignities  which  his  father  had  cov! 
eted  lor  fiim,  they  did  not  prevent  him  from  attaining  a  high  degree  of  favor 
and  consideration  both  with  Charies  the  Second  and  his  successor  ;  .vhich 
3X0'^''"'  "'"^°''  of  his  power,  for  the  relief  of  persecuted  mem- 

rs  of  the  Quaker  society.  Whatever  were  the  services  of  the  admiral, 
!lt'H"'h  V  '^'y^^''.'f  ^'^  «^t^"ded  to  his  son  ;  nor  was  its  efficacy 
impaired  by  his.  visible  influence  over  a  numerous  body  of  men,  whose 
avowed  renunciation  of  the  rights  of  resistance  and  self-defence  could  not 
lail  to  conciliate  the  regards  of  arbitrary  princes. 1 

rhere  exists,  in  all  mankind,  a  propensity  to  unbounded  admiration,  aris- 
ing Irom  an  indistinct  glimpse  and  faint  remaining  trace  of  that  image  of 
nifm.  e  majesty  and  purity  with  which  their  existence  connects  them,  and 
0  winch  their  nature  once  enjoyed  a  closer  conformity  than  it  has  been 

e  to  retain.     We  may  consider  either  as  the  expression  of  this  propen- 

y,  or  the  apology  for  indulging  it,  that  eagerness  to  claim  the  praise 
ot  faultless  perfection  for  the  objects  of  our  esteem,  which  perhaps  truly 
indicates  a  secret  consciousness  that  it  is  only  to  excellence  above  the 
reach  of  humamty  that  our  admiration  can"  ever  be  justly  due.  This  error 
ha3_been  exemplified  in  ajvery  remarkable  degree  by  the  biographers  of 

'  Proud.     Clarkson's  Ufe  of  Pcnn7    ~  ' 


496 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


Penn  and  the  historians  of  his  transactions  and  institution?  in  America. 
The  unmixed  and   unmerited  encomium,  which  his  character  and  labors 
have  received,  originated,  no  doubt,  with  the  writers  of  his  own  rehg.ous 
nersuasion.;  but,  so  far  from  being  confined  to  them,  it  has  been  even  exag- 
cerated  by  writers  of  a  totally  diflerent  class,  and  whose  seeming  irapartiali- 
Fy  has  contributed,  in  a  remarkable  degree,  to  fortify  and  propagate  the 
illusion.     The  Quakers  have  always  enjoyed,  with  some  infidel  philoso- 
phers,»  a  reputation  which  no  other  professors  of  Christianity  have  been 
permitted  to  share  ;  partly  because  they  were  accounted  the  fnends  of  un- 
limited toleration,  and  partly  from  an  erroneous  rdea  that  their  Christian 
name  was  but  a  thin  mystical  covering,  which  veiled  the  pure  and  simple 
light  of  reason  and  philosophy  from  eyes  yet  too  gross  to  receive  it.    llelus- 
ing  to  define  their  doctrinal  tenets  by  a  creed,  and  having  already  evacuated 
by  alleKorical  interpretation  some  of  the  plainest  precepts  of  the  gospel, 
the  Quakers  were  expected  by  their  philosophical  panegyrists  to  pave  the 
way  for  a  total  dissolution  of  Christianity,  by  gradually  allegorizing  the  whole 
of  the  Scriptures.     By  the  united  efforts  of  these  several  tributaries  to  his 
fame,  William  Penn  has  been  presented  to  the  worid  as  a  character  nearly, 
if  not  entirely,  faultless  ;  as  the  author  of  institutions  not  less  admirable  for 
their  wisdoin  than  their  originality,  and  not  less  amply  than  instantaneously 
productive  of  the  gratitude  and  happiness  of  mankmd.^   How  exaggerated  .s 
[his  picture  of  the  merit  and  the  effects  of  his  institutions  will  appear  but 
too  dearly  from  the  following  pages.     That  the  dazzling  light  with  which 
his  character  has  been  invested  was  sulhed  with  the  specks  of  moHal  im- 
perfection is  also  a  truth  which  it  is  more  easy  than  agreeable  to  demon- 
slrate.     But  excellence,  the  more  credibly  it  is  represented,  is  the  more  ef- 
fectually  recommended  to  imitation  and  esteem;  and  those  who  maybe 
conscious  of  such  infirmities  as  William  Penn  betrayed  receive  an  impor- 
tant  lesson,  when  they  are  taught  that  these  imperfections  neither  mev.tably 
obstruct,  nor  satisfactorily  apologize  for,  deficiency  of  even  the  most  cxem- 

^'^'J^tlTcommencement  of  his  very  controversial  career,  Penn  treated  his 
opponents  with  an  arrogance  of  disdain,  and  a  coarseness  and  scurnlity 
of  vituperation,  strangely  inconsistent  with  the  mildness  of  mp.ners  enjoined 
by  the  canons  of  Quakerism,  and  even  with  xommon  decency  and  propriety. 
li  redounds  to  his  credit  that  he  corrected  this  fault,  and  graced  his  wisdom 
with  an  address  replete  with  courtesy  and  kindness.  But  another  change 
that  occurred  in  his  disposition  presents  him  in  an  aspect  which  it  is  ess 
pleasing  to  contemplate.  Recommended  to  Charies  the  Second  and  ih. 
monarch's  successir  by  a  hereditarvjclaimof  regard,  by  the  principles  of 

■-,    . „„  ^.h^TrVoltii^it^lMdmrt.  Ravnal,  Mirnboau,  and  Brissot.     Hume,  m  his  Ihstory, 

of  France.  ,    -  .         , 

r,f^?  ThoribS  v!whi,rPom,"on  tl,i,  occasion  co,ul««cm.d  1»  ou.plo,    »«.  borromd 

Qtutkern  lual  CiVJt  jovna  rmt,  iviiu  tu3=rTciT;«   ..   .\- ■= '      3 

Jfaiud  Trvth  needs  no  Shifi 


CHAP.  I.] 


WILLIAM  PENN. 


497 


passive  obedience,— which,  as  a  Quaker,  he  professed,  and  as  a  writer 
contributed  widely  to  d'  ",eminate,  —  and  by  the  uillingness  with  which  he  and 
lus  lellow-sectanes  alo  .e,  of  ail  the  Biiiisli  Protcslai.ts,  recognized  the  des- 
potic prerogative  affected  by  tlie  crown,\.f  suspending  die  ordinances  of  the 
legislature,  —  he  was  admitted  to  a  degree  of  favor  and  intimacy  with  those 
perfidious  and  tyrannical  princes,  which  laid  a  dangerous  snare  for  the  integ- 
rity ol  his  character  and  the  rectitude  of  his  conduct.     It  was  natural  that 
he  and  Ins    riend.-,  op])ressed  by  the  severe  intolerance    of  parliamentary 
legislation,  slipuld  regard  with  more  favor  the  arbitrary  power  which  was 
sometmies  interposed  for  their  relief,  than  the  constitutional  authority  which 
was  uniformly  directed  to  dieir  mtleslation.     But  the  other  Protestant  Dis- 
senters in  general  beheld  with  di:.g.!si  and  suspicion  the  boon  of  a  temporary 
mitigation  ot    egal  rigor,  whicji  implied  a  power  in  the  ;rown  subversive  of 
every  bulwark  of  British  liberty.     As  the   political  agent  of  his  society, 
cultivating  the  friendship  of  a  tyrant,  and  seeking  a  shelter  under  his  pre- 
rogative Irom  the  existing  huvs„Penn  occupied  a  situation  regulated  by  no 
established  maxims  of    duty,  or    ascertained  principles  ;>   and    becoming 
gradually  lamiharized  with  arbitrary  power,  he  scrupled  not  to  beseech  its 
interposition  m  behalf  of  his  own  private  concernments,  and  to  employ,  for 
the  enlargement  of  his  American  territory,  at  the  expense  of  the  prior  right 
of  Lord  Baltimore,  the  same  authority  which  he  had  accustomed  himself 
to  respect  as  an  engine  of  public  good  and  religious  toleration.     Dazzled, 
rather  than  corrupted,  by  royal  favor  and  confidence,  he  beheld  nothing 
in  the  character  of  the  British  princes  that  reproved  his  friendship  with 
tliem,  or  prevented  it  from  becoming  even  more  intimate  and  confidential,  at 
a  period  when  their  tyrannical  designs  were  already  fully  developed,  their 
perfidy  unmasked  to  every  other  eye,  and  the  hands  from  which  he  solicited 
favors  were  imbrued  with  the  blood  of  men  whom  he  had  loved  as  friends, 
and  reverenced  as  the  most  estimable  and  illustrious  characters  in  England. 
While  as  yet  the  struggle  between  the  popular  leaders  and  the  abettors 
of  arbitrary  power  had  not  issued  in  the  triumph  of  royal  prerogative, 
Penn  seemed  to  participate  in  the  sentiments  that  were  cherished  by  the 
friends  of  liberty.     He  addressed  his  supplications,  for  repeal  of  the  penal 
laws  against  Dissenters,  to  the  House  of  Commons  ;  he  attached  himself 
to  Algernon  Sydney,  and  endeavoured  to  promote  his  election  in  a  competi- 
tion with  a  court  candidate  for  the  borough  of  Guildford  ;^  and  we  have 
seen  how  he  cooperated  in  the  magnanimous  vindication  of  the  rights  of 
West  Jersey  against  the  encroachments  of  the  Duke  of  York.     But  when 
the  cause  of  liberty  seemed  for  ever  to  have  sunk  beneath  the  victorious 
ascendency  of  royal  prerogative,  he  applied  to  the   crown  for  that  relief 
from  the  rigor    of  ecclesiastical   law,   which   he  had   already  practically 
avowed  to  be  legally  derivable  from  the  parliament  alone  ;  he  beheld  his 
friend   Sydney  perish  on  a  scaffold,  the  victim  of  patriotic  virtue,  without 
any  interruption  of  cordiality  between  himself  and  the  court  ;  and  when 
James  the  Second  committed  a  far  greater  outrage  on  the  rights  of  Magda- 
len College  of  Oxford  than  the  encroachment  he  had  attempted  on  the  lib- 
ertics  of  New  Jersey,  Penn's^dvice  to   the  academic   authorities  was  to 

'  That  Penn  did  not  acknowledge  the  snme  duties,  as  a  politician^  which  he  prescribed  to 
himsell  (13  a  Quaker,  appears  from  his  witlidrawinj;  from  a  state  warrant  that  was  issued  fw 
his  imprisonrnent  on  a  political  charge  by  Kinj;Wil!iam,(Proud)  —  an  evasion  which  ho  n.-vo* 
stooped  to,  when  he  wiia  persecuted  for  iiis  religions  practices. 

*  Clarksnn, 

VOL.     I.  63  bdW 


pp 


498 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMIUUCA. 


[DOOK  VII. 


appease  the  kinr;  by  apologies  for  their  past  comhict,  whirl.,  at  the  same 
time   he  acknowledged  to  have  been  not  only  bhunch^ss,  but  upright  and 
commendable. I     Nay,  as  if  to  render  the  change  ol   his  disposition  still 
more  signally  conspicuous,  he  concurred  with  the    other  proprietaries  of 
Fast  Jersey  in  tamely  surrendering  the  liberties  of  (Ins  {.Tovihce  to  the  same 
prince,  against  whom,  when  supported  by  the  spirit  of  better  times,  he  had 
so  strenuously  defended  the  freedom  of  its  sister  colony.     1  enn  was  vol- 
untarily present  at  the  execution  of  Mrs.  Gaunt,  an  aged  lady,  renowned 
for  her  piety  and  charity,  who  was  burnt  alive  for  having  given  shelter  to  a 
person  in  distress,  whom  she  knew  not  at  the  time  to  have  been  a  fugitive 
from  the  rebel  army  of  the  Duke  of   Monmouth;    and  at  the  execution 
of  Alderman  Cornish,  who  was  hanged  before  the  door  of  his  own  house, 
for  a  pretended  trei,^on,  of  which  nobody  believed  him  to  be  guilty       The 
only  sentiment  that  he  is  reported  to  have  expressed  in  relation  to  these 
atrocities  was,  that  "  the  king  was  greally  to  be  intredhv  the  evil  counsels 
that  hurried  him  into  so  much  effusion  of  blood.'  •«    When  it  is  considered 
that,  after  all  this,  Penn's  eyes  were  not  opened  \to  the  real  character  of 
James,  and  that,  on  the  contrary,  his  friendship  with  the  barbarous  tyrant 
continued  to  subsist,  and  even  to  increase,  till  the  very  last, -it  seems  by 
no  means  surprising  that  his  contemporaries  should  have  generally  regarded 
him  as  a  secret  abettor  of  all  the  monarch's  designs  for  the  reestabhshmcnt 
of  the  church  of  Rome  in  Britain  and  the  destruction  of  British  liberty 
It  was,  perhaps,  fortunate  for  his  fame  that  the  public  displeasure  vented 
itself  in  this  injustice  ;  the  detection  of  which  has  contributed  to  shel  er  h.rn 
oven  from  the  milder  but  more  merited  censure  of  an  infatuated  se  f-com- 
placence  and  credulity,  inspired  by  the  flattering  idea  that  he  would  ulti- 
mately render  the  royal  authority  entirely  subservient  to  the  accomplishment 
of  his  own  religious  and  philanthropic  views.  ,,       ,  r      v.-     5 

The  character  of  William  Penn  has  not  escaped  the  charge  of  ambition, 
—  a  charge  which  admits  of  such  variety  of  signification,  that  perhaps  no 
human  being  was  ever  entirely  exempt  from  it.  If  restriction  to  ends  merely 
selfish  constitute  the  depravity  of  ambition,  a  nobler  and  more  generous 
range  may  be  allowed  to  make  ambition  virtue.  Assuredly,  Penn  wa 
neither  conscious  nor  susceptible  of  that  vile  and  vulgar  aspiration  that 
courts  a  personal  distinction  and  superiority  obtained  by  the  depression  and 
spoliation  of  mankind.  Of  the  wish  to  derive  a  reflected  lustre  from  the 
happiness  and  improvement  which  others  might  owe  to  him,  't  's  ne.thei  so 
easy  nor  so  desirable  to  absolve  him.  Nor,  perhaps,  was  he  wholly  insensi- 
ble to  the  influence  of  a  temptation  which  this  refined  ambition  is  very  ap 
to  beget,  — the  desire  of  enlarging  and  |,erp^ua^tingjb^uthority^whicli 

-  .  p|..lk„„n       Hbid"  ^See  Note  XXVII.,  at  th«  end  of  the  volume. 

.  He'pTlUhed  a  book  in  favor  of  tho  kin.'s  attempts  to  -'f  f^ '^HntoX  «  r. 

'•'ttn'tS  bit  v^Jy  pSl  >vritcr,  .ho  boldly  essays  to  beat  d.vv„  all  P-;;^-:^ 
t,,  generous  virtue,  1ms  characterized  him  as  "  a  man  of  groat  «»«pt»?  f  ..^':',''«'„'!;"„:';^i:i='„„ 


,  more 


;;.^;r^^qual  dissimulation;  "f  e;t;:;me"^t Jo^^^ei^T^^anu^  SSf  ""' 

b.t.on;  aAd  'of  an  address  in  proportion  to^alljhese        C[->'^«-.„,'^™J;y'Juh^  to 

favorable  are  liie  nuntiraents  exprcsscu  l-y  t^x.  1  jatiKHn  s e , 

the  character  of  Penn, 


CHAP.  I.]  PENN  SOLICITS  A   GRANT  OF  TERRITORY. 


499 


such  benefits  might  cijntmue  to  be  conferred  by  himself  and  his  posterity. 
It  has  been  al  eged  of  more  than  one  benefactor  of  the  liun.an  rice,  that, 
confident  of  their  good  intentions,  and  habituated  to  power,  they  liave 
coveted  the  possession  of  it  somewhat  too  eagerly,  as  a  peruliaily  efficient 
instrurnent  of  human  welOire.  But  it  is  time  to  proceed  from  these  prefa- 
tory  obsorvations  on  the  character  of  this  distinguished  person,  to  a  con- 
sideration of  that  portion  of  his  Hfe  which  is  identified  with  the  history 
ol  Delaware  and  tlie  rise  of  Pennsylvania. 

The  circumstances  by  which  the  attention  of  Penn  was  first  directed  to 
the  colonization  of  .North  America  have  already  been  unfolded  in  the  early 
annals  of  New  Jersey      While  he  was  engaged  with  Jiis  Quaker  associates 
in  administering  the  New  Jersey  government,  he  received  such  information 
of   he  fertility  and  resources  of  the  country  situated  to  the  westward  of  the 
Delaware,  as  inspired  him  with  the  desire  of  acrp.iring  a  separate  estate  in 
this  quarter    [June    1680.]     For  this  purpose,  he  presented  a  petition  to 
Charles  the  Second,  stating  Ins  relationship  to  the  deceased  admiral,  and  his 
claim  for  a  debt  mcurred  by  the  crown  to   his  father,  at  the  time  when 
Shaftesbury  s  memorable  device  was  adopted,  of  shutting  the  exchequer  ; 
soliciting,  on  these  accounts,  a  grant  of  land  to  the  northward  of  Maryland, 
and  westward  of  the  Delaware  ;  and  representing,  that,  by  his  interest  with 
the  Quakers,  he  should  be  able  to  colonize  the  province,  which  might,  in 
time,  not  only  yield  a  revenue  sufficient  to  extinguish  his  claims  on  the 
crown,  but  enlarge  the  British  empire,  augment  its  trade,  and  promote  the 
glory  ol  Ood  by  the  civihzation  and  conversion  of  the  Indian  tribes.^    This 
petition  was  referred  to  the  Duke  of  York  and  Lord  Baltimore,  that  they 
might  report  how  far  its  object  was  compatible  with  their  prior  investitures. 
Both  signified   their  acquiescence  in  Penn's  demand,  provided  his  patent 
should  be  so  worded  as  to  preclude  any  encroachment  on  their  territories  • 
and  the  Duke  of  York  added  his  recommendation  of  the  petition  to  the 
ftivor  of  the  crown.     Successful  thus  far,  Penn  transcribed  from  the  charter 
of  Maryland  the  sketch  of  a  patent  in  his  own  favor  [November,  1680]  ; 
but  the  attorney-general,  Jones,  to  whose  opinion  it  was  remitted,  pro- 
nounced that  certain  of  the  clauses  were  "not  agreeable  to  the  laws  here, 
though  they  are  in  Lord  Baltimore's  patent,"  and  signified,  in  particular, 
that  the  exemption  from  British  taxation,  which  Penn  desired  for  his  col- 
ony,  was  utterly  illegal.    Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  at  the  same  time, 
nnderstanding  that  Penn,  in  soliciting  his  patent,  described  himself  as  the 
head  of  the  English  Quakers,  interposed  in  the  relative  proceedings,  for 
tlie  protection  (as  he  declared)  of  the  interests  of  the  church  of  England. 
[January,  1681.]     After  some  discussion  of  the  points  that  had  thus  arisen, 
the  Committee  of  Plantations  desired  Chief-Justice  North,  a  person  of 
considerable  eminence,  both  as  a  statesman  and  a  lawyer,  to  undertake 
the  revision  of  the  patent,  and  to  secure,  by  proper  clauses,  the  reservation 
of  royal  prerogative  and  parliamentary  jurisdiction.     With  his  assistance, 
there  was  prepared  an  instrument  which  received  the  royal  confirmation, 
and  afterwards  a-jquired  much  celebrity  as  the  charter  of  Pennsylvania." 
[  March,  1681.]  ^ 

'  In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  about  the  same  time,  he  declares  his  purpose  in  tlie  ncquisition  of 
American  territory  to  have  been  "  so  to  serve  tlie  truth  and  people  of  the  Lord,  that  an 
example  may  be  set  to  the  nations  "  ;  adding,  "  there  may  be  room  there,  though  not  here,  for 
such  an  holy  experiment."     Proud.  i         6  i 

'  Oidraixon.    Proud.    Cimlmers.    Diilwyn  (see  Note  XXVI.)  apud  Winterbotham.    Both 


500 


HISTORY    OF   NORTH   AMF.RICA. 


[B(X)K  VII. 


Bv  this  cliartcr,  which  profcssod  to  ho  prantod  in  ronsidcrntion  of  « the 
merits  of  the  father  and   the   good  purposes  of  the  son,     there  was  eon- 
ferred  on  William  Penn,  and  his  iicirs  and  assigns,  that  v«^t  region  honndod 
on  the  east  by  the  river  Dehuvare  ;    extending  westward    five  dealers  of 
h)n£'itnde;  stretching  to  the  north  from  twelve  miles  northward  ol   New- 
rastlefin  the   Delaware   territory)   to   the    forty-third  degree  ot   latitude ; 
limited  on  the  south  by  a   circle  of  tw.<lve  miles  drawn  round  Neweastlo 
to  the  beginning  of  the  fortictli  degree  of  latitude.     I'enn  was  constitntod 
,ho  absolute  pmprietary  of  the  whole  of  this   territory,  which  was  erected 
into  a  province  by  the  name  of  Pennsylvania,'  and  was  to  be  held  m  ino, 
and  common  so/cage   by   feahy   only,  with  the  obligation   of  {jaying   tjyo 
bear-skins  annually,  and  one  fifth  of  all  the  gold  an,   silver  that  might  be  ,l,s- 
oovercd,  to  the  kmg.     He  was  empowered  to  .nake    aws,  with  the  advice 
and  assent  of  the  freemen  of  the  territory   assembled,  for  the  nnposiimn 
of  taxes  and  other  public  purposcs,-but  always  in  conformity  with  the 
eeneral  strain  of  the  jurisprudence  of  England  ;  to  appoint  judges  and  oti,or 
officers  to  carry  the 'laws  into  execution  ;  and  to  pnr.lon  and   reprieve  <.|- 
fenders,  excepi  in  the  cases  of  wilful  murder  and  high-  reason       In  these 
cases,    eprieve  might  be  granted  only  till  the  signification  of  the  pleasure 
of  the  king, -to  whom  tfcre  was   also  reserved  the  privilege  of  receiving 
appeals  from  the  provincial  tribunals  in  civil  cases.     The  d.s tr.bu  len  of 
Zperty,  and  the\)unishment  of  felonies,  were  to  be  regulated  by  the  Inw, 
o    England,  unless  and  until   different  ordinances  should  be  expressly  en- 
acted by  the  proprietary  and  freemen.    Duplicates  of  all  the  provincial  laws 
^e  to  be  transmitted  to  the  privy  council,  within  five  years  after  tliey 
were  passed;  and  if  not  declared  void  by  the  counc.l  w.thm  s.x  mon^l.s 
after  transmission,  they  were  to  be  considered  as  finally  ratified,  and  to  bo- 

come  valid  ordinances.  .  in. 

That  the  colony  might  increase  by  the  resort  of  people,  hborty  was 
given  to  English  subjects  (those  only  exc/^pted  who  should  be  specially  for- 
bidden)  to  remove  to  and  settle  in  Pennsylvania  ;  and  thence  to  import  the 
productions  of  the  province  into  England,  "but  into  no  other  country  wliu - 
soever,"  and  to  rec'xport  them,  within  one  year  -paying  the  same  duties 
;s  other  subjects,  «nd  conforming  to  the  Acts  of  Navigation.  The  propio- 
lary  was  authorized  to  divide  the  province  into  towns,  hundreds,  and  coun- 
lies;  to  erect  and  incorporate  towns  into  boroughs,  and  boroughs  into 
cities  ;  and  to  constitute  ports  for  the  convenience  of  commerce,  to  which 
he  officers  of  the  customs  were  to  have  free  admission.  The  freemen  in 
assembly  were  empowered  to  assess  reasonable  duUeson  thecommoditios 

'T^Jr^alc^nt'Ss  a..no.i„a.io„  In  creditable  to  hi.  mo.lnsly      Fin^nj^.t  0,0  Kin, 

"lli!>c  habpt,  c't  rcRio  mciiiorabilo  nonion  nuUoDii, 

AiKtior  aurtoris  in  nnmc  tcmpiis  sui ; 

Q,!!!  fi!!t  iUustri  nroavnniin  stcininato  nntiis, 

Scd  virtulc  maais  nobilis  ipse  sun."  .    .    -  i       -^ 

Dtu  Yumii.       o  »  Makin  8  Descriptio  Pennstjlvaniai. 


CHAP.  I] 


CHARTER   OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 


601 


laden  or  un  adcn  in  the  Imhouvs  of  il,o  colony  ;  and  those  duties  were 
grantiHl  lo  1  omi,  uitli  ro,seiv;.iion,  however,  to  tlie  crown  of  such  customs  us 
then  were,  or  in  lulurc  niighl  bo,  imposed  by  uct  of  parliament.  I'enn  was 
rc.pnrod  JO  appoint  an  agent  lo  reside  in  or  near  London,  to  answer  for  any 
breaeii  ol  the  trade  laws  which  he  or  his  people  niigiit  connnit  ;  and  in  case 

0  such  misde.neanonr,  ho  was  to  make  satisfaction  within  a  ycnir  ;  in  default 

01  \yhich,  the  king  was  to  appropriate  the  government  of  the  province,  and 
rotani  »t  till  duo  satisfaction  were  made.  The  proprietary  was  required 
not  to  maintain  correspondence  with  any  prince  or  state  at  war,  nor  to 
rni.ke  war  against  any  prince  or  stale  in  amity,  with  England.  By  an  article 
ol  the  charter,  which,  perhaps,  a  strict  adherence  to  his  ,)rinciples  should 
liayo  induced  hiin  to  disclaim,  he  was  empowered  "  to  levy,  muster,  and 
train  all  sorts  of  men  ;  to  pursue  and  vamjuish  enemies  ;  to  take  and  put 
t  leni  to  death  by  the  laws  of  war  ;  and  to  do  cveny  thing  which  belongeth  to 
the  ofiicc  of  captain-general  in  an  army."  He  was  farther  empowered 
to  alienate  the  soil  to  the  colonists,  who  were  authorized  to  hold  their  lands 
under  his  grants,  notwithstanding  the  Kuglish  statute  prohibiting  such  suh- 
mleudations.  Assurance  was  given  by  the  king,  for  himself  andiiis  succes- 
sors, "  that  no  custom  or  other  contribution  shall  be  levied  on  the  inhabitants 
or  their  estates,  unless  hy  the  consent,  of  the  proprietary,  or  governor  and 
assembly,  or  by  act  of  parliament  in  England."  It  was  stipulated  (in  com- 
pliance with  the  suggestion  of  Bishop  Complon),  thai,  if  any  of  the  inhab- 
itants, to  the  number  of  twenty,  should  signify  their  desire  to  the  Bishop 
of  London  to  have  an  Episcopal  ministei'  established  among  them,  the  pastor 
appointed  for  them  by  this  dignitary  should  be  allowed  to  reside  and  per- 
form his  functions  without  hindrance  or  molestation.  In  case  of  the  emer- 
gence of  doubt  with  regard  to  the  construction  properly  applicable  to  any 
part  of  the  charter,  it  was  declared  that  an  interpretation  the  most  favor- 
able to  the  proprietary  should  always  be  admitted  ;  with  the  exclusion, 
however,  of  any  supposition  that  might  derogate  from  the  allegiance  due  to 
the  crown.' 

Such  is  tlie  substance  of  a  charter  on  which  was  established  the  fabric 
of  the  Pennsylvanian  government  and  laws,  so  renowned  for  their  wisdom, 
mildness,  equity,  and  liberality.  The  cautious  stipulations  for  guarding 
and  ascertaining  the  British  ascendency,  by  which  this  charter  was  dis- 
tinguished froin  all  preceding  patents,  were  manifestly  the  offspring  of  the 
disputes  in  which  the  royal  court  had  been  for  some  time  engaged  with  the 
colony  of  ISrassachusetts.  The  provincial  government  of  Massachusetts 
had  deemed  the  Acts  of  Navigation  inoperative  within  its  jurisdiction,  till 
they  were  legalized  by  its  own  ordinance.  But  direct  and  steady  obedience 
to  them  in  Pennsylvania  was  enforced  by  the  stipulated  penalty  of  the  forfeit- 
ure of  the  charter.  Laws  had  been  passed  in  Massachusetts  for  a  domestic 
coinage  of  money,  and  other  objects,  which  were  deemed  inconsistent  w  ith 
the  prerogative  of  the  sovereign  state.  For  the  prevention  of  sitnilar 
abuse,  or  at  least  the  correction  of  it,  before  inveterate  prevalence  shoultl 
createjiabits  of  independence,  it  was  required  that  all  the  laws  of  the  new 

•  Proiul.  Chiilmers.  "It  is  romarknble,"  says  Dr7Fnuiklin7in~liis~//;*-<OT-;ra7  AVr/ff/To/ 
the  Constitutitm  nf  Pennsylvania,  "  lliat  gucli  an  "instrument,  penned  witli  all  the  appoanmce 
of  canilor  and  siniplicitv  imaginable,  and  e(|iially  ngreeable  to  law  and  rensoij,  to  the  cininis 
of  the  crown  and  the  rigfits  of  the  stiliject.  sliouldbe  the  growth  of  an  arbitrary  court."  The 
trait  would  have  been  more  remarkable,  if  this  arbitrary  eourt  had  been  as  nmeh  renowned  for 

inteurilV  in  flllflllimr.  us    fnr    filr-ijitv   In    rrmtrju'lincT    npTinroptonfu    ;>i    <!..,,>..  nf  !'l"r     ••p->urin     nrtA 

,-.,  t-'  ■  COO  J  * 

popular  rights. 


502 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


province  should  be  regularly  transmitted  to  England  for  the  royal  approba- 
tion  or  dissent.  To  obviate  the  difficulty  that  was  experienced  by  the  Kng- 
hsh  .roverninent  in  conducting  its  disputes  with  the  people  of  Massaclui- 
setts^who  could  never  be  induced  to  accredit  an  agent  at  the  court  without 
much  reluctance  and  long  delay,  it  was  required  that  a  standing  agen'  for 
Pennsylvania  should  reside  in  London,  and  be  held  responsible  lor  the  pro- 
ceedings of  his  colonial  constituents.  But  the  most  remarkable  provision, 
by  which  this  charter  was  distinguished  from  all  the  other  American  patents, 
was  that  which  expressly  reserved  a  power  of  taxation  to  the  British  par- 
liament. .  ,        ,  ,.jy,  .  .    . 

Of  tlie  import  of  this  much  agitated  clause  very  diflerent  opinions  were 
entertained,  from  the   first,  by  the  lawyers  and  statesmen  of  Lngland,  and 
the  politicians  of  Pennsylvania.     In  England,  while  it  was  denied  that  the 
novel  introduction  of  the  clause  into  the  charter  of  this  province  afforded  to 
any  of  the  other  colonies  an  argument  against  their  liability  to  parliamentary 
taxation,  —it  was,  with  more  appearance  of  reason,  maintained  that  its  ac 
tual  insertion  in  the   present  charter  precluded   even  the  possibility  of  an 
honest  pretension  to  such  immunity  on  the  part  of  the  Pennsylvanians.    Of 
the  very  opposite  ideas  that  were  entertained  on  this  subject  by  the  colo- 
nists  an  account  was  rendered  about  a  century  afterwards  by  Dr.  1  rankh.i, 
in  his  celebrated  examination,  as  an  agent  of  his  countrymen,  at  the  bar  of  the 
British  House  of  Commons.     Being  asked  how  the  Pennsylvanians  could 
reconcile  a  pretence  to  be  exempted  from  taxation  with  the  express  words 
of  a  clause  reserving  to  parliament  the  privilege  of  imposing  this  burden  upon 
them,  he  answered,-"  They  understand  it  tlnis:— By  the  same  charter,' 
and  otherwise,  they  are  entitled  to  all  the  privileges  and  liberties  of  Eng- 
lishmen.   They  find  in  the  great  charters  and  in  the  petition  and  declaration 
of  rights,  that  one  of  the  privileges   of  English   subjects  is,  that  they  are 
not  taxed  but  by  their  common  consent  ;  they  have,  therefore,  relied  upon 
it,   from  the    first  settlement  of  the    province,  that  the    parliament  never 
would  nor  could,  by  color  of  that  clause  in  tlie  charter,  tax  them  till  it 
had  qualified  itself  to  exercise  such  right  by  admitting  representatives  rom 
the  people  to  be  taxed."  ^     That  this  reasoning  was  not  (as  some  have 
su-4sted)  the  mere  production  of  Eranklin's  own  ingenuity,  nor  even  the 
inuuediate  growth  of  the  era  of  American  independence,  but  that  it  express- 
ed the  opinion  of  the  earhest  race  of  the  Pennsylvanian  settlers,  is  a  point 
susceptible  of  the  clearest  demonstration.  ,    r       •        •       • 

From  the  official  correspondence  between  the  royal  functionaries  in 
America  and  the  court  of  London,  it  appears,  that,  before  the  1  ennsylva- 
nians  had  existed  as  a  people  for  seventeen  years,  the  English  ministry 
were  apprized  of  the  general  prevalence  of  these  sentiments  among  tlicni; 
and  in  the  work  of  a  contemporary  historian  of  this  province,  who  derived 
his  acquaintance  with  it  from  the  communications  of  Penn  himseli,  the  rig  it 
of  the  colonists  to  elect  representatives  to  the  British  parliament  is  distinctly 
asserted.-'  It  was  only  in  the  year  preceding  the  date  of  the  Pennsylvanian 
charter,  that  Penn,  in  reclaiming  forjhe  colonists  of  New  Jersey  the  pnvi- 

"  ■  Tl.is  is  a  mistM^~Tim"lVnnsyrvaninn  r.ha'rtcVdiircrs  from  all  tho  otiiprs  in  not  eo.nuui- 
nicat  ngan  ox^r  S^«^  uranro  to  tho  colonist,  of  tho  rigl.ts  and  character  of  Englishmen,     f  o 

r  asorn^r  thii^omission  i.  said  by  (^hahnnrs  to  ^^--'^ ^'^^-^ ''^^  ^t^^/lZ^^  ^c^^^t 
prrnnrml  the  charter,  deemed  such  declarations  superfluous,  and  their  import  sulhcuntly  in 

terred  by  genc'ral  law. 

»  Mininirs,  &,t.,  nf  Frnnhtin. 

'  See  Note  XXVIll  ,  at  tlie  end  of  the  volume. 


CHAP.    I.] 


PRELIMINARY  TERMS  TO  SETTLERS. 


603 


lege  of  imposing  taxes  on  themselves,  had  protested  that  no  reasonable 
men  would  emigrate  from  England  to  a  country  where  this  advantage  was 
not  to  be  enjoyed  ;  and  as  the  argument  which  he  maintained  on  that  occa- 
sion was  founded  entirely  on  general  principles,  and  on  what  he  regarded 
as  the  constitutional  rights  inseparable  from  the  character  of  British  sub- 
jects,  without  reference  to  any  peculiarities  in  the  charter  of  New  Jersey, 
It  is  highly  improbable  that  he  beheved  the  clauses  pecuhar  to  his  ovvn 
charter  to  admit  of  an  interpretation  that  would  have  placed  his  favorite 
province  beyond  the  pale  of  the  British  constitution,  and  deterred  reasona- 
ble men  from  resorting  to  it.  We  must  either  believe  him  to  have  enter- 
tained the  same  opinion  that  prevailed  on  this  point  among  the  colonists  of 
his  territory  or  adopt  the  illiberal  supposition  of  a  historian'  who  charges 
him  vvith  making  concessions,  in  treating  with  the  crown,  which  he  ne?er 
intended  to  substantiate  m  practice. 

Possessed  of  this  charter,  to  which  the  king  gave  additional  authority  by 
a  royal  letter  commanding  all  intending  planters  in  the  new  province  to 
render  due  submission  to  the  proprietary,  Penn  directed  his  attention  to  the 
interesting  concern  of  attracting  inhabitants  to  his  vacant  territory.  To 
this  end,  he  published  a  description  of  the  soil  ana  resources  of  the  prov- 
ince, together  with  admonitions  to  those  who  were  inclined  to  undertake  its 
cultivation,  and  a  statement  of  the  conditions  on  which  he  was  willing  to 
deal  with  them.  1  he  admonitions  are  almost  precisely  the  same  with  those 
which  lie  previously  addressed  to  the  intending  emigrants  to  West  Jersey  • 
and  enjom  all  persons,  deliberating  with  regard  to  their  removal,  to  have 
especial  respect  to  the  will  of  God,  — to  balance  present  inconvenience  with 
luture  ease  and  plenty,  —and  to  obtain  the  consent  of  their  near  relations 
in  order  that  natural  affections  might  be  preserved,  and  a  friendly  and 
prohtabie  correspondence  between  the  two  countries  maintained.  It  was 
intimated  to  all  who  were  disposed  to  become  planters,  that  a  hundred  acres 
of  land  would  be  sold  at  the  price  of  forty  shillings,  together  vvith  a  perpet- 
ual quitrent  of  a  shilling.  It  was  required,  that,  in  disencumbering  the 
ground  of  wood,  there  should  be  reserved  one  acre  of  trees  for  every 
five  acres  cleared  ;  and  an  especial  recommendation  was  given  to  preserve 
oak  and  mulberry  trees  for  the  construction  of  ships  and  the  manufocture 
ol  silk.  It  was  declared  that  no  planter  would  be  permitted  to  overreach  or 
otherwise  injure  the  Indians,  or  even  to  avenge,  at  his  own  hands,  any 
wrong  he  might  receive  from  them  ;  but  that,  in  case  of  disputes  between  the 
two  races,  the  adjustment  of  them  should,  in  every  instance,  be  referred  to 
twelve  arbitrators,  selected  equally  from  the  Europeans  and  the  Indians, 
ihe  requisition  of  quitrents,  in  addition  to  the  payment  of  a  price,  which 
proved  ultimately  so  fertile  a  source  of  discord  between  the  proprietary 
lamily  and  the  colonists,  was  the  only  feature  in  this  scheme  that  appeared 
objectionable  to  the  religious  fraternity  of  which  Penn  was  a  member  ;  but 
ins  influence  with  these  sectaries  was  so  great,  and  his  description  of  the 
province  so  inviting,  as  more  than  to  outweigh  this  disagreeable  and  unex- 
pected condition. 

Numci-ous  applications  for  land  were  speedily  made  by  persons,  chiefly 
of  the  Quaker  persuasion,  in  Eondon,  Liverpool,  and  especially  in  Bristol, 
where  one  trading  assocjat^mn  alone  became  the  purchasers  of  Twenty  thou- 

'  Chalmers,  wiio  in  s.ipport  of  his  qsl^oi,,  r.^m.'irks  that  not  <>r,e  of  the  luws  and  ci.m. 
sututions  oriartcd  by  Pcn.i  or  under  hi«  auspices,  was  ever  eubraittcd,  according  to  the  renui- 
BUion  of  tlie  charter,  to  the  English  court. 


604 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  vir. 


sand  acres  of  the  territory,  and  prepared  for  embarking  in  various  branches 
of  commerce  which   had   relation  to  their  acquisition.     The   prospect  thus 
afforded,  of  an  early  replenishment  of  his  province,  invited  the  immediate 
attention  of  Penn  to  the  form  and  fabric  of  its  political  constitution  ;  in  the 
composition  of  which  there  could  be   room  for  little  other  labor  than  the 
exercise  of  a   judicious  selection  from   the   numerous    theoretical   models 
which  had  employed  the  pens  and  exhausted  the  invention  of  contemporary 
writers,   and   from  the  various  practical  institutions   by  which  the  several 
proprietaries  of  American  provinces  had  vied  with  each  other  for  the  ap- 
probation of  mankind  and  the  attraction  of  inhabitants  to  their  vacant  do- 
mains.    In  undertaking  an   employment  so  congenial  to  his  disposition  as 
the  work  of  legislation,  Penn  seems  to  have  been  impressed  with  equal  con- 
fidence in  the  ^resources  of  his  capacity  and  the  rectitude  of  his  intentions, 
and   touched  at  the  same  time  with  a  generous  sense  of  the  value  of  those 
interests  that  were  involved  in  his  performance,  and  the  expanse  of  liberty 
and  happiness  that  might  result  from  it.     "  As  my  understanding  and  nicH- 
nations,"  he  declared,  "  have  been  much  directed  to  observe  and  reprove 
mischiefs  in  government,  so  it  is  now  put  into  my  power  to  settle  one.     For 
the  matters  of  libertv  and  privilege,  /  purpose  that  ivhich  is  cxtraonhmiry, 
and  leave  myself  and  successors  no  power  of  doing  mischief,  that  the  will 
of  one  man  may  not  hinder  the  good  of  a  whole  country."     The  liberal 
mstitutions  that  arose  shortly  after  in  Pennsylvania,  and  the  happiness  of 
which  they  were  so  largely  productive,  attested  the  sincerity  and  rewarded 
the  virtue  of  this   magnanimous  design  ;  while  the  partial  disappointment 
which   it  sustained,  and  particularly  the  mischief  and  dissension  that  arose 
from   the  degree   of  power  that  was  actually  reserved   to  the  proprietary 
and  his  successors,  forcibly  exemplified  the  infirmity  of  human  purpose,  and 
the  fallacy  incident  to  all  human  expectations. 

As  several  of  the  purchasers  of  land,  in  their  eagerness  to  commence 
the  new  settlement,  were  prepared  to  embark  before  Penn  had  yet  com- 
pleted his  legislatorial  composition,  it  was  necessary  that  they  should  be 
previously  acquainted  with  the  general  scope,  at  least,  of  a  work  so  deeply 
affecting  their  interests.  A  rough  sketch  of  its  principal  features  was  ac- 
cordingly prepared  and  mutually  signed  by  the  proprietary  and  those  adven- 
turers, who,  being  now  assured  of  unlimited  toleration,'  and  satisfied  with 
the  model  of  the  political  constitutions,  no  longer  hesitated  to  bid  adieu  to 
a  scene  of  tyranny,  contention,  and  persecution,  and  sot  sail,  in  quest  of 
freedom  and  repose,  for  Pennsylvania.  [May,  1G81.]  Three  vessels  from 
London  and  Bristol  carried  out  these  first  Pennsylvanian  settlers,  and  along 
with  them  Colonel  William  Markhatn,  the  kinsman  and  secretary  ot  I  enn, 
who  appointed  him  deputy-governor;  and  certain  commissioners  v ho  were 
appointed  to  confer  with  the  Indians  respecting  the  purchase  of  their  lands, 
and  to  endeavour  to  form  with  them  a  league  of  perpetual  peace.  1  hese 
commissioners  were  solemnly  enjoined  to  treat  the  Indians  with  candor*,  jus- 
tice, and  humanity,  and  were  intrusted  with  a  letter  from  Penn  to  them, 
accompanied  by  suitable   presents.    The  proprietary  V,  letter  signified  to  the 

'^TrdoUnpTsli^tlVoi^rtiil'wis.ioin  of  Ponn,  1.11^  niorfly  "fronrtho  ju<lt;n.ont  aiui  mcurn.y 
ofllKwe  writera  who  have  dm-incd  the  honor  of  ,.nrti<-al  virluo  mroinnh.fe  without  tho  ntlri- 
hiite  of  original  invention,  that  this  nnnitablo  principle  of  toleration  ha-l  b.-on  already  real- 
ized in  Amerha  hy  I-ord  Ilaltitnoro  and  the  Catholi.s  ot  Maryland,  and  enmiovjl  as  »  poli- 
tic devic.  by  Lord  {:-!ar,nd.u,  und  h\,  n.soeint.-  in  Cndin.,  :>nd  bv  L-rd  rter  <eley  and  .• 
Cflorgc  Carteret  in  New  Jersey.  Clarkson  Ih  the  only  historian  of  I'enn  v,lio  has  contedtd 
V)  Lord  Baltimore  the  honor  of  originuting  tokrution  in  America. 


CHAP.  I.] 


FIRST  SETTLERS  IN  PENNSYLVANIA. 


605 


Indians,  that  the  great  God  and  Tower,  who  created  all  men  and  command- 
ed them  to  love  and  do  good  to  one  another,  had  been  pleased  to  make  a 
connection  between  Penn  and  America  ;  that  the  king  of  England  had  be- 
stowed on  hnn  a  province  there,  but  that  he  desired  to  enjoy  it  with  the 
good-will  and  consent  of  the  Indians  ;  that  many  wicked  Europeans,  he  was 
aware,  had  treated  the  Indians  very  ill,  but  that  he  was  a  person  of  a  difler- 
eiit  disposition,  and  bore  great  love  and  regard  to  them  ;  and  that  the  peo- 
ple lie  now  sent  among  them  were  similarly  disposed,  and  wished  to  live 
with  them  as  neighbours  and  friends. 

Markham,  at  the  head  of  one  of  tliese  detachments  of  adventurers, 
proceeded,  on  his  arrival  in  America  [August,  1681],  to  take  possession  of 
an  extensive  forest,  situated  twelve  miles  northward  of  Newcastle,  on  the 
western  side  of  the  Delaware,  whose  waters  contributed,  with  other  streams 
of  lesser  note,  to  the  salubrity  of  the  air  and  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  As 
this  situation  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  civilized  neighbourhood  on  the 
south  and  east,  the  colonists  were  not  embarrassed  with  the  difficulties  which 
encumbered  and  disturbed  so  many  of  their  predecessors  in  similar  pur- 
suits ;  and,  animated  by  vigorous  hope  and  steady  resolve,  they  set  them- 
selves diligently  to  prejjare  for  the  reception  of  the  numerous  emigrants  who 
were  expected  to  join  them  in  the  following  year.  Greater  hardships  were 
endured  by  another- detachment  of  the  first  adventurers,  who,  arriving  later 
in  the  season,  disembarked  at  the  place  where  Chester  was  afterwards 
built  [Oct.,  1681]  ;  and,  the  river  having  suddenly  frozen  before  they  could 
resume  their  voyage,  were  constrained  to  pass  the  remainder  of  the  winter 
there.  Markham  now  discovered  a  circumstance  which  had  material  in- 
fluence on  the  future  conduct  and  policy  of  his  patron.  Penn  had  hitherto 
supposed  that  the  whole  of  the  Delaware  territory,  except  the  settlement 
of  Newcastle  and  its  appendages  (occupied  by  the  Duke  of  York  as'  a  de- 
pendency of  his  own  province  of  New  York),  was  really  included  in  the 
Pennsylvanian  charter,  —  a  supposition  which  he  entertained  with  a  great 
deal  of  satisfaction  ;  for  he  was  aware  that  this  territory  already  contained  a 
number  of  Swedish  and  English  settlers  ;  and  though  doubtless  he  proposed 
to  people  his  domains  chiefly  with  Quakers,  he  was  by  no  means  insensible 
to  the  advantage  of  obtaining  for  himself  an  immediate  accession  of  tribu- 
taries, and  for  his  people  a  social  connection  with  a  race  of  hardy  agricul- 
turists inured  to  colonial  life  and  habits.  He  knew  that  the. government  of 
Maryland  laid  claim  to  the  allegiance  of  a  number  of  settlers  whose  planta- 
tions he  believed  to  be  included  within  his  own  chartered  district  of  Penn- 
sylvania ;  and  he  had  instructed  Markham  to  demand  from  Lord  Baltimore 
a  relinquishment  of  that  pretension.  Markham  accordingly  applied  to  the 
proprietary  of  Maryland,  and  readily  accepted  this  nobleman's  proposal  to 
compare  the  titles  of  the  two  provinces  and  adjust  their  boundaries  ;  but 
discovering  very  speedily  that  Penn  had  in  reality  no  other  claim  than  what 
niight  be  derived  from  the  confused  designation  in  his  charter  of  the  limits 
of  his  province,  and  that  a  literal  construction  of  Lord  Baltimore's  ])rior 
charter,  where  the  limits  were  indicated  with  greater  precision,  would  ovac 
uate  at  once  the  pretensions  both  of  Penn  and  the  Duke  of  York,  he  de  , 
dined  all  farther  conference,  and  acquainted  Penn  with  a  discovery  that 
threatened  so  much  obstruction  to  his  views.' 

In  the  spring  of  the  ensuing  year  [April,  1682],  Penn  completed  ami 


VOL.    I. 


»  Proud. 
04 


Chulmcrs.    Chirksou. 


QQ 


606 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


delivered  to  the  world  a  composition,  the  fruit  of  great  research  and  pro- 
found reflection,  entitled  "  The  Frame  of  the  Government  of  the  Province 
of  Pemmjlvania.''    It  was  introduced  by  an  ingenious  preface,  unfolding  his 
own  views  of  the  origin,  nature,  and  objects  of  government ;  wherein  he  de- 
duces from  various  texts  of  Scripture  the  origination  and   descent  of  all 
human  power  from  God,  the  utter  unlawfulness  of  resisting  constituted  au- 
thority, and,  in  short,  "  the  divine  right  of  government,  and  that  for  two 
ends  :  first,  to  terrify  evil  doers  ;  secondly,  to  cherish  those  that  do  well ; 
which,"  he    continues,  ''gives  government  a  life  beyond  corruption,  nnd 
makes  it  as  durable  in  the  world  as  good  men  shall  be  ;  so  that  governmeui 
seems  to  me  a  part  of  religion  itself,  a  thing  sacred  in   its   mstitution  and 
end."     "  They  weakly  err,"  he  afterwards  observes,  "  who  thnik  there  is 
no  other  use  of  government  than  correction,  which  is  the  coarsest  part  of 
it."     Declining  to  pronounce  any  opinion  on  the  comparative  merit  of  the 
various  political  systems  which  had  been  exhibited  to  mankind  in  the  prac- 
tice of  commonwealths  or  the  speculations  of  philosophers,  and  remarking 
that  not  one  of  these  models  was  ever  realized  without  mcurrmg  some  al- 
teration from  the  lapse  of  time  or  the  emergency  of  circumstances,  he  ad- 
vances this  position,  that  "  any  government   is  free  to  the  people  under  it, 
whatever  be  the  frame,  where  the  laws  rule  and  the   people  are  a  party 
to  these  laws  ;  and  more  than  this  is  tyranny,   oligarchy,   or  confusion." 
With  close,  though  perhaps  unconscious,  transcription  ot   the  maxims  as- 
cribed by  Plutarch  to  Lycurgus,  he  maintains  that  "  governments  rather 
d-^pend  upon  men,  than  men  upon  governments.     Let  men  be  good  and  the 
government  cannot  be  bad.     If  it  be  ill,  they  will  cure  it.      But  li  men  be 
bad,  let  the  government  be  never  so  good,  they  will  endeavour  to  warp  and 
spoil  it  to  their  turn.     I  know  some  say,  '  Let  us  have  good  laws,  and  no 
matter  for  the  men  that  execute  diem.     But  let  them  consider,  that,  though 
good  laws  do  well,  good  men  do  better  ;  for  good  laws  may  want  good 
men,  and  be  invaded  or  abolished  by  ill  men  ;  but  good  men  will  never 
want  good  laws  nor  sufler  ill  ones.'     That,  therefore,  which  makes  a  good 
constitution,  must  keep  it  ;  namely,  men  of  icisdom  and  virtue;  qualines, 
that,  because  they  descend  not  with  worldly  inheritances,  must  be  carejully 
propa'rated  by  a  virtuous  education   of  youth.''     In  conclusion,   he   pro- 
claims  that  "We- have,  with  reverence  to  Cod  and  good  conscience  to 
men,  to  the  best  of  our  skill,  contrived  and  composed  the  frame  of  this  gov- 
ernment to  the  great  end  of  all  government,  to  support  power  in  reverence 
with  the  people,  and  to  secure  the  people  from  the  abuse  of  power   that  they 
mail  be  free  by  their  just  obedience,  and  the  magistrates  honorable  jor  their 
just  administration;  for  liberty  ivithout  obedience  is  confusion,  and  obedi- 
encc^ithout  liberty  is  slavery.''     This  production,  which  will  always  com- 
mand respect  for  its  intrinsic  merits,  excited  the  greater  interest,  at  the 
time  of  its  emission,  from  being  regarded  as  the  political  manifesto  ot  the 
party  that  had  now  become  the  most  numerous  and  powerlul  among  the 
Quakers,    and    whose  ascendency  continued  gradually   to  increase,  till  at 
length  the  whole  sectarian  society ,_by  dint  of  conversion  or  expulsion,^  was 

"~n[h;^li;rf"(^urd  refuse  to  Bum'r  bad  lawsrim.lcr  a  fraino^of  government  cMluding  tliom 

from  a  Hha  /in  1. .^i.lation,  is  a  diOicuhy  wi.i.i.  he  has  n.;t  ,,n,  er.aken  to  Boive,  and  vvlnrh 

mhCd    I  Lgencral  anathema  ngah.st  ullresislan.e  to  estahhshed  anthor.ty  renders  ,.erlertly 

nsoh  hi  "    ft  in  true  that  he  reproaches  a  ^overnn.ent  ho  framed  vv.th  the  eharaeter  ot  lyra  - 

;.[!;;  "^('■jj.it.^prouch  merely  gives  nddittonal  sanction  to  discontent,  without  giving  any  to 

'"•"Sc'of  the  planters  had  cooperated  with  Penn  in  the  composition  of  the  frame. 


CHAP.  I] 


PENN'S  FIRST  FRAME  QF  GOVERNMENT. 


507 


moulded  to  a  conformity  with  its  opinions.  Another  party  siiU  existed, 
but  was  daily  diminishing,  which  regarded  with  equal  aversion  the  establish- 
ment of  ecclesiastical  discipline  and  the  recognition  of  municipal  govern- 
ment. The  adherents  of  this  party  were  willing  to  forbear  from  all  lorcible 
resistance  to  human  violence  ;  but  were  no  less  resolutely  bent,  against  any 
voluntary  cooperation  with  municipal  authority  ;  and  reproached  the  rest 
of  their  brethren  with  degenerating  from  original  Quaker  principles,  and 
substituting  a  servile  obedience  to  the  dead  laic  without,  in  place  of  a  holy 
conformity  to  the  living  law  within. 

By  the  constitutional  frame  which  followed  this  preface,  it  was  announced 
that  the  government  of  the  province  should  be  administered  by  the  proprie- 
tary, or  his  deputy,  as  president,  and  by  the  freemen  formed  into  two  sep- 
arate bodies  of  a  provincial  council  and  a  general  assembly.  The  council 
was  to  be  elected  by  the  freemen,  and  to  consist  of  seventy-two  members, 
of  whom  twenty-four  were  annually  to  retire,  and  be  replaced  by  a  new 
election.  In  the  council,  the  governor  was  to  preside,  invested  with  no 
other  control  than  a  treble  vote.  Thus  composed,  the  council  was  to  ex- 
ercise not  only  the  whole  executive  power,  but  the  peculiar  privilege  which 
was  annexed  to  the  functions  of  the  same  state  organ  in  the  Carolinian  con- 
stitutions, of  prejudging  and  composing  all  the  bills  or  legislative  projects 
that  should  be  presented  to  the  assembly.  The  presence  of  two  thirds  of 
the  members  of  the  council  was  requisite  to  the  composition  of  a  quorum 
of  this  body  ;  and  the  consent  of  two  thirds  of  such  quorum  was  indispen- 
sable in  all  matters  of  importance.  The  assembly  was  to  consist,  the  first 
year,  of  all  the  freemen ;  the  next,  of  two  hundred  representatives  elected 
by  the  rest  :  and  diis  number  was  afterwards  to  be  augmented  in  proportion 
to  the  increase  of  population.  The  legislative  functions  of  the  assembly  did 
not  extend  to  originating  laws,  but  were  restricted  to  a  simple  assent  or  nega- 
tion in  passing  or  rejecting  the  bills  that  might  be  proposed  to  them  by  the 
governor  and  council.  They  were  to  present  sheriffs  and  justices  of  the 
peace  to  the  governor,  —  naming  double  the  requisite  number  of  persons,  foi: 
his  selection  of  half.  They  were  to  be  elected  annually  ;  and  all  elections, 
whether  for  the  council  or  the  assembly,  were  to  be  conducted  by  ballot. 
Such  was  the  substance  of  the  constitution,  or  frame  of  government,  which 
was  farther  declared  to  be  incapable  of  alteration,  change,  or  diminution, 
in  any  part  or  clause,  without  the  consent  of  the  proprietary  or  his  heirs, 
and  six  parts  in  seven  of  the  members  both  of  the  council  and  the  assembly. 

The  mode  of  election  by  ballot^  which  has  since  become  so  general  in 
North  America,  was  first  introduced  there  by  the  Puritans,  and  subse- 
quently adopted  into  the  constitutions  of  Quaker  legislation,  —  by  which 
we  have  seen  it  establ'shed  in  New  Jersey,  and  now  extended  to  Pennsyl- 
vania. This  latter  repetition  of  the  experiment  proved  very  unsatisfactory. 
The  planters  soon  declared  that  they  felt  it  repugnant  to  the  spirit  of  Eng- 
lishmen to  go  muzzled  (as  they  were  pleased  to  express  themselves)  to  elec- 
tions ;  that  they  scorned  to  give  their  opinions  in  the  dark,  or  to  do  what 
they  seemed  asliamed  to  avow  ;  and  that  they  wished  the  mode  of  election 
to  be  so  framed  as  to  show  that  their  hearts  and  their  tongues  agreed  to- 
gether. In  consequence  of  these  objections,  Penn,  perceiving  (says  Old- 
mixon)  that  the  perfection  of  his  institutions  was  not  in  accordance  with 
the  narrow  capacities  of  human  nature,  consented  to  assimilate  the  Penn- 
sylvanian  to  the  English  mode  of  election. 


608 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


To  the  Constitutional  Frame  there  was  appended  a  code  of  forty  condi- 
tional laws,  which  had  been  concerted  between  the  proprietary  and  divers 
of  the  planters  before  their  departure  from  Lngland,i  and  were  to  be  sub- 
mitted ibr  approval  or  modification  to  the  first  provmcial  assembly.     1  h.s 
code  is  a  production  far  superior  to  the  Constitutional  Irame,  and  highly 
creditable   to   the  sense,    the  spirit,  andthe  benevolence  of  its   authors. 
Amons  other  regulations,  it  proclaimed  that  the  rank  and  rights  of  freemen 
of  the  province  should  accrue  to  all   purchasers  or  renters  of  a  Imndred 
acres  of  land  ;  to  all  servants  or  bondsmen  who  at  the  expiry  of  tlie.r  en- 
gasements  should  cuhivate  the  quota  of  land  (fifty  acres    allotted  to  them 
bv  law  ;  and  to  all  artificers  and  other  inhabitants  or  residents  paying  scot 
and  lot  to  the  government  ;  that  no  public  tax  should  be  levied   irom  tlie 
people,  "  but  by  a  law  for  that  purpose  made  '  ;  and  that  whoever  should 
collect  or  pay  taxes  i,ot  thus  sanctioned  should  be  held  a  public  euemy  of 
the  province  and  a  betrayer  of  its  liberties  ;  "  that  all  pnsons  shall  ie 
workhouses  "  ;  that  a  thief  should  restore  twice  the  value  oi  h.s  depredation, 
and,  in  default  of  other  means  adequate  to  such  restitution,  slioidd  work  as  a 
bondsman  in  prison  for  the  benefit  of  the  person  wta  he  had  plundered  ; 
that  the  lands  as  well  as  the  personal  property  of  a  debtor  should  be  respon- 
slble  for  his  obligations,  except  in  the  case  ot  li.s  havmg  lawful  children,  for 
lose  use  two  thirds  of  the  landed  estate  were  appointed  to  be  reserved  ; 
hatTu  factors  and  correspondents  in  tiie  provnice,  defrauding  their  foreign 
employers,  should,  in  addition  to  complete  restitution,  jmy  a  surplus  amount- 
W  t^l  third  of  the  sum  they  had  unjustly  detained  ;  that  no  person  shoukl 
quit  The  province,  without  publication  of  his  intention,  m  the  market-place, 
Tee  weeks  prio    to  his  departure  ;  that  all  dramatic  entertainments   games 
o    hazard,  sports  of  cruelty,  and  whatever  e  se  might  contribute  to  pro- 
mote  ferocity  of  temper,  or  habits  of  dissipat  on  and  irre^ion,  should  be 
d'sfouraged  ^and  punished  ;  and  "  that  all  children  within  jh-s  FOvn.ce,  o 
the  age  of  twelve  years,  shall  be  taught  some  useful  trade  oi    k  1 ,  to  th 
end  none  may  be  idle,  but  the  poor  may  work  to  live,  and  the  iich,  li  the) 
become  poor,  may  not  want."     This  last  regulation,  so  congenial  to  pm- 
itl^e  Quaker  sentiment  and  to  repubhcan  spirit  and  simplicity,  was  cnlcu- 
lated  not  less  to  promote  fellow-feeling  than  to  repress  pauperism  and  de- 
pendence.    It  contributed  to  preserve  a  sense  ol  the  natural  equahty  of 
Eki  d   by  recalling  to  every  man's  remembrance  his  origina    destination 
"riSjanT  while  it  tended  thus  to  abate  the  pride  and  insolence  ot 
veaUh,  it  operated  no  less  beneficially  to  remedy  the  decay  of  fortune  pe- 
culiarly incident  to  wealthy  settlers  in  a  country  where  the  dearness  of  all 
kinds  of  labor  rendered  idleness  a  much  more    expensive  condition  than 
in  Europe.     It  was  farther  declared  that  no  persons  should  be  pei™ 
to  hold  any  public  office,  or  to  exercise  the  functions  of  freemen,  but     such 
as  profess  foUh  in  Jesus  Christ,  and  are  not  convicted  of  .1    fame,  or  unso- 
irand  dilnest  conversation"  ;   and  that  every  man  acknowledging  t lie 
one  almighty  and  eternal  God  to  be  the  creator,  preser^er^ anc^ruler^f  the 


;nt]  was  forcfid  from  him  by/wnt/^,  when,  unless  pleased, 


Lnnw  that  it  rtho  fr:ime  of  govcrnmentj  WHO  ■"■■-•••  ■■-■■ "-.'Vi- 

."^Wrnla  vlhlvor  ilun' d.manded.ihey  would  not  have  settlod  !..«  cou"t^J^ 


State.  I'apirs^ 
«;m/Cl.almcr8._  Itjs  plain  Irom  iho  preface,  that  Tcun  considcrca  u  mtu:c  .lter.,t,»n       t.. 


constitutions  as  fur  from  unlikely. 


CHAP.  I.] 


GRANT  OF  DELAWARE   TO  PENN. 


609 


universe,  and  professing  to  be  conscientiously  engaged  to  live  peaceably 
and  uprightly  in  the  world,  should  be  exempted  from  molestation  on  account 
of  his  more  particular  opinions  and  practices,  as  well  as  from  obligation  to 
frequent  or  support  any  religious  assembly,  ministry,  or  worship  whatever.' 

This  composition  having  been  published,  the  next  care  of  Penn,  sug- 
gested doubtless  by  his  experience  of  the  Duke  of  York's  behaviour  to  the 
proprietaries  of  New  Jersey,  was  to  obtain  from  this  prince  an  express 
release  of  every  claim  or  pretence  of  jurisdiction  over  Pennsylvania  ;  nor 
did  the  duke  refuse  a  concession  so  manifestly  just,  to  the  son  of  a  man  for 
whose  memory  he  professed  the  highest  legard.  [August,  1682.]  It  was 
a  stronger  proof  of  this  regard,  and  the  fruit  of  much  more  importunate  so- 
licitation, which  Penn  obtained  at  the  same  time,  in  a  grant  of  the  Dela- 
ware territory,^  whose  thriving  plantations  he  anxiously  desired  to  annex  to 
his  extensive  but  uncultivated  domains  of  Pennsylvania.  Yielding  to  the 
urgency  of  Penn,  and  probably  swayed,  in  some  degree,  both  by  senti- 
ments of  friendship,  and  by  indifference  for  an  estate  which  he  held  by  a 
defective  and  uncertain  title,  and  had  never  been  able  to  render  productive 
of  revenue,  —  the  duke  now  conveyed  to  him,  by  two  separate  deeds  of 
gift,  the  town  of  Newcastle,  with  a  territory  of  twelve  miles  around  it,  to- 
gether with  the  tract  of  land  extending  southward  from  it  along  the  Bay  of 
Delaware  to  Cape  Henlopen.  This  conveyance  included  not  only  the  set- 
tlements originally  formed  by  the  Swedes  and  afterwards  conquered  by 
the  Dutch,  whereof  the  early  history  is  blended  with  the  annals  of  New 
York,^  rnd  to  which  Lord  Baltimore  possessed  a  claim  which  he  had  never 
been  able  to  render  effectual,  but  a  large  district  which  this  nobleman's 
title  equally  embraced,  and  which  his  activity  and  remonstrance  had  actually 
reclaimed  from  Dutch  and  Swedish  occupation.''  Without  adopting  the 
harsh  censure  of  a  writer  *  who  maintains  that  this  transaction  reflected  dis- 
honor both  on  the  Duke  of  York  and  on  Penn,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  regard 
it  as  a  faulty  and  equivocal  proceeding,  or  to  regret  the  proportions  in 
which  its  attendant  blame  must  be  divided  between  a  prince  distinguished 
even  among  the  Stuarts  for  perfidy  and  injustice,  and  a  patriarch  renowned 
even  among  the  Quakers  for  humanity  and  benevolence.  The  duke's  pa- 
tents assuredly  did  not  include  within  his  boundaries  the  region  which  he 
now  pretended  to  convey  ;  and  it  was  only  to  a  part  of  it  that  he  could 
transfer  even  the  dubious  tide  arising  from  casual  occupation,  in  opposition 
to  the  formal  grant  and  legal  claim  of  Lord  Baltimore.'* 

All  things  being  now  prepared  for  his  own  personal  presence  and  agency 
in  America,  Penn  himself  set  sail  from  England  to  visit  his  transatlantic  ter- 

'  Proud.     Oldmixon. 

-  Only  a  month  betbro  this  favor  was  granted,  Sir  John  Werdon,  the  duko's  secretary,  signi- 
fied to  Pciin  a  repetition  of  former  refusals  of  it,  and  nt  the  same  time  wrote  to  Dongaii,  the 
govcrnorof  New  York,  cautioning  liiin  to  boware  of  the  cncroacliments  of  Penn,whont  he  de- 
scribes as  "  very  intent  on  his  own  interest  in  these  parts,  as  yon  observe."  Slate  Papers,  npud 
Chalmers.  The  eflect  of  the  scenes  of  intri£;uo  and  controversy,  which  his  views  on  the  Del- 
aware territory  had  produced  and  seemed  likely  slill  liirthcr  to  prolong,  is  sulficieutly  visible 
on  the  mind  of  Penn.  One  of  his  letters  to  a  friend,  at  this  period,  e-xpresses  an  evident  abate- 
ment of  the  fervor  of  his  first  impressions  of  the  degree  in  which  his  colonial  designs  might 
be  rendered  conducive  to  spiritual  ends.  "Surely,"  lie  says,  "  God  will  come  in  for  a  share 
in  this  planting  work,  and  that  leaven  shall  leaven  the  lump  in  time.  I  do  not  believe  the 
Lord's  providence  had  run  this  way  towards  me,  but  that  he  has  a  heavenly  end  and  service 
in  it."  Clarkson.  "  Less  of  the  man  of  God  now  began  to  appear,"  says  Dr.  Franklin,  "  and 
more  of  the  niiin  of  the  world." 

'  Jlnte,  Book  V.,  Chap.  L  *  Ante,  Book  IIL,  and  Book  V.,  Chap.  L 

^  Chalmers.  *  Oldmixon.     Proud.    Chalmers. 


610 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII 


ritory  [September,  1682],  in  company  with  a  hundred  English  Quakers, 
who  resolved  to  unite  themselves  to  their  friends  already  removed  to  that 
(luarter  of  the  world.      Arriving  on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware,  he  beheld 
with  great   satisfaction  the  tliriving  settlements  comprehended  in  his  latest 
acquisition,  and  the   hardy,   sober,  and  industrious  race  of  men  by  whom 
they  were  inhabited.     The  population  of  that  part  of  the  Delaware  terri- 
tory which  he  succeeded  in  finally  retaining  against  Lord  Baltimore  amounted 
already  to  three   thousand  persons,  chiefly  Swedes  and  Dutch  ; '  and  by 
them,  as  well  as  by  the  English  settlers  who  were  intermixed  with  them, 
and  by  the  Quakers  whom  Markham  had  conducted  thither  in  die  preceding 
year,  the  proprietary  was  received  on  his  arrival  with  a  satisfaction  equal 
to  his  own,  and  greeted  with  the  most  cordial  expressions  of  respect  ami 
good-will.     The  English  rejoiced  in  their  deliverance  from  the  sway  of  ttio 
Duke  of  York  ;  and  the  Dutch  and  Swedes  were  glad  to  renounce  a  con- 
nection that  had  originated  in  the  conquest,  first  of  the  one,  and  afterwards 
of  both  their  races.^    It  was  flattering  to  their  importance  to  be  united  to  a 
State  that  seemed  then  much  less  likely  to  overshadow  them  by  superior 
greatness  than  either  New  York  or  Maryland  ;  and  whatever  they  might 
think  of  the  justice  of  Lord  Baltimore's  pretensions,  or  of  the  equny  of  his 
administration,  it  was  manifest  that  his  power  was  unequal  to  divest  the  Duke 
of  York  of  the  dominion  which  this  prince  had  now  peaceably  surrendered 
to  the  solicitations  of  William  Penn.     Advancing  to  Newcastle,  wheie  the 
Dutch  possessed  a  court-house,  the  proprietary  convoked  there  a  meeting  of 
his  ncvf  subjects  ;  and,  after  a  formal  proclamation  of  his  title  to  the  soil  and 
the  political  governance  of  the  country,  he  explained  to  the  people  the  ob- 
jects of  his  visit  to  them,  exhorted  them  to  live  in  sobriety  and  mutual  amity, 
and  renewed  the  commissions  of  the  existing  magistrates. 

The  number  of  his  colonists  meanwhile  was  fast  ir  creasing  around  him. 
In  the  course  of  the  present  year,  no  fe\Ver  than  two  thousand  emigrants, 
chiefly  Quakers,  arrived  from  England  on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware.    Many 
of  them  were  persons  considerable  by  their  rank  and  substance  in  the  parent 
state  ;  and  all  were  men  of  some  education  and  great  respectability,  and  to 
whom  the  main  inducement  to  forsake  their  native  land  was  supplied  by 
views  of  religious  truth  and   duty,  niore  or  less  enlightened,  but  unques- 
tionably sincere  and  conscientious.     They  needed  all  the  influence  of  this 
noble  principle  to  animate  them  to  a  brave  endurance  of  the  hardships 
they  were  compelled  to  undergo  during  the  rigorous  winter  tliat  followed 
their  arrival.     Their  sufierings  were  mitigated  as  far  as  possible  by  the  hos- 
pitality of  the  Swedes  ;  but  many  families  were  compelled  to  pass  the  \vm- 
ter  in  temporary  huts  or  sheds  ;  and  the  greater  number  of  the  new  settlers 
had  no  better  lodging  than  caves,  which  they  dug  for  themselves  on  the 
banks  of  the  river.     These  hardships  neither  abated  their  zeal,  nor  were 
depicted  by  them  in  surh  a  formidable  light  as  to  repress  tlie  ardor  of  their 
friends  in  Europe,  who,  in  the  course  of  the  following  year,  contuiued,  by 
successive  arrivals,  to  enlarge  the  population  of  Delaware  and  Pennsylva- 
nia.    A  valuable  addition,  in  particular,  was^  derived  soon  after  from  a  nu- 

>  InTnTof'Pcnn'8  leUerelhe"Dutciriind  Swedish  inhabitants  of  Dolnwaro  are  thus  (Ic- 
ocribed  :  —  "  They  are  a  plain,  strong,  industrious  people  ;  who  have  made  no  great  progress 
in  culture;  desiring  rather  to  have  enough,  than  plenty  or  traffic.  As  thfiy  are  miople  prmier 
and  strong  of  body,  so  they  have  fine  children,  and  almost  every  house  full  »'»"''■  \^^ 
Dutch  had  one  and  the  Swedes  three  meeting-houses  for  divine  worship  in  the  Delaware  ter- 


ritory 


ibid. 


»  JltUe,  Book  v.,  Chap.  I. 


CHAP.  I.] 


FlfeST  ASSEMBLY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 


511 


ier  from  a  nu- 


merous emigration  of  Gdrman  Quakers,  who  had  been  converted  to  this 
form  of  faith  by  the  preaching  of  Penn  and  his  associates,  and  whose  well- 
timed  removal  from,  their  native  land  enabled  them  to  escape  from  the  des- 
olation of  the  Palatinate.  The  exemplary  piety  and  virtue  by  which  these 
German  colonists  were  distinguished  in  America  formed  an  agreeable  sequel 
to  the  happy  intervention  of  Providence  by  which  they  were  thus  seasonably 
snatched  from  the  rage  of  a  tyrant  and  the  impending  ruin  of  their  native 
country.  There  arrived  likewise  at  the  same  time,  or  shortly  after,  a  num- 
ber of  emigrants  from  Holland,  a  country  in  which  Penn  had  already  preach- 
ed and  propagated  his  doctrines.^ 

Seeing  his  neople  thus  gathering  in  numerous  and  increasing  confluence 
around  him,  Penn  hastened  to  bind  them  together  by  a  practical  application 
of  the  social  compact  which  he  had  devised.  Having  distributed  his  terri- 
tory into  six  counties,  he  summoned,  at  a  place  which  received  the  name  of 
Chester,  the  first  provincial  parliament,  consisting  of  seventy-two  delegates. 
[December,  1682.]  Here,  according  to  the  frame  that  ha^'  been  concerted 
in  England,  the  freemen  should  have  attended  in  their  own  persons.  But 
both  the  sherifFs  in  their  returns,  and  the  inhabitants  in  petitions  which 
they  presented  to  the  proprietary,  affirmed  that  the  fewness  of  the  people, 
their  inexperience  in  legislation,  and  the  engrossing  urgency  of  their  domes- 
tic concerns,  rendered  it  inexpedient  for  them  to  exercise  their  political 
privileges  ;  and  expressed  their  desire  that  the  deputies  they  had  chosen 
might  serve  both  for  the  council  and  the  assembly,  in  the  proportions  of  three 
iiom  every  county  for  the  council,  and  nine  from  every  county  for  the  as- 
sembly. From  the  circumstances  of  the  people,  the  session  of  this  first 
provincial  parliament  was  necessarily  short  ;  but  it  was  distinguished  by 
measures  of  considerable  importance.  The  proprietary  having  expressed  his 
approbation  of  the  suggestions  that  were  conveyed  to  him,  an  act  of  settle- 
ment was  framed,  introducing  a  corresponding  and  permanent  change  into 
the  provincial  constitution.  With  this  and  a  few  other  modifications,  the 
municipal  scheme  that  had  previously  been  announced  was  solemnly  recog- 
nized and  accepted.  An  act  of  union  was  passed,  annexing  the  Delawcre 
territorj^to  the  province  of  Pennsylvania  ;  and  the  rank  of  naturalized  Brit- 
ish subjects  was  conferred  on  the  Dutch,  the  Swedes,  and  all  other  foreign- 
ers within  the  boundaries  of  the  province  and  territory.  This  arrangement, 
which,  at  the  time,  was  both  the  effect  and  the  cause  of  mutual  harmony, 
unfortunately  contained  within  itself  the  seeds  of  future  dissension  and  dis- 
content :  for  Penn  held  the  Delaware  territory,  not  by  a  grant  from  the 
crown,  but  by  an  assignation  from  the  Duke  of  York  ;  and  when  the  effica- 
cy of  such  a  title  to  convey  municipal  authority  came  to  be  questioned,  the 
people  reprobated  with  resentful  blame  the  wanton  rashness,  as  they  deemed 
it,  of  erecting  tlie  system  of  their  civil  rights  and  liberties  on  a  foundation  so 
precarious.  All  the  laws  that  had  been  concerted  in  England,  together 
with  nineteen  others,  were  adopted  and  enacted  by  the  assembly,  which, 
in  three  days,  closed  a  session  no  less  remarkable  for  the  extent  and  im- 
portance of  its  labors,  than  for  the  mutual  confidence,  good-will,  and  general 
harmony  that  prevailed  among  men  so  diversified  by  variety  of  race,  habit, 
and  religious  opinion.  All  united  in  expressing  gratitude  and  attachment  to 
the  proprietary  ;  the  Swedes,  in  particular,  deputing  one  of  their  number 


'  "  In  this  [1682]  and  the  two  next  succeeding  years,  arrived  ships,  with  passengei 
Bottlora,  froTT!  London,  Bristol-  Ireland-  Wales- Ghoshire-  Lancashir6-  Holland-  (.i^rnnany, 
to  tho  number  of  about  fiAy  soil."    Proud. 


jers  or 
ftnv,  &c.. 


512 


IlISTOKY   OF   NORTH   AMLUICA.* 


[BOOK  vn. 


to  assure  him  that  they  would  love,  serve,  and  obey  him  with  all  they  had, 
and  that  this  was  the  best  day  they  had  ever  seen.^ 

Amone  the  many  praiseworthy  features  ol  the  code  of  laws  that  was  thus 
enacted  for  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware,  we  have  already  remarked  the  par- 
ticular wisdom  of  the  provision   for  educating  every  native-horn  colonist 
to  some  useful  trade  or  employment.     But  the  pomts  on  which  this  code 
most  iustly  claims  the  praise  of  original  excellence  and  enlightened  huinaniiy 
are  its  provisions  for  the  administration  of  penal  law.      Nor  was  th(>rc  any 
Doint  on  which  its  regulations  have  been  more  efTicacious,  or  more  produc- 
tive of  lasting  and  extensive  benefit  to  mankind.    It  was  reserved  lor  Quaker 
wisdom  to  discover,  and  for  Quaker  patience  and  benevolence  to  demon- 
strate, that,  in  the  treatment  of  criminals,  justice  and  mercy  were  not  in- 
consistent virtues,  nor  policy  and  humanity  incompatible  objects  of  pursuil. 
Only  two  capital  crimes,  treason  and  murder,  were  recognized  by  tlielcnn- 
sylvanian  code  ;  and,  in  all  other  cases,  the  reformation  of  the  criminal  \vus 
esteemed  a  duty  not  less  imperative  than  the  punishment  of  liJS  ollence.   lo 
this  end,  it  was  ordained  that  all  prisons   should  be    workhouses,  ^^\mo 
offenders  might  bo  reclaimed,  by  discipline  and  instruction,  to  habits  of  ni- 
dustrv  and  morahty,  and  political  benefit  educed  from  the  performance  of 
Christian  duty.     The  institutions  that  resulted  from  this  benevolent  enter- 
prise in  legislation  have   reflected  honor  on  Pennsylvania,  and  diflused  their 
advantagesextensivcly  in  America  and  Europe.^     Notw.thstandmg  the  .st.ict 
injunctions  in  the  royal  charter,  neither  the  code  of  laws  which  was  now  es- 
tablished, nor  the  alteration  and  enlargement  which  it  subsequently  uiuior- 
went,  was  ever  submitted  to  royal  revision.  ,  .    xr     i     i 

No  sooner  was  the  assembly  adjourned,  than  Penn  hastened  to  Maryland 
to  vindicate  that  part  of  its  proceedings  which  was  necessarily  oflensive 
to  Lord. Baltimore,  and,  if  possible,  negotiate  with  this  nobleman  an  ami- 
cable adjustment  of  their  respective  territorial  pretensions.  But  be  seems, 
from  the  beginning,  to  have  been  aware  that  such  a  termination  o  the  d.s- 
pute  was  not  to  be  expected;  and,  notwithstanding  the  grateful  and  ap- 
proving sentiments  with  which  he  must  necessarily  have  contemplated  Lord 
Baltimore's  tolerant  policy,  and  the  protection  which  the  Quakers  had  ex- 
perienced  from  it  in  Maryland,  he  plainly  regarded  him  with  a  prejudice 
and  suspicion  not  very  creditable  to  his  own  candor  and  moderation ;  find- 
ing matter  of  evil  surmise  even  in  the  demonstrations  ol  lonor  and  respect 
which  he  received  from  his  brother  proprietary.-*  Lord  Baltimore  relied  on 
the  priority  and  distJnctncss^nns_ow^^ 

"  i  ¥lfe'"^2d^^vf  Src^^ently  carried,  in  practical  application,  the  nystan  of  prison 
S"  ov  CO  nmunitiVi  L.  I,.!^n'cul,ivatcd  will,  admirat.le  goni...,  benevolence   and  s m  ,   .. 

divisive  principle,  the  nun.0  of  vice,  misery,  nn.l  soc.ul  anarchy  or  urbitrary  gov  trntncnt,  may 
!L  Ldered  a  principle  of  union,  the  nurse  of  virtue,  '»r'I''"-«','^"f  «"X  J  ,  ^'.avs  "I  n.c. 
»  In  nn  account  of  their  conference,  which  Penn  tnmsnntted  to  Lngknd,  ho  says,  i^n.e. 
the  proprietary  of  Maryland,  attended  suitably  to  !..»  .  haractcr,  vvno  luur.  t!.r  oca.-n,  n,  ..„ 
sivjlitics,  to  show  mc  the  greatness  of  his  power.      1  roud. 


CHAP.  I.]     CONTBOVERSY  WITH  LORD  BALTIMORE. 


613 


And  more  indistinct  grant,  on  a  plea  which  wvls  suggested  to  him  by  the 
Committee  of  Plantations  in  England,  —  that  it  had  never  been  huended 
10  confer  on  Lord  Baltimore  any  other  territory  but  such  as  was  inhabited 
by  savages  only,  at  die  date  of  his  charter  ;  and  that  tlie  language  of  his 
charter  was  tl>erefore  inconsistent  with  its  intendment,  in  so  far  as  it  seemed 
to  authorize  his  claim  to  any  part  of  the  region  previously  colonized  by  the 
Swedes  or  the  Dutch.  Each  of  the  competitors  tenaciously  adhered  to  his 
interest  in  property,  which,  with  more  or  less  reason,  he  considered  his 
own  ;  and  neither  could  suggest  any  mode  of  adjustment,  save  a  total  relin- 
quishment of  the  other's  pretensions.  To  avoid  the  necessity  of  recurring 
again  to  this  disagreeable  controversy,  we  may  here  so  far  anticipate  the 
pace  of  events  as  to  remark,  that  it  was  protracted  for  some  years  without 
the  slightest  approach  to  mutual  accommodation ;  that  King  Charles,  to 
whom  both  parties  complained,  vainly  endeavoured  to  prevail  with  the  one 
or  the  other  to  yield  ;  and  that  James  the  Second,  soon  after  his  accession 
to  the  throne,  caused  an  act  of  council  to  be  issued  for  terminating  the  dis- 
pute by  dividing  the  subject-matter  of  it  equally  between  them.  By  this  ar- 
rangement, which  had  more  of  equitable  show  than  of  substantial  justice, 
Penn  obtained  the  whole  of  the  Swedish  and  Dutch  settlements,  and,  in 
effect,  preserved  all  that  he  or  the  Duke  of  York  had  ever  been  in  posses- 
sion of.  These  districts,  annexed  to  his  original  acquisition,  received  the 
name  of  the  Three  Lower  Counties,  or  the  Territories  of  Delaware,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  the  remainder  of  the  united  domain,  which  was  termed 
the  Three  Upper  Counties,  or  Province  of  Penflsylvania.^ 

This  busy  year  was  not  yet  to  close  without  an  important  and  memora- 
ble scene,  in  which  the  character  of  Penn  appears  in  a  very  different  light 
from  that  which  his  controversy  with  Lord  Baltimore  reflects  on  it.  The 
commissioners  who  accompanied  the  first  detachment  of  emigrants  had,  in 
compliance  with  the  proprietary's  instructions,  negotiated  a  treaty  with  the 
neighbouring  Indian  tribes,  for  the  purchase  of  the  lands  which  the  colo- 
nists were  to  occupy,  and  for  the  assurance  of  perpetual  friendship  and  peace 
between  the  two  races  of  people.  The  time  appointed  for  tlie  ratification 
of  this  treaty  now  arrived  ;  and,  at  a  spot  where  subsequently  arose  Ken- 
sington, one  of  the  suburbs  of  Philadelphia;  tlie  Indian  sachems,  at  the 
head  of  their  assembled  warriors,  awaited  m  arms  the  approach  of  a  Quaker 
deputation.  To  this  scene  William  Penn  repaired,  at  the  head  of  an  un- 
armed train  of  his  sectarian  associates,  carrying  various  articles  of  merchan- 
dise, which,  on  their  approach  to  the  sachems,  were  spread  on  the  ground. 
Distinguished  from  his  followers  by  no  other  external  badge  than  a  saah 
of  blue  silk,  and  holding  in  his  hand  a  roll  of  parchment  that  contained 
the  confirmation  of  the  treaty,  Penn  exchanged  salutations  with  the  Indians, 
and,  taking  his  station  under  an  elm-tree,^  addressed  them  with  the  assist 
ance  of  an  interpreter.     He  assured  them  that  the  Great  Spirit,  who  cre- 

•  Proud.    GImlmera  ~  " 

*  This  troe  was  long  regarded  with  universal  respect.  During  the  war  of  independence, 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Simcoe,  who  commanded  a  British  force  stationed  at  Kensington,  when 
his  soldiers  were  cutting  down  all  the  trees  around  them  for  firewood,  placed  a  sentinel  under 
Pcnn's  elm  to  guard  it  from  injury,  —  a  singular  tribute  from  a  man  who  was  engaged  in  vio- 
lating the  very  principles  of  equity  and  peace  of  which  the  object  of  his  consideration  woe  re- 
spected as  a  memorial,  and  probably  intended  as  a  gratefbl  compliment  to  the  American  Qua- 
kers, for  supporting  British  tyranny  against  the  liberties  of  their  country.  In  1810,  the  tree  was 
blowj  down ;  and  a  large  portion  of  it  was  then  conveyed  to  the  seat  of  the  representative  of 
iaz  ronn  fa<r>iiy  at  Stoke,  near  Wtuilttut,  iu  J^tigituiti,  wiiere,  tu  IbJJo,  i  saw  it  in  a  sum  of 
Munplete  preMrvation. 

VOL.    I.  65 


514 


HISTORY   OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII 


ated  all  men,  and  beheld  the  thoughts  of  every  heart,  knew  that  ho  and 
his  people  sincerely  desired  to  live  in  friendship  and  a  perpetual  commerce 
of  good  offices  with  the  Indians.     It  was  not  the  custom  of  his  friends, 
ho*  said   to  use  hostile  weapons  against  their  fellow-creatures,  and  fortius 
reason  they  came  to  the  conference  unarmed.     Their  intention  was  not  to 
do  iniury,  and  so  provoke  the  Great  Spirit,  but  to  do  good  ;  and  in  this 
and  every  uansaction  with  their  Indian  neighbours,  to  consider  the  advan- 
tage of  both  races  of  people  as  inseparable,  and  to  proceed  with  all  open- 
ness, brotherhood,  and  love.    Having  read,  from  the  parchment  record,  the 
conditions  of  the  purchase,  and  the  articles  of  compact,  by  which  it  was 
aercod  that  all  disputes  between  the  colonists  and  the  Indians  should  be  ad- 
Justed  by  arbitrators  mutually  chosen,  ho  delivered  to  the  sachems  the  stipu- 
lated  price,'  and  farther  desired  their  acceptance,  as  a  friendly  gift,  of  the 
additional  articles  of  merchandise  that  were  spread  before  them.     He  then 
invited  them  to  consider  the  land  which  he  had  purchased  as  still  common 
to  the  two  races,  and  freely  to  use  its  resources  whenever  t»iey  might  have 
occasion  for  them.'-'     He  added,  "  that  he  would  not  do  as  the  Marylandm 
did,  that  is,  call  them  children  or  brothers  only ;  for  often  parents  were^apt 
to  whip  their  children  too  severely,  and  brothers  sometimes  would  differ ; 
neither  would  he  compare  the  friendship  between  him  and  them  to  a  chain, 
for  the  rain  might  sometimes  rust  it,  or  a  tree  might  fall  and  break  it ;  but 
he  should  consider  them  as  the  same  flesh  and  blood  with  the  Chnstxum 
and  the  same  as  if  one  man's  body  were  to  be  divided  into  two  parts. 
He  concluded  by  presentihg  the  parchment  to  the  sachems,  and  requesting, 
that,  for  the  information  of  their  posterity,  they  would  cause  it  to  be  careful- 
ly  preserved  for  three  generations.     The  Indians  cordially  acceded  to  these 
propositions,  and  solemnly  pledged  themselves  to  live  m  love  with  William 
Penn  and  his  children  as  long  as  the  sun  and  moon  should  endure. 

Thus  was  conducted  a  treaty  of  which  Voltaire  has  remarked,  with  more 
sarcasm  than  truth  or  propriety,  that  it  was  the  only  one  between  the  Chris- 
tians  and  the  Indians  that  was  not  ratified  by  an  oath,  and  that  never  was 
broken.     Assuredly,  no  ceremonial  altogether  resembling  the  legal  formula 
of  a  Christian  oath  was  employed  by  either  of  the  contracting  parties  ;  but 
it  is  not  easy  to  distinguish  the  solemn  appeal  that  vvas  made  to  the  omnis- 
cience and  vindictive  justice  of  a  Supreme  Being  from  the  substantial  in- 
terposition of  a  sacramental  pledge  ;  nor  would  it  be  easy  to  cite  another 
treaty  between  the  Europeans  and  the  Indians  m  which  such  a  pledge  was 
expressed  with  more  or  even  with  equal  distinctness  and  formality.     In  one 
respect,  indeed,  the  forbearance  of  Penn  on  this  occasion  to  advert  to 
Christianity  otherwise  than  as  a  mere  nominative  distinction  may  have  con- 
tributed to  the  cordiality  with  which  his  propositions  were  received.     He 
sedulously  forbore  every  allusion  to  distinctive  peculiarities  or  offensive 
truths  ;  and  in  addresshig  n^enwhomjie  considered  as  benighted  heathens, 

-T-Wh^Hi^s-^ri^T^iiiiiii^^^^  been  recorded.    P«""' *r:it"«Ji'I,  i''/«erveX 

ing  year  to  some  friend,  in  England,  rcpreBente  .t  as  drur;  ""^ "''''«:" "^^''^n^^f^'^U" 
nam«  of  wiw  that  outwits  them  (the  Indians)  in  any  treaty  about  a  thing  they  undersuna. 

**TT|,e  «ime  liberality  was  shown  by  the  colonist,  of  New  E"gl;"f '^''«'^'J„«,,«„«„'7|^  ^ 
Dr.  Dwight,"the  Indians  were  alwavs  considered  as  having  a  r^ht  to  dwell  and  to 
within  the  lands  which  they  had  «o!d.'^     Travels  m  JVeio  England,  &c. 

!  SirnThi.'iZt  to^^l^Ss^in  England,  he  sayscf  the  In.dians:^ These  V^r^V^'^J^Z 


CHAP.  I] 


PENN'8  TREATY  WITH  THE  INDIAN8. 


515 


n  the  Chris- 


he  descended  to  adopt  their  religious  nomenclature,  and  more  than  insin- 
uated that  the  Great  Spirit  of  the  Indians  and  the  Tnio  God  of  the  Chris- 
tians were  not  different,  but  the  same.  But  a  much  more  respectable  pecu- 
liarity of  (Quakerism  than  abstinence  from  oaths  formed  the  most  remarkable 
feature  in  this  treaty  with  the  Indians,  and  mainly  contributed  to  insure  its 
durability,  tew  instances  have  been  recorded  of  greater  magnanimity 
than  was  evinced  in  the  explicit  declaration  of  a  race  of  civilized  men 
surrounded  by  a  nation  of  warlike  barbarians,  that  they  renounced  all  the 
advantage  of  superior  military  skill,  and  even  disclaimed  the  employment 
of  every  weapon  of  violence  for  the  defence  of  their  lives  or  the  redress  of 
their  wrongs  ;  trusting  the  safety  of  their  persons  and  possessions  against 
human  ferocity  and  cupidity  to  the  dominion  of  God  over  the  hearts  of 
his  rational  creatures,  and  relying  on  his  willingness  to  signalize  this  do- 
minion in  the  protection  of  all  who  would  exclusively  rely  on  it. 

The  singular  exemplification  of  Christian  character  in  this  respect,  by 
the  I  ennsylvanian  Quakers,  was  attended  with  an  exemption  no  less  singular 
from  those  contentions  and  calamities  which  Indian  neighbourhood  entailed 
on  every  other  description  of  European  colonists.  The  intentional  injury 
of  a  Quaker  by  an  Indian  is  an  event  almost,  if  not  altogether,  unknown  in 
Pennsylvanian,  and  very  rare  in  all  American  history.  The  probity  of  deal- 
ing, and  courtesy  of  deportment,  by  which  the  Quakers  generally  endeav- 
oured to  maintain  this  good  understanding,  were  aided  by  the  distinctions 
of  dress  and  manners  by  which  the  members  of  their  society  were  visibly 
segregated  from  other  men,  and  thus  exempted,  as  a  peculiar  or  separate 
tribe,  from  responsibility  for  the  actions,  or  concern  in  the  quarrels,  of  their 
countrymen.  The  inhabitants  of  many  of  the  other  colonies  were  no  less 
distinguished  than  the  Quakers  for  the  justice  and  good  faith  that  charac- 
terized their  transactions  with  the  Indians  ;  and  the  Catholic  inhabitants  of 
Maryland  are  said,  in  addition,  to  have  graced  these  estimable  qualities 
with  the  most  conciliating  demeanour.  Yet  none  were  able  to  obtain  an  en- 
tire exemption  from  Indian  hostility,  or  to  refrain  from  retaliatory  warfare. 
The  people  of  Maryland  were  sometimes  involved  in  the  indiscriminate 
rage  with  which  certain  of  the  Indian  tribes  pursued  the  hostilities  they  had 
commenced  against  the  colonists  of  Virginia.  But  whatever  animosity  the 
Indians  might  conceive  against  the  European  neighbours  of  the  Pennsylva- 
nians,  or  even  against  Pennsylvanian  colonists  who  did  not  belong  to  the 
Quaker  society,  they  never  failed  to  discriminate  the  followers  of  Penn, 
or  children  of  Onas  ^  (which  was  the  denomination  they  gave  to  the  Qua- 
kers), as  persons  whom  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  include  within  the 
pale  of  legitimate  warfare. 

The  friendship  that  was  created  by  Penn's  treaty  between  the  province 
and  the  Indians,  refreslied  by  successive  acts  of  courtesy  and  humanity, 
endured  for  about  sixty  years,  and  was  never  seriously  interrupted  till  near 
the  close  of  the  political  supremacy  of  the  Quakers  in  Pennsylvania.  No 
feature  in  the  manners  of  the  Quakers  contributed  more  efficiently  to  guard 


relirtd  for  the  night,  when  a  youns,  .._ , „ „  „„,. 

down  beside  him.    Penn  was  much  shocked  ;  but,  unwiMrng^to  "offend  by  reiectina  an'  in- 
tended  comphment,  he  '—  -•="    -"'• '-'-  ■     "  ^  .         ...    ■>.     J.        ? 


woman,  the  sachem's  daughter,  approaching  his  bed,  lay 

shocked;  but,  unwilling  to  offend  by  rejecting  an  in- 

pliment,  he  lay  still  without  taking  any  notice  of  her,  till  she  thought  proper 
to  return  to  her  own  couch.  A  New  England  patriarch,  in  such  circumstances,  would  probably 


have  excited  the  enmity  of  the  whole  Indian  tribd  by  his  expressions  of  displeasure  and  rep- 

...n.'t:,  5«  '""  •r.„ir,n  {ongue,  si-nifies  a  pes.    It  came  to  be  the  Indi.in  appoiiation  of  t|ii' 
gOTcrnore  of  PenoBylvania,  as  Corltar  was  of  the  governors  of  New  York.    Prow^.  %*' 


616 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


them  against  Indian  ferocity,  than  their  rigid  abstinence  not  merely  from 
the  use,  but  even  from  the  possession,  of  offensive  weapons,'  enforced 
by  their  conviction  of  the  sufficiency  of  divine  aid,  and  their  respect  to  the 
Scriptural  threat,  that  all  who  take  the  sword  shall  perish  by  it.  It  was  a 
different  feature  of  Christian  character  that  was  exhibited  by  the  Puritan 
colonists  of  New  England  in  their  intercourse  with  the  Indians.  They  felt 
less  indulgence  for  the  frailty  of  the  savages,  than  concern  for  their  spiritual 
blindness,  and  abhorrence  of  their  idolatrous  superstition  ;  they  displayed 
less  meekness  of  wisdom  than  the  Quakers,  but  more  of  active  zeal  and 
missionary  ardor.  The  Puritans  were  most  concerned  to  promote  the  re- 
ligious interests  of  the  Indians  ;  the  Quakers,  to  gain  tlieir  good-will.  The 
Puritans  converted  a  number  of  their  heathen  neighbours  ;  the  Quakers 
conciliated  them  all.  It  was  unfortunate  for  the  colonists  of  New  England, 
that,  asserting  the  lawfulness  of  defensive  war,  they  were  surrounded  by 
numerous  bold  and  warlike  tribes,  stimulated  to  acts  of  aggression,  at  first 
by  their  own  ferocity  and  jealousy,  and  latterly  by  the  intrigues  of  the 
French.  It  was  a  happy  contingency  for  the  planters  of  Pennsylvania,  thai 
the  Indian  tribes  around  them  were  inconsiderable  in  number,  and  eiilier 
belonged  to  the  confederacy  or  were  subject  to  the  influence  of  the  Five 
jsrations,^  who  were  themselves  in  alliance  with  the  sister  colony  of  New 

York. 

Nothing  can  be  more  exaggerated  or  inapplicable  than  the  encomrtiirs 
which  numerous  writers  have  bestowed  on  this  celebrated  transaction  be- 
tween Penn  and  the  Indians.    They  have,  with  unhappy  partiality,  selected 
as  the  chief,  and  frequently  the  sole,  object  of  commendation,  the  sup- 
posed originality  of  the  design  of  buying  the  land  from   the  savages,  in- 
stead of  appropriating  it  by  fraud  or  force, — which  last  they  represent  as 
the  only  methods  of  acquisition  that  had  been  employed  by  the  predecessors 
of  Penn  in  the  colonization  of  Nortli  America.^   This  is  at  once  to  reproach 
all  the  other  founders  of  civilized  society  in  North  America  witli  injustice 
and  usurpation  ;  to  compliment  the  Indians  with  the  gratuitous  supposition 
that  only  bare  justice  on  tha  part  of  the  colonists  was  requisite  to  the  pres- 
ervation of  |)eace  between  the  two  races  ;  and  to  ascribe  to  Penn  a  merit 
which  assuredly  did  not  belong  to  him,  and  which  he  himself  (though  by  no 
means  deficient  in  self-complacency)  has  expressly  disclaimed.     The  ex- 
ample of  that  equitable  consideration  of  tlie  rights  of  the  native  owners  of 
the  soil,  which  has  been  supposed  to  have  originated  with  him,  was  first 
exhibited  by  the  planters  of  New  England,  whose  deeds  of  conveyance 

'  Herodotus  (Book  IV.)  rolatns  t?  u  Scvthiun  tribe,  called  the  Argippaean*,  that  »  No  man 
offers  violcnre  to  this  people ;  for  tlioy  are  accounted  sacred,  and  tiav»  no  wiirhkt  wmpon 
amon<r  them."  These  Scylliian  C^uakprs  appear  also  to  have  studied  an  ohscrvnhle  peruii- 
ority  of  exterior,  by  croditintiiif;  all  the  hair  from  their  bodies.  Herodotus,  indeed,  represent* 
them  ns  bom  without  luiir  ;  but  we  know  that  the  same  opinio.i  was  long,  though  erroneously, 
entertained  with  regard  to  tlic  aborigines  of  America. 

*  Oldmixon.     Chalmers.  .     i    i- 

»  The  Abb6  Raynal  declares,  that  Penn,  by  purchasing  a  conveyance  from  the  Indir.n.s,  in 
addition  to  his  charter  from  the  king  of  England,  "  is  entitled  to  the  glory  of  having  given  an 
Mampio  of  moderation  and  justice  in  America,  never  so  much  as  Ihonght  of  before  by  the 
Europeans."  Noble,  in  his  Cmtinuatiun  of  firun/rer,  s.iys, «'  Ho  occupied  his  domain^)  by  ac 
tual  bargain  and  sale  with  the  Indiana.  This  diet  docs  him  infinite  honor.  Penn  has  tlius 
taught  us  to  respect  the  lives  and  properties  of  the  most  unenlightened  nations.*  It  vsould 
be  easy  to  multiply  similar  <iuotutions.  Even  Mr.  Cliirkson,  who  ncknowlcdjres  that  I.ord 
Baltimore,  at  least,  urcce  ted  Ponn  in  this  hct  of  justice,  cannot  regain  from  compiinicnting 
Peiiii  lot  Muiifills,  H)  ifiin  liistr.nrti,  "  iinovc  uu;  prrjiitlit-its  ailtj  t-iiBtw?in  .,•?  ;!i_r-  ..m,  .  .-ir  ...!... 
modest  and  moderale  account  >.l'  Penn's  tnmty  wtilrh  I  have  seen  w  that  which  claims  Mr.  UtU- 
mya  (See  Note  ^i^VL,  at  ijip  cud  of  tlw  volu'oe)  <«»f  it»  awibof 


CHAP.  I] 


SECOND   ASSEMBLY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 


m 


suc- 


li  claims  Mr.  Dill- 


from  the  Indians  were  earlier  by  half  a  century  than  his  ;  and  was 

cessively  repeated  by  the  planters  of  Maryland,  Carolina,  New  York,  and 
New  Jersey,  before  the  province  of  Pennsylvania  had  a  name.  Penn  was 
introduced  to  an  acquaintance  with  American  colonization  by  succeeding  to 
the  management  of  New  Jersey,  in  which  Berkeley  and  Carteret  had  already 
established  this  equitable  practice  ;  and  his  own  conformity  to  it  in  Penn- 
sylvania was  expressly  recommended  to  him  by  Bishop  Compton  (whose  in- 
terference we  have  remarked  in  the  composition  of  the  charter) ,  and  was 
publicly  ascribed  by  himself  to  the  counsels  of  that  prelate. i 

The  continual  arrival  of  vessels,  transporting  settlers  to  the  colony  from 
all  parts  of  the  British  dominions,  afforded  frequent  occasion  to  Penn  for 
the  exercise  of  the  agreeable  labor  of  surveying  his  territories,  and  appro- 
priating to  the  purchasers  their  resi>ective  allotments  of  land,  [1683.]  One 
of  these  allotments,  consisting  of  a  thousand  acres,  was  a  gift  from  the 
proprietary  to  his  friend,  George  Fox,  and  formed  the  only  landed  estate 
which  this  venerable  founder  of  Quakerism  ever  possessed.**  The  greater 
number  of  the  emigrants  still  continued  to  be  Quakers,  with  the  acldilion 
of  some  other  Dissenters,  withdrawing  from  the  severities  of  persecution 
and  the  contagion  of  European  vices  ;  and  their  behaviour  in  the  < olony 
corresponding  with  the  noble  motives  that  conducted  them  o  it,^  the  do- 
mains of  Penn  exhibited  a  happy  and  animated  scene  of  active  industry, 
devotional  exercise,  and  thankful  enjoyment  of  civil  and  religious  liberty .  It 
appeared,  however,  that  some  worthless  persons  had  already  intruded  them- 
selves among  the  more  respectable  settlers  ;  and  three  men,  who  were 
now  brought  to  trial  and  convicted  of  coining  adulterated  money,  gave  oc- 
casion to  the  first  practical  display  of  the  mildness  of  Pennsylvanian  justice. 

Shortly  before  this  judicial  proceeding,  the  second  convocation  of  the 
legislative  assembly  of  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware  had  taken  place.  [March, 
1683.]  In  this  assembly  some  new  laws  were  passed,  and  certain  anom- 
alies in  legislation  were  broached.  It  was  proposed  that  all  young  men 
should  be  compelled  by  law  to  marry  before  a  certain  age  ;  and  that  no  in- 
habitant of  the  province  should  be  permitted  to  have  more  than  two  suits  of 
clothes,  one  for  summer  and  the  other  for  winter  ;  but  these  propositions 
were,  very  properly,  rejected.  More  wisdom  vas  displayed  in  an  ordinance 
which  abrogated  the  common  law  with  regard  to  the  descent  of  lands,  and 
enacted,  that,  in  the  succession  of  children  to  a  father  dying  intestate,  the 
eldest  son  should  have  no  farther  preference  than  a  double  share.  How- 
ever consonant  it  might  be  to  feudal  principles  to  bestow  the  fief  undimin- 
ished upon  the  son  who  was  first  able  to  defend  it,  this  policy  was  mani- 
festly unsuitable  to  colonists,  who,  liaving  a  vast  wilderness  to  cultivate, 
were  in  prudence  obliged  to  multiply  the  incentives  to  exertion  by  an  ex- 
tensive diffusion  of  interest  and  property  in  the  soil.  An  impost  upon 
goods  imported  and  exported  was  voted  to  the  proprietary,'  who  acknovvl- 

'  In  a  letter  from  Penn  to  the  Lords  oHlie  Coniniittoj  of  Trade  and  Plantations  in  England 
(in  ItidH),  ho  declares,  that  "I  have  followed  the  Bishop  of  Loudon's  counaei,  hv ':">!;-.-, 
and  not  taking  away,  the  natives'  land."  Proud.  Tlii^  letter  is  also  printed  by  Chalmers. 
Mr.  Clarkson  refers  to  it  as  containing  Peiin's  statement  of  his  controversy  with  Lord  Balti- 
more, but  has  not  thought  that  the  credit  of  Penn  would  be  advanced  by  its  republication. 
It  consists  chiefly  of  an  elaborate  attempt  to  vindicate  iiis  own  pretensions  to  the  Delawaro 
territory,  and  to  interest  the  Lords  of  Trade  to  support  them  against  Lord  Baltimore's  clainw. 
Hence,  perhaps,  the  readiness  ho  evinces  to  compliment  tiie  Bishop  of  London. 

•  Fox  dispo.sed  of  this  estate  by  his  will.   But  he  never  was  in  Pennsylvania. 
'  See  Note  XXIX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

*  This  seems  to  refute  the  allegation  of  Dr.  Franklin,  in  his  Ilislorkal,  Review  of  the  Con- 


RR 


dl8 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


edged  the  kindness  of  the  assembly,  but  wisely  and  liberally  remitted  the 
proposed  burden  on  the  province  and  the  traders  who  resorted  to  it.  But 
the  most  important  business  transacted  in  this  session  was  an  alteration  in 
the  constitution  of  the  State,  which,  unquestionably,  from  whatever  cause, 
underwent  in  its  infancy  a  fluctuation  almost,  if  not  altogether,  unexampled 
in  the  history  of  the  other  colonial  establishments.  William  Penn  having 
demanded  of  the  members  of  council  and  assembly,  "  whether  they  desired 
to  preserve  his  first  charter,  or  to  obtain  a  new  one,"  they  unanimously 
adopted  the  latter  part  of  the  alternat've  ;  and  with  the  assistance  of  a  com- 
mittee of  these  bodies,  a  new  frame  or  charter  was  forthwith  prepared. 
The  chief  purpose  of  this  transaction  seems  to  have  been  to  legalize  (ac- 
cording to  Penn's  ideas)  the  alteration  introduced  by  the  act  of  settlement 
passed  by  the  prior  assembly.  It  was  accordingly  now  provided,  by  a 
charter  emanating  from  the  proprietary,  that  the  provincial  council  should 
consist  of  eighteen  persons,  three  from  each  county,  and  the  assembly  of 
thirty-six,  by  whom,  in  conjunction  with  the  governor,  all  laws  were  to  be 
made  and  public  affairs  conducted.  But  still  no  laws  could  be  proposed  in 
the  assembly,  except  such  as  had  been  considered  and  prepared  by  ihe  gov- 
ernor and  council.  The  only  change  in  the  distribution  of  power  that 
was  produced  by  this  new  charter  was,  that  the  governor,  with  his  treble 
vote,  necessarily  possessed  more  control  in  a  council  of  eighteen,  than  by 
the  original  frame  he  could  have  enjoyed  in  a  council  of  seventy-two  mem- 
bers. The  interests  of  freedom  were,  however,  promoted  by  a  grant,  to 
all  the  inhabitants  of  the  province,  of  unlimited  liberty  to  hunt  in  uninclosod 
lands  and  to  fish  in  all  waters,  "  that  they  may  be  accommodated  with  such 
food  and  sustenance  as  God  in  his  providence  hath  freely  afforded  "  ; '  and 
ahens  were  encouraged  by  a  provision,  that,  in  case  of  their  dying  without 
having  been  previously  naturalized,  their  lands  should,  nevertheless,  de- 
scend to  their  heirs.  The  new  charter  was  thankfully  accepted  by  the 
representatives  of  the  people,  who  closed  their  second  assembly  with  ex- 
pressions of  undiminished  attachment  to  the  proprietary. 

This  assembly  was  held  at  the  infant  city  of  Philadelphia.  Soon  after 
his  arrival  in  the  province,  Penn  had  selected  a  commodiaus  situation, 
between  the  rivers  Schuylkill  and  Delaware,  for  the  erection  of  the  metrop- 
olis of  Pennsylvania  ;  and,  having  regulated  the  model  of  the  future  city 
by  a  map,'-^  he  bestowed  on  it  a  name  expressive  of  that  brotherly  love 
which  he  hoped  would  ever  characterize  its  inhabitants.  Many  of  the 
streets  he  distinguished  by  appellations  descriptive  of  the  peculiar  ibrest- 
trees  that  were  cut  down  to  make  room  for  them,  and  which  still  continue 
to  commemorate  the  sylvan  original  of  the  place.  The  progress  of  the 
buildings  of  Philadelphia  was  a  favorite  object  of  his  care,  and  advanced 
with  such  rapidity,  that,  in  less  than  a  year  from  its  commencement,  the  in- 

MUution  of  Pennsylvania,  tlint  "Perm  prevailed  with  Jiis  first  colonists  to  snbniit  to  liis  quit- 
rt^nts,  by  holding  out  the  delusive  hope  that  they  would  supersede  all  public  impoBilioiis  for 
the  support  of  government  " 
•  Tins  spocilication  of  til 

hn  cliasu.     Snngiiinar 
Yet,  at  a  later  perioi 


I  of  the  leeitimaU'  objects  of  limiting  and  fishing  was  probably  intend 
caranee  ol  t^uaker  sanction  of  the  pastime  of  the  chase 


7 

d, 


v.i  to  obviate  the  app< 

sports  have  alwavs  been  deemed  utterly  repugnant  to  (luaki'rism  . 

n  Pennsylvanian  (luaker  was  celebrated  for  possessing  the  only  pack  of  hounds  existing  at  the 

time  in  North  America.     Cobbett's  Yrnr's  Residence  in  the  Vnittd  Slates. 

*  In  the  Connertinn  nf  the  History  of  the  Old  and  j\ew  Testament,  by  Dean  Pridcaux.  there 
IS  a  plan  or  model  of  the  citv  of  ancient  Babylon.  "  Much  according  to  this  model,"  says 
the  dt-an,  «  hiuh  William  Wnm,  the  Qusker,  laid  out  the  grf-sind  i'r.r  h;~  city  of  Phibidclplna, 
in  Pennsylvania  ;  and  were  it  all  built  according  to  that  design,  it  would  be  the  fairest  and 
beat  city  in  all  America,  and  not  much  behind  any  othsr  in  the  whole  world." 


CHAP.  I] 


PENN'S  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND. 


519 


habitants  of  a  hundred  substantial  houses  beheld  [1684]  from  these  struct- 
ures of  civilized  life  the  caves  whose  rude  shelter  they  had  so  recently 
occupied  ;  and/ in  the  course  of  the  following  year  the  population  of  the 
city  amounted  to  two  thousand  five  hundred  persons. * 

The  remainder  of  the  time  spent  by  the  proprietary,  in  his  first  visit  to 
his  colony,  was  employed  in  conducting  his  controversy  with  liord  Balti- 
more ;  in  extending  his  treaties  with  the  Indian  trjbes,  to  whom  his  presents 
from  time  to  time  amounted  in  value  to  several  thousand  pounds  ;  in  acting 
as  a  niinister  among  the  Quaker  colonists,  and  arranging  the  frame  of  their 
sectarian  practice  and  discipline  ;  and  in  impelling  and  directing  the  progress 
of  his  favorite  city  of  Philadelphia.  He  saw  his  religious  society  and 
principles  established  in  a  land  where  they  were  likely  to  take  a  firm  and 
vigorous  root  and  expand  with  unbounded  freedom  ;  and  institutions  rising 
around  him  that  promised  to  illustrate  his  name  with  a  lasting  and  honor- 
able renown.  In  fine,  he  beheld  the  people  who  acknowledged  his  su- 
premacy happy  and  prosperous,  and  seemed  himself  to  enjoy  his  transatlan- 
tic retirement.^  The  only  subjects  of  trouble  or  disappointment,  which  his 
colonial  project  had  yet  produced,  were,  his  dispute  with  Lord  Baltimore, 
and  the  failure  of  his  efforts  to  guard  the  Indians  from  that  destructive 
vice  which  the  vicinity  of  Europeans  has  always  contributed  to  diffuse  among 
them.  A  law  was  passed  against  supplying  those  savages  with  spirituous 
liquors  ;  but  the  practice  had  been  introduced  by  the  colonists  of  Delaware 
long  before  Penn's  arrival,  and  his  attempts  to  suppress  it  proved  inef- 
fectual. The  Europeans  acknowledged  the  cruelty  and  injustice  of  this 
traffic,  and  the  Indians  confessed  their  experience  of  its  baneful  effects; 
but  neither  could  be  persuaded  to  desist  from  it.  It  was  attended  with 
the  additional  evil  of  confirming  the  Indians  in  their  roving  habits  of  life  and 
distaste  for  the  discipline  of  civilization  ;  as  the  peltry  they  acquired  in 
hunting  was  the  only  commodity  they  were  able  to  exchange  with  the  colo- 
nists for  rum  and  brandy.^  The  more  valuable  possessions  and  advantages 
by  which  the  colonists  were  distinguished  were  either  lightly  esteemed  by 
the  Indians,  or  reckoned  unworthy  of  the  constant  toil  thai  was  required  to 
procure  them.  In  answer  to  the  advice  of  the  Europeans,  that  they  should 
betake  themselves  to  a  life  of  regular  industry,  one  of  the  Indians  begged  to 
hear  some  satisfactory  reason  why  he  should  labor  hard  all  his  days  to  make 
his  children  idle  all  theirs.* 

In  the  midst  of  a  scene  of  felicity  as  unmixed,  perhaps,  as  any  socii.-ty 
of  human  beings  ever  exhibited,  Penn  resolved  upon  returning  to 'England, 
in  order  to  fortify,  by  personal  solicitation,  the  interest  which  he  possessed 
at  the  English  court,  and  which  he  was  desirous  to  employ  in  furtherance 
of  his  suit  with  Lord  Baltimore,  as  well  as  for  the  relief  of  a  number  of  his 
Quaker  brethren  who  were  suffering  in  the  parent  state  from  an  increased 

'  Oldmixon.    Proud.    Chalmers.     Clarkson. 

•  In  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  Engalnd,  he  says,  "  O,  how  sweet  is  the  quiet  of  these  part.s, 
free  from  the  anxious  and  troublesome  solicitations,  hurries,  and  perplexities  of  icoful  Europe  ; 
and  God  will  thin  her;  the  day  hastens  upon  her."    Proud. 

'  "  An  Indian,"  says  Charlevoix,  "  who  lias  onco  tasted  brandy,  never  after  applies  himself 
to  fishing  or  agriculture.  Ho  thinks  only  of  amassing  furs  in  order  to  purchase  the  means  of 
intoxication." 

*  Oldmixon.  Proud.  S.  Smith.  "  Th'.-  Indians  have  a  sovereign  contempt  for  whatever  is 
not  necessary-, —  that  is,  for  the  very  thing's  vviiich  we  hold  in  the  greatest  estimation."  Charle- 
voix. This  18  too  broad  an  assertion.  Proud,  the  Quaker,  in  one  pa);e  compliirients  the  Indians 
*!>r  tliPir  Ptoir;)!  indifference  to  all  (ir-ery  whatever;  and  in  the  very  next  cundumns  their 
childish  partiality  for  finery  of  apparel. 


620 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


Strictness  in  the  execution  of  the  penal  hiws  against  Nonconformists.'     In 
preparation  for  this  measure,  he  intrusted  the  administration  of  his  propri- 
etary functions  to  the  provincial  council,  of  which  he  appointed  Thomas 
Lloyd,  a  Quaker,  to  be  president,  and  Irs  own  kinsman,  Markham,  to  be 
secretary  ;   and  committed  the  distribution  of  justice,  in  conformity  with 
the  existing  laws,  to  Nicholas  Moore  and  four  other  planters,  whom  he 
constituted  the  provincial  judges.   [June,  1684.]     On  the  eve  of  his  de- 
parture, and  having  already  embarked,  he  addressed  to  Lloyd,  and  others, 
of  his  more  intimate  associates,  a  valedictory  letter,  which  he  desired  them 
to  communicate  to  all  his  friends  in  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware.     "  Dear 
friends,"  he  declared,  "  my  love  and  my  life  is  to  you  and  with  you  ;  and 
no  water  can  quench  it,  nor  distance  wear  it  out  or  bring  it  to  an  end.     1 
have  been  with  you,  cared  over  you,  and  served  you  with  unfeigned  love  ; 
and  you  are  beloved  of  me  and  dear  to  me  beyond  utterance.     I  bless  you 
in  the  name  and  power  of  the  Lord  ;  and  may  God  bless   you  with  his 
righteousness,  peace,  and  plenty,  all  the  land  over.     O,  that  you  would  eye 
him  in  all,  through  all,  and  above  all  the  works  of  your  hands  !  "    After  ad- 
monishing those  to  whom  he  committed  the  office  of  magistracy  to  consider 
it  as  a  sacred  function  and  heavenly  trust,  he  apostrophized  his  favorite  city 
with  this  votive  benediction  :  —  "And  thou,  Philadelphia,  the  virgin  settle- 
ment of  this  province,  named  before  thou  wert  born,  what  love,  what  care, 
what  service,  and  what  travail  has  there  been  to  bring  thee  forth,  and  pre- 
serve thee  from  such  as  would  abuse  and  defile  thee  !  O,  that  thou  mayest 
be  kept  from  the  evil  that  would  overwhelm  thee  !  that,  faithful  to  the  God 
of  thy  mercies  in  the  life  of  righteousness,  thou  mayest  be  preserved  to  the 
end  !     My  soul  prays  to  God  for  thee,  that  thou  mayest  stand  in  the  day 
of  trial,  that  thy  children  may  be  blest  of  the  Lord,  and  thy  people  saved 
by  his  power.     JNIy  love  to  thee  has  been  great,  and  the  remembrance 
of  thee  affects  mine  heart  and  mine  eyes.     The  God  of  eternal  strength 
keep  and  preserve  thee  to  his  glory  and  thy  peace  !  "    "  So,  dear  friends," 
he  thus   concluded,  "  my  love  again  salutes  you  all,  wishing  that  grace, 
mercy,  and  peace,  with  all  temporal  blessings,  may  abound  richly  among 
you  :  —  So  says,  so  prays,  your  friend  and  lover  in  the  truth,  William 
P 


enn." 

At  the  period  of  the  proprietary's  departure  from  the  province,  Phila- 
delphia already  contained  three  hundred  houses,  and  the  population  of  Penn- 
sylvania amounted  altogether  to  six  thousand  souls.^  Of  the  increase  which 
the  population  of  the  Delaware  territory  had  undergone  no  memorial  has 
been  preserved. 

'  The  unfortunate  consequences  that  attended  Penn's  withdrawment  at  this  perigd  from  the 
quiet  of  America,  to  plunge  again  into  the  goUritations  of  woful  Europe,  have  ronderrd  the 
cause  of  this  step  a  suojectof  some  importance.  Oldmixon,  who  derived  his  information  from 
Penn  himself,  says,  that  he  was  dctenninrd,  much  against  his  will,  to  return,  hy  tidings  of  the 
persecution  of  the  Quakers  and  other  Dissenters  in  England  ;  and  that  "  he  knew  he  had 
an  interest  in  the  court  of  England,  and  was  willitis  to  enip.oy  it  for  the  safety,  ease,  and  wel- 
fare of  his  friends."  But  Proud,  who  is  by  fiir  the  best  authority  on  points  of  early  I'cnn- 
sylvanian  history,  declares  that  "  the  dispute  between  him  and  the  Lord  Baltimore  before- 
im-ntioned  was  vh  t  mainly  occasioned  Penn's  return  to  England."  In  a  letter  written 
shortly  after  his  arri\ai  in  England,  Penn  says  that  "ho  had  seen  t  ho  king  and  the  Duke 
uf  York.  They  and  their  nobles  had  been  very  kind  to  him,  and  ho  hoped  the  Lord  would 
make  way  for  him  in  their  hearts  to  serve  his  suffering  people,  as  also  hit  own  interest  as  it 
related  to  his  American  conccrna."     Clarkson. 

•  Oldmixon.    Proud. 


CIIAP.  II.]        PENNS  FAVOR  AT  THE  COURT  OF  JAMES  II. 


521 


CHAPTER    II. 


Venn's  Fuvor  at  the  Court  of  James  tlie  Second.  —  Dissensions  among  the  Colonists  — 
their  Disagreement  with  Penn  about  his  Quitrents.  —  He  appoints  five  Commissioners  of 
Suite.  —  Humor  of  an  Indian  Conspiracy. — Penn  dissatisfied  with  his  Commigsioners  — 
appoints  liiackwell  Deputy-Governor.  — Arbitrary  Conduct  of  Blaekwell.—  Displeasure  of 
the  Assembly.  —  Dissension  between  the  People  of  Delaware  and  Pennsylvania.  —  Dela- 
ware obtains  a  separate  Executive  Government.  —  George  Keith's  Schism  in  Pennsyl- 
vania. —  Penn  deprived  of  his  Authority  by  King  William.  —  Fletcher  appointed  Governor. 

—  Penn's  Authority  restored.  —  Third  Frame  of  Government.  —  Quaker  Accession  to  War. 

—  Penn's  second  Visit  to  his  Colony.  —  Sentiments  and  Conduct  of  the  Quakers  relative;  to 
Negro  Slavery. —  Renewal  of  the  Disputes  between  Delaware  and  Pennsylvania.—  Fnurth 
and  last  Frame  of  Government.  —  Penn  returns  to  England.  —  Union  of  Pennsylviiniii  and 
Delaware  dissolved.  —  Complaints  of  the  Assembly  against  Penn.  —  Misconduct  of  Govern 
or  Evans.  —  He  is  superseded  by  Gookin.  —  Penn's  Remonstrance 
Pennsylvania  and  Delaware  at  the  Close  of  the  Seventeenth  Century 


to  his  People.  —  State  of 


Bidding  adieu  to  the  peaceful  scene  of  his  infant  commonwealth,  Penn 
transferred  his  presence  and  activity  to  the  very  dissimilar  theatre  of  the 
court  of  England.  [1685.]  Here  the  interest  which  he  possessed  was 
soon  increased  to  such  a  degree,  by  the  advancement  of  his  patron  and  his 
father's  friend,  the  Duke  of  York,  to  the  throne,  that,  in  the  hope  of  em- 
ploying it  to  his  own  advantage  and  to  the  general  promotion  of  religious 
liberty,*  he  abandoned  all  thoughts  of  returning  to  America,  and  continued 
to  reside  in  the  neighbourhood,  and  even  to  employ  himself  in  the  service 
of  the  court,  as  long  as  James  the  Second  was  permitted  to  wear  the 
crown  ;  —  a  policy,  which,  in  the  sequel,  proved  extremely  prejudicial  to 
his  reputation  in  England  and  to  his  interest  in  America.  The  first  fruit  of 
his  enhanced  influence  at  court  was  the  adjudication  that  terminated  his 
controversy  witli  Lord  Baltimore  and  secured  to  him  the  most  valuable 
portion  of  the  Delaware  territory. '^  Fruits  of  a  more  liberal  description 
illustrated  his  successful  efforts  to  procure  a  suspension  of  the  legal  severi- 
ties to  which  the  members  of  his  own  religious  society  were  exposed,  and 
for  the  discontinuance  of  which  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  presentmg  an 
address  of  thanks  to  the  king  i:oin  all  the  Quakers  in  England.^ 

'  The  address  of  the  Quakers  of  England  to  James  the  Second,  on  his  accession  to  the 
throne,  wils  conceived  in  these  brief  and  simple  terms  :  "  We  are  come  to  testify  our  sorrow 
for  the  death  of  our  good  friend  Charles,  and  our  joy  for  thy  being  made  our  governor.  We 
are  told  thou  art  not  of  the  persuasion  of  the  church  of  England,  no  more  than  we  ;  where- 
fore we  hope  thou  wilt  grant  us  the  same  liberty  which  thou  allowest  to  thyself,  which 
doing,  we  wish  ilico  all  manner  of  happiness."  And  yet  these  Quakers  perfectly  well  knew 
that  the  prince  whom  they  thus  addressed  was,  at  the  time,  and  had  for  several  years  before 
been,  wiiging  n  savage  persecution  against  the  people  of  Scotland  for  their  dissent  from  a 
church  from  which  he  himself  still  more  widely  dissented. 

'  This  adjudication  was  not  so  distinct  as  to  prevent  much  subsequent  dispute  respecting 
the  p-eciso  boundaries  between  Delaware  anil  Maryland,  which  continuea  to  distract  the 
inhabitants  on  the  borders  of  these  provinces,  till  it  was  adjusted  in  1750,  by  a  decree  pro- 
nounced in  Chancery  by  Lord  Htu-dwicke.  Chalmers.  Vesey's  Reports.  This  decree  was 
not  finally  executed  till  the  year  1762,  when  "  the  inhabitants  on,  the  Pennsylvanian  side, 
near  the  boundary,  agreed  to  employ  two  ingenious  English  mathematicians,  after  their  return 
from  the  Capo  of  Good  Hope  (where  they  had  been  to  observe  the  transit  of  Venus  in  1761), 
finally  to  settle  or  make  out  the  same;  which  was  accordingly  performed  by  tlicm  ;  and 
itone  pillitrs  erected,  to  render  the  same  more  durably  conspicuous.  '     Proud. 

Nothing  was  more  common,  for  a  long  time,  in  the  American  provinces,  than  disputes  arising 
from  niicrrtain  boundaries.  A  dispute  of  this  nature  between  the  townships  of  Lyme  and  New 
London,  in  New  England,  during  the  seventeenth  century,  was  decided  by  a  solemn  pugilistic 
combat  between  four  champions  chosen  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  two  places.  Dvvight's  Travels. 

'  Proud.     The  civic  company  o? cooks  in  London  followed  the  example  of  the  Quakers  in 


•I... 


tiiC 


i^ijtfw    .>r  H''*  •^j' 


vqL. 


66 


nF ; 


-  1.- 


address  (publlKhsd  in  tile  Londu 
RR 


11 


622 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


This  year  was  signalized  by  an  attempt,  that  originated  with  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  Quaker  society  at  Burlington,  in  New  Jersey,  to  counnu- 
nicate  the  knowledge  (such  knowledge  as  the  teachers  themselves  possessed) 
of  Christian  truth  to  the  Indians.  These  savages  readily  acceded  to  the 
conferences  that  were  proposed  to  them,  and  listened  with  their  usual 
gravity  and  decorum  to  the  first  body  of  missionaries  who,  in  professing  to 
obey  the  divine  command  to  teach  and  baptize  all  nations,  ever  ventured  to 
teach  that  baptism  was  not  an  ordinance  of  Christian  appointment.  Of  the 
particular  communications  between  the  Quaker  teachers  and  the  Indians  no 
account  has  been  preserved  ;  but  the  result,  as  reported  by  a  Quaker  his- 
torian, was,  that  the  Indians  in  general  acknowledged  at  the  time  that  what 
they  heard  was  very  wise,  weighty,  and  true,  —  and  never  afterwards  thought 
farther  about  it.'  The  first  successful  attempts  to  evangelize  the  Indian  in- 
habitants of  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  and  Pennsylvania  were  not  made  till 
towards  the  middle  of  the  following  century,  when  this  work  was  under- 
taken by  the  celebrated  David  Brainerd,  of  New  England,  and  by  certain 
Moravians  who  had  emigrated  from  Germany.  Indian  converts  to  Chris- 
tianity have  been  gained  in  America  by  Catholics,  Puritans,  and  Moravians-, 
out  no  instance  has  beeii  recorded  of  the  religious  conversion  of  an  Indian 
by  Quakers. 

Meanwhile,  the  emigration  from  England  to  Pennsylvania  continued  to 
flow  with  undiminished  cuiT' it ;  the  stimulus,  that  had  been  previousl) 
afiorded  by  the  rigors  of  ecclesiastical  law,  being  amply  supplied  by  the 
disUke  and  suspicion  with  which  the  king's  civil  policy  was  regarded,— 
by  tlie  accounts  which  were  circulated  of  the  prosperity  enjoyed  by  the  col- 
onists of  this  province,  —  and  by  the  common  belief  that  Penn's  interest 
with  the  king  would  protect  its  liberties  from  the  general  wreck  in  vvhicli 
royal  tyranny  had  involved  the  constitutions  of  the  other  American  colo- 
nies.*' But  this  increase  in  the  numbers  of  his  colonists  was  now  the  sole 
satisfaction  that  they  were  to  aftbrd  to  the  proprietary  ;  and  his  connection 
with  them  henceforward  was  clouded  by  disappointment,  and  embittered  by 
mutual  dispute.  It  was  but  a  few  months  after  his  departure  from  the 
province,  that  a  spirit  of  discord  began  to  manifest  itself  among  the  planters. 
Moore,  the  chief  justice,  and  Robinson,  the  clerk  of  the  provincial  court, 
neither  of  whom  belonged  to  the  Quaker  society,  had  rendered  themselves 
disagreeable  to  the  leading  persons  of  this  persuasion  in  the  colony.  The 
first  was  impeached  by  the  assembly  of  high  crimes  and  misdemeanours,— 
and  for  refusing  to  answer  the  charge  was  suspended  from  his  functions  by 
the  council  ;  while  a  very  disproportioned  censure  was  passed  on  the  other, 
who,  for  what  v,as  deemed  contemptuous  behaviour  in  answering  the  ques- 
tions of  the  assembly,  was  not  only  deprived  of  his  liberty,  but  voted  "a 
public  enemy  to  the  province  and  territories."  Of  the  charges  against 
Moore  not  a  trace  has  been  preserved  ;  but  it  is  manifest  that  Penn  consid- 
ered them  frivolous  or  unfounded.  In  vain  he  wrotn  to  the  authors  of 
these  measures,^  entreating  them  to  moderate  their  tempers,  ami  forbear 


iblcs 


the  AlinigliiN 
ercnt  gustos  may  as  well  he 


!■■■  manna, 
furced,  m 


Gazftle)  in  which  they  protested  that  this  act  of  power  "  i 

which  suited  every  man's  palate ;  and  that  men's  diffcrcni 

their  different  apprehensions  about  religi'  ii." 

'  Proud.  ,  ,      ,w     , 

»  In  1685.  the  number  of  inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania  was  seven  tliousaju       T,Vurden. 

»  «»  For  the  love  of  God,  me,  and  the  poor  country,"  he  says  in  one  of  these     t'ers,  "  bo  not 

80  giitcrnmenthh,  so  noisy  and  open  in  ywr  dissiiitisfactions.    Some  folks   Ir,-  hmtmg  m 

government  itself."    Proud. 


CHAP.  II.] 


PENN'S  LETTER  OF   COMPLAINT. 


623 


i  I 


from  the  indulgence  of  animosities  so  discreditable  to  the  colony  ;  to  value 
themselves  a  little  less,  and  to  honor  other  men  a  little  more.  The  as- 
sembly answered  by  professions  of  the  highest  reverence  for  himself,  ac- 
companied by  entreaties  (unfortunately  ineffectual)  that  he  would  return  to 
live  among  his  people  ;  but  declared  withal  that  they  thought  fit  "  to  humble 
that  corrupt  and  aspiring  minister  of  state,  Nicholas  Moore." 

The  correspondence  between  the  proprietary  and  this  body,  as  well  as 
the  council,  assumed  in  its  progress  an  increasingly  unfriendly  complexion. 
To  other  causes  of  displeasure  were  added  reports  of  the  increased  con- 
sumption of  spirituous  liquors  among  the  colonists,  —  the  intemperance 
which  they  propagated  among  the  Indians  thus  recoiling  upon  themselves  ; 
and  complaints  of  various  abuses  and  extortions  committed  by  the  officers 
whom  Penn  had  appointed  to  conduct  the  sales  of  his  land.  But  nothing 
else  mortified  him  so  keenly  as  the  difficulty  he  experienced  in  obtaining 
payment  of  his  quitrents,  and  the  reluctance  that  was  shown  to  comply 
with,  or  even  bestow  any  attention  on,  his  applications  for  the  arrears  of  this 
revenue.  The  people  in  general  had  rather  submitted  to  than  approved 
the  imposition  of  quitrents  ;  and,  though  prospering  in  their  circumstances, 
and  conscious  of  the  expenses  that  the  proprietary  had  incurred  for  their 
advantage,  they  were  as  yet  only  beginning  to  reap  the  first  fruits  of  the  far 
greater  expenses  incurred  by  themselves  in  purchasing  their  possessions 
from  him,  and  in  transporting  themselves  and  their  families,  servants,  and 
substance  to  the  province.  Much  labor  and  expense  was  yet  wanting  to 
render  more  than  a  small  portion  of  their  lands  productive  of  advantage 
to  them  ;  and  the  summons  now  addressed  to  them  to  pay  quitrents  for 
the  whole,  and  for  this  purpose  to  surrender  the  first  earnings  of  their  own 
hazard,  hardship,  and  toil,  to  be  expended  by  their  proprietary  in  a  distant 
country,  was  a  measure  ill  qualified  to  obtain  their  favorable  regard,  and 
which  the  very  munificence  of  the  proprietary,  that  rendered  it  the  more 
urgently  necessary  on  his  part,  had  by  no  means  prepared  them  to  expect. 
Penn  had  hoped  that  the  council  to  whom  he  delegated  his  proprietary 
functions  would  have  spared  him  the  humiliating  necessity  of  descending 
to  a  personal  solicitation  jf  quitrents  from  his  people.  But,  so  far  were 
the  council  from  demonstrating  such  regard  for  his  delicacy  or  his  interest, 
that  they  would  give  him  no  assistance  whatever  in  the  prosecution  of  his 
unpopular  demand,  and  even  forbore  to  take  any  notice  of  the  remonstrances 
which  he  addressed  to  them  on  the  neglect  of  their  duty.  [1685.]  Aston- 
ished and  indignant  to  find  himself  treated  in  a  manner  which  he  deemed 
so  unjust  and  unmerited,  Penn  was  provoked  to  reproach  his  people  in  a 
letter  which  forms  a  melancholy  contrast  to  the  beautiful  valediction  with 
which  he  had  taken  his  leave  of  them,  scarcely  two  years  before.  [1686.] 
He  complained  that  the  provincial  council  neglected  and  slighted  his 
communications  ;  that  the  labor  which  he  religiously  consecrated  to  his 
people's  good  was  neither  valued  nor  understood  by  them  ;  and  that  their 
conduct  in  other  respects  was  so  unwarrantable,  as  to  have  put  it  in  his 
power  more  than  once  to  annul  the  charter  he  had  bestowed  on  them,  if 
he  had  been  disposed  to  take  advantage  of  their  ungrateful  folly.  He  de- 
clared that  he  was  suffering  much  embarrassment  by  the  failure  of  the  remit- 
tances he  had  expected  from  America,  and  that  this  w^as  one  of  the  causes 
of  his  detention  in  England.  His  quitrents,  he  insisted,  ought  then  to  amount, 
at  the  very  least,  to  five  hundred  pounds  a  year  ;    but  he  could  not  obtani 


I 
I 


624 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


a  penny  of  this  income.     "  God  is  my  witness,"  he  protested,  "  I  lie  not. 
I  am  above  six  thousand  pounds  out  of  pocicct  more  than  ever  I  saw  by 
the  province  ;  and  you  may  throw  in  my  pains,  cares,  and  hazard  of  life, 
and  leaving  of  my  family  and  friends  to  serve  them."     If  this  statement  be 
perfectly  accurate,   we  are  to  believe  that  he  had  already  sold  a  million 
acres  of  land  in  the  province,  and  devoted  twenty  thousand  pounds  (the 
stipulated  price  corresponding  to  sales  of  that  extent)  to  the  public  service, 
besides  the  additional  expenditure  which  he  mentions  ol  six  thousand  pouncis. 
The  proprietary's  remonstrance,  which  was  more  especially  addressed  to 
the  provincial  council,  having  proved  as  unavailing  as  his  preceding  appli- 
cations, Penn   determined  to  withdraw  from  that  body  the  management  of 
his  interests  and  the  administration  of  the  executive  power,  which  he  had 
committed  to  it  on  his  departure  from  the  province.     Expecting  more  ac- 
ivity  from  fewer  ministers,  and  more   aflection  to  his  service  from  other 
men,  he  resolved  to  confine  the  executive  power  to  five  persons  ;  and,  in 
order  to  mark  his  sense  of  the  injurious  treatment  of  an  individual  who  pes- 
sessed  iiis  friendship  and  esteem,  he  hesitated   not    to  appoint    Nicholas 
Moore  one  of  the  officers  by  whom  this  important  Junction  was  to  be  exer- 
cised     To   Lloyd,  the  former   president  of  the  council,  and  three  other 
Quakers,  in  conjunction  with  Moore,  he  granted,  accordingly,  a  warrant  or 
deputation  investing  them  with  the  administration  oi  the  proprietary  authori- 
ty under  the  title  of  commissioners  of  state.   [December,  1686.]     lie  com- 
inanded  them,  in  the  very  first  assembly  that  should  be  holden  after  their 
instalment  in   office,   to   abrogate,   in  the    proprietary's  name,  every  law 
that  had  been  enacted  during  his  absence.     He  required  them  heedfully 
to  note  and  check  any  tendency  to  disorder,  dispute,  or  collision  of  powers 
between  the  several  organs  of  government,  and,  for  this  purpose,  to  permit 
no  parleying  or  open  conference  between  the  council  and  the  assembly,  but 
to  confine  the  one  to  the  exercise  of  its  privilege  of  proposing  laws,  and 
the  other  to  a  simple  expression  of  assent  or  negation.     He  charged  them 
to  act  with  vigor  in  repressing  vices,  without  respect  of  persons  or  persua- 
sions, —  adding,  "  Let  not  foolish  pity  rob  justice  of  its  due,  and  the  people 
of  proper  examples.     I  know  what  malice  and  prejudice  say  ;  but  they 
move  me  not.     I  know  how  to  allow  for  new  colonies,  though  other?  uo 
not  "     He  advised  them,  before  ever  letting  their  spirits  mto  any  ajfatr 
to  lift  up  their  thoughts  to  the  Almighty  Being  who  is  never  far  from  any  o\ 
his  creatures,  and  to  beseech  from  this  only  source  of  intelligence  and  virtue 
the  communication  of  a  good  understanding  and  a  temperate  spirit.     He 
recommended  to  them  a  diligent  care  of  the  proprietary's  interest,  and  a 
watchful  attention  to  the  preservation  of  their  own  dignity.     "  1  beseech 
you  "  he  said,  "  draw  not  several  ways  ;   have  no  cabals  apart,  nor  re- 
serves from  one  another ;  treat  with  a  mutual  simplicity,  an  entire  confi- 
dence in  one  another  ;  and  if  at  any  time  you  mistake,  or  misapprehend,  or 
dissent  from  one  another,  let  not  that  appear  to  the  people :  show  your 
virtues,  but  conceal  your  infirmities  ;  this  will  make  you  awful  and  reverent 
with  the  people."     "  Love,  forgive,  help,  and  serve  one  another,     he  con- 
tinued ;  "  and  let  the  people  learn  by  your  example,  as  well  as  by  your 
power,  the  happy  hfe  of  concord."'     ^      ^ 

""'•nP^ti^ST^In^  ioucr  to  thMC  coinmissionpniVsomo  time  after,  he  tolls  them  :  — ''  J''^y  '''"* 
live  near  to  (iod  will  live  far  from  the.nseiveH  ;  and,  from  the  sense  they  have  of  h.s  nearness 
'j^?  __".....  h—  o  lowoninlon  of  ih-msi^l VPS ;  and  out  of  that  low  and  humble  frame  of 
gjnt  Uirtfiat'i'rue  chaVily  gr^ws".    O,  that  the  people  of  my  province  felt  this  gracious  quai- 


CHAP.  II.] 


RUMORED  CONSPIRACY  OF  THE  INDIANS. 


626 


Tho  new  arrang«5ment  proved  more  conducive,  than  miglit  reasonably  be 
supposed  to  the  peace  of  tlie  province,  which  appears  for  some  time  to 
have  sustained  no  other  interruption  than  what  arose  from  the  rumor  of  a 
conspiracy  of  the  Indians  for  a  general  massacre  of  the  colonists.  [1687.] 
In  the  midst  of  the  consternation  which  this  re})ort  excited,  Caleb  Puscy, 
a  Quaker,  volunteered  to  repair  to  the  spot  where  the  conspirators  were 
said  to  have  assembled  in  preparation  for  their  bloody  enterprise,  —  pro- 
vided five  other  persons  deputed  by  the  council  would  consent  to  accom- 
pany him,  and  to  appear,  as  he  purposed  to  do,  unarmed  before  the  In- 
dians. [1688.]  Never  was  the  dignity  and  utility  of  moral  courage  more 
signally  displayed  ;  nor  ever  was  this  virtue  more  happily  contrasted  with 
that  moral  cowardice,  which,  united  (as  it  frequently  is)  with  animal  spirit 
and  personal  bravery,  would,  on  such  an  emergency,  have  inspired  counsels 
equally  dangerous  and  cruel.  On  the  arrival  of  Pusey  and  his  magnani- 
mous associates  at  the  spot  to  which  they  were  directed,  they  found  only 
an  Indian  prince  with  a  small  retinue  engaged  in  their  ordinary  occupa- 
tions. The  prince,  to  whom  they  related  the  cause  of  their  visit,  informed 
the  deputies  that  the  Indians  were  indeed  disappointed  to  find  that  the 
price  of  a  recent  occupation  of  land  was  not  yet  ful'v  paid  to  them  ;  but 
that,  having  perfect  confidence  in  the  integrity  of  the  ii-nglish,  they  were  by 
no  means  impatient :  he  protested  that  the  story  of  the  projected  massacre 
was  a  wicked  fabrication,  and  that  some  Indian  women  who  had  contributed 
to  give  it  currency  deserved  to  be  burned  alive.  One  of  the  deputies 
having  reminded  the  prince  that  the  Indians  and  tlie  English  were  the 
creatures  of  the  same  God,  and  equally  the  objects  of  his  impartial  benev- 
olence, which  he  manifested  by  sending  dew  from  heaven  alike  on  tlieir 
lands,  and  urged  that  the  two  races  ought  therefore  to  love  one  another,  — 
the  prince  replied,  "  What  you  have  said  is  true  ;  and  as  God  has  given  you 
corn,  I  would  advise  you  to  get  it  in,  for  we  intend  you  no  harm."  This 
amicable  assurance,  repeated  by  the  deputies  to  their  friends,  delivered  the 
province  from  an  apprehension  that  had  spread  general  dismay. 

But  Penn  was  far  from  deriving  the  satisfaction  which  he  had  expected 
from  his  commissioners  of  state  ;  and  his  letters  continued  to  repeat,  though 
in  a  milder  tone  than  before,  his  complaints  of  the  detention  of  his  quitrents, 
the  neglect  of  his  communications,  and  the  disregard  of  his  services.  "  / 
believe  I  may  say,^^  was  his  expression  at  this  period,  "  I  am  one  of  the 
unhappiest  proprietaries  with  one  of  the  best  peop/c."*  From  the  numer- 
ous apologies  contained  in  these  letters  for  his  continued  residence  in  Eng- 
land, and  his  protestations  that  he  found  attendance  at  court  as  burdensome 
and  disagreeable  as  the  state  of  a  slave  in  Turkey,  it  would  seem  that  the 
people  of  Pennsylvania  regarded  his  absence  from  them  with  much  dissat- 
isfaction. At  length,  Lloyd  and  some  of  the  other  Quaker  commissioners' 
desiring  that  he  would  release  them  from  their  functions,  Penn  conceived 
that  some  farther  change  was  necessary  in  the  form  of  the  provincial  gov- 
ernment ;  and,  having  determined  to  commit  his  authority  and  his  interests 
to  the  more  active  management  of  a  single  individual  invested  with  the 

ity  abounding  in  thcin  !  My  work  would  then  be  done,  nnd  their  praise  and  my  joy  un- 
speakably abound.  Wherefore,  in  the  name  and  fear  of  God,  let  all  old  sores  be  forgotten 
as  well  as  forgiven."     Ibid. 

'  "  It  is  none  of  tho  endcaringcat  considerations,"  he  adds  in  the  same  letter,  "  that  I  have 
not  had  tho  present  of  a  skin,  or  a  pound  of  tobacco,  since  I  came  over."  frond.  Yet  Penn- 
condomn^d  tli^  nue  of  tobacco-  and  vninlv  endeavoured  to  norsuadA  the  Quakers  to  renounofl 
it.    Clarkson. 


526 


HISTORY  or  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


rank  of  deputy-governor^  he  selected  for  this  purpose  Captain  John  Black- 
well,  one  of  Cromwell's  officers,  who  had  married  the  daughter  of  (Jen- 
era!   Lambert,  and  was  residing  at  this  time  in  New  Enc;land.^     The  conso 
quences  of  this  appointment  were,  effectually,  the  reverse  in  all  respects 
of  those  which   had  resulted  from  the  preceding  one  ;  but,  unfortunUely, 
they  were  much  more  disagreeabl      i.-i  ;.i   ,;:rious.     Blackwell  was  highly 
esteemed  by  Penn,  and  ho  probably  escrtoit  himself  more  diligently  than 
his  predecessors  in  the  executive  aiuliouty  had  done  to  vindicate  the  pat- 
rimonial interest  of  the  proprietary  ;   but  he  provoked  the  indignation  and 
disgust  of  the  people  by  arbitrary  and  illiberal  conduct.     "  Rule  the  meek 
meekly,"  was  the  instruction  of  Penn  to  him  ;  "  and  thosn  that  will  not  be 
ruled,  rule  with  authority."     But  meekness  was  no  part  of  the  disposition 
of  Blackwell  ;    and   violence  and   intrigue  were  tli^    -W-'^  engines  t)f  his 
policy.^     He  commenced  his  administration  by  endeavouring,  not  without 
effect,  to  sow  discord  among  the  planters,  and  to  overawe  the  timid  by  a 
display  of  power.     But  he  had   mistaken   the  real  character  of  tlic  people 
over  whom  he  presided  ;  and  was  taught,  by  the  issue  of  an  obstinate  strug- 
gle, that  the  profession  of  Quaker  meekness  and  submission  is  by  no  moans 
inconsistent  with  the  exertion  of  inflexible  firmness  and  determination.    Find- 
ing that  White,  the  individual  who  had  given  most  displeasure  to  Penn,  by 
urging  the  impeachment  of  Moore,  was  chosen  a  delegate  to  the  assem- 
bly, he  resolved  to  debar  him  from  attendance  there  ;  and  for  this  purpose 
caused  him  to  be  thrown  into  prison  on  the  most  frivolous  pretences.    A  writ 
of  habeas  corpus  was  procured  in  behalf  of  White ;  but  the  execution  of  it 
was  long  impeded  by  the  devices  of  Blackwell. 

Other  practices,  no  less  iniquitous  and  tyrannical,  were  employed  by  him 
for  disabling  men  whom  he  disliked  or  suspected  from  performing  the  func- 
tions of  members  of  the  provincial  council.  To  give  the  assembly  time  to 
cool,  after  the  commission  of  these  outrages,  he  deferred  the  convocation 
of  it  as  long  as  possible,  and  at  last  opened  its  session  with  a  speech  con- 
ceived in  the  most  haughty  and  imperious  strain.  [March,  1689.]  His 
predecessors  in  authority  had  not  considered  it  expedient  to  comply  witii 
the  proprietary's  desire  of  abrogating  all  the  laws  enacted  in  his  absence  ; 
but  this  measure  was  now  announced  by  the  deputy-governor  with  an  inso- 
•  lence  that  would  have  discredited  a  more  acceptable  communication.  The 
first  act  of  the  assembly  was  a  remonstrance  against  his  arbitrary  conduct ; 
and  the  utmost  that  his  influence  could  accomplish  with  some  of  the  mem- 
bers of  this  body  was  to  prevail  wi»h  them  to  absent  themselves  from  its 
sittings.  This  miserable  device  had  no  other  effect  than  to  provoke  the  as- 
sembly to  declare  that  the  secession  of  those  members  was  a  treacherous 
desertion  of  the  public  service.  They  voted,  at  the  same  time,  a  series 
of  resolutions,  importing  "  that  the  proprietary's  absence,  as  it  may  be  to 
his  disappointment,  so  it  is  extremely  to  the  people's  prejudice  ;  that,  as  to 
the  project  of  abrogating  all  the  laws,  he  has  no  right  so  to  do,  because 
every  law  is  in  force  that  has  not  been  declared  void  by  the  king  ;  that, 
even  with  the  consent  of  the  freemen,  the  proprietary  can  make  no  laws^ 

■  Penn  appears  to  hnvo  been  deceived  on  this  occasion  by  a  repute  of  which  Blnrkwell 
proved  to  be  totally  undeserving.  He  apologized  to  the  people  of  Pennsylvanm  for  the  un- 
happy consequences  that  reaultod  from  his  iiiisplnced  confidence,  by  stating  that  he  hud  acted 
for  the  best,  and  had  not  selected  Blackwell  till  he  found  it  impossible  to  prevail  with  any 
ftuiikcrto  accent  the  office  of  dcputy-jrovernor ;  yet,  he  added  withal,  ''I  must  say,  I  Fear 
this  peevishness"  to  Bome  friends  (Uiiakers)  has  not  arisen  out  of  the  dusl  without  occasioa. 
Proud. 


CHAP.  11]         CONDUCT  OF  PENN   AT  THE  REVOLUTION. 


627 


bind  the  province,  except  in  the  way  prescribed  by  the  charter  ;  and  that, 
as  it  is  desirable,  so  it  is  also  to  bo  hoped,  that  no  laws  of  any  other  make 
will  be  innposed  upon  the  people."  After  a  vain  struggle  with  an  opposi- 
{ion  thus  <solutely  conducted,  Blackwell  was  compelled  to  abandon  his 
office,  and  depart  from  the  province,  leaving  the  executive  authority  onco 
more  in  the  hands  of  the  provincial  council,  of  which  the  presidency  was 
resumed  by  Thomas  Lloyd.'     [Dec,  1689.] 

The  ferment  that  was  excited  during  Blackwell's  administration,  whatever 
evil  mfluence  it  may  have  exercised  on  the  tempers  of  the  colonists,  had 
not  the  effect  of  retarding  even  in  the  slightest  degree  the  rapid  pace  with 
which  their  prosperity  was  advancing.  On  the  contrary,  a  more  vigorous 
spring  seemed  to  have  been  imparted  to  the  industry  and  general  progress 
and  improvement  of  the  community,  —  as  if  the  energy  that  was  aroused  by 
the  strong  provocation  of  public  spirit  had  diffused  its  influence  through 
every  occupation  and  department  of  life.  It  was  in  the  present  year  that 
the  first  institution  for  the  education  of  youth  was  established  in  Pennsylva- 
nia. This  was  called  The  Friends'  Public  School  of  Philadelphia  ;  at  the 
head  of  it  was  placed  George  Keith,  a  celebrated  Quaker  writer  ;  and  it 
was  subsequently  incorporated  and  enlarged  by  charters  from  the  pro- 
prietary.** 

It  had  been  happy  for  Penn,  if  he  had  sooner  discovered  how  detrl- 
mentnl  to  all  his  interests  his  long  absence  from  the  colony  and  residence 
at  the  English  court  must  inevitably  prove.  The  revolution  of  the  British 
government  that  occurred  in  the  close  of  the  preceding  year  abruptly  de- 
stroyed that  precarious  favor  of  a  tyrant,  for  the  sake  of  which  he  had  risked 
his  popularity  in  England  and  his  influence  in  Pennsylvania,  and  which  in- 
fatuated his  understanding  to  such  a  degree  that  he  even  continued  to  cor- 
respond with  the  fugitive  monarch  after  his  expulsion  from  the  throne.  No 
satisfactory  evidence  has  ever  been  adduced  to  prove  that  he  was  personally 
engaged  in  the  plots  that  were  formed  at  this  period  for  the  restoration  of 
James  ;  but  as  he  voluntarily  lingered  in  England  for  some  time  after  the 
revolution  was  accomplished,  and  never  transmitted  any  instruction  for  pro- 
claiming William  and  Mary  in  Pennsylvania,  it  is  not  improbable  that  he 
looked  with  some  expectation  to  the  success  of  those  attempts.-*  To  re- 
turn to  America  was  soon  after  put  out  of  his  pow  er,  by  the  consequences 
of  the  general  suspicion  which  his  conduct  excited  in  England.  [1690.] 
He  was  compelled  to  give  bail  for  his  appearance  before  the  privy  council  ; 
and  though  he  more  than  once  succeeded  in  justifying  himself  from  the 
charges  adduced  against  him,  yet,  finding  that  farther  accusations  continued 
to  bo  preferred,  and  that  a  warrant  at  length  was  issued  for  committing  him 
to^P'''so">  he  thought  proper       sequester  himself  from  public  view,  and  to 

'  Proud.  Modern  Universal  History.  Franklin's  Historical  Review  of  the  Constitution  of 
Pmnsijlvania.     Chalmers. 

*  Proiid.    Clmltiiers. 

'  In  a  letter,  written  by  him  to  hia  friends  in  Pennsylvania  in  January,  1680,  he  says, 
"  Great  rnvohitions  have  been  of  late  in  this  land  of  your  nativity,  and  where  they  may  pc- 
lioti  the  Lord  knows."  He  adds,  that  "  to  improve  my  interest  with  King  James  for  tender 
conscionccs  "  had  been  the  main  cause  of  his  detention  so  long  in  England.  Proud.  From  a 
letter  of  Leisler,  who  at  this  period  acquired  much  cckbritj'  at  Now  York  {ante.  Book  V., 
Chap.  H),  to  Bishop  Burnet,  it  appcnrs  tiiat  he  accounted  Pennsylvania  one  of  the  strong- 
holds of  the  Jacobites  in  America,  and  that  a  considerable  number  of  this  party  were  then 
retiring  from  the  other  provinces  to  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey.  Chalmers,  Smollett  as- 
serts that  Penn  was  an  accomplice  in  Lord  Preston's  plot  for  the  restoration  of  King  James, 
-'tsniinr  Cimrges  sguinst  i  enn  liavc-  boon  pruicrrcd  by  tho  hisioriaDs  Burnet  and  Ralph. 


628 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII 


Jive  in  a  state  of  concealment.  Ills  panie  was  occasionally  inserted  in  the 
«>roclan»Htions  for  the  apprehension  of  suspected  persons,  issued  from  time 
tune  hy  the  Kn^lish  iuinisters  ;  who  were,  however,  too  deeply  en- 
ed  in  liiore  pressing  and  important  affairs,  to  have  leisure  as  yet  to  attend 
io'tho  concerns  of  his  Pounsylvaniaii  sc)vereif5nty.  During  this  retif i  ment, 
bis  repose  was  invaded  very  disagreeably  by  tidings  of  factiwus  dispmeg 
and  dissensions  among  his  people,  and  particularly  by  the  rupture  that  took 
■^lace  between  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware,  and  separated  from  e!»h  other 
two  connnunities,  for  the  conjunction  of  which  he  had  labored  with  a  zeal 
that  outstripped  his  usual  equity  and  moderation. 

The  increasing  strength  and  importance  of  Pennsylvania  had  gradually 
excited  ihe  jealousy  of  the  people  of  Delaware,  who  beheld  with  impatience 
their  own  more  ancient  sottlem'uit  verging  into  comparative  insignificance,  as 
the  mere  fraction  of  a  younger  but  more  thriving  community.     The  mem- 
bers deputed  to  the  provincial  council  at  Philadelphia  from  Delaware  com- 
plained that  they  were  deprived  of  a  just  share  m  the  direction  of  public 
affairs,  and  attempted  by  n)trigue  to  counterbalance  tlje  preponderance  of 
ihoir  Pennsylvanian  associates.    Privately  assembling,  without  the  usual  for- 
mality of  an  ollicial  summons,  in  the  council-room,  tliey  assumed  plenary 
possession  of  the  executive  functions  vested  in  the  whole  body,  and  Issued 
warrants  for  displacing  a  number  of  public  officers,  and  appointing  others  to 
fill  their  places.  [September,  1690.]    This  transaction  was  almost  i.istamy 
declared  illegal  and  void  by  a  council  more  regularly  convoked  ;  but  the 
waters  of  strife  had  now  broke  forth,  and  could  no  longer  be  stayed.    Penn, 
alarmed  at  these  dissensions,  sought  to  mediate  between  the  parties,  and 
desired  them  to  make  choice  of  any  one  of  the  three  forms  of  execuiive 
administration  which  tliey  had  already  successively  tried.     He  was  willing, 
be  said,  to  invest  the  executive  power  either  in  the  council,  or  in  five  com- 
wissioners,  or  in  a  deputy-governor  ;  and  their  choice  would  be  deterrriined 
by  the  recollection  of  which  of  these  they  had  found  the  most  impartial  in 
the  distribution  oS  municipal  functions  and  emoluments.   [January,  1601.] 
The  Pennsylvanians   at  once  declared  themselves  in  favor  of  a  depiity- 
goveroor  ;  and,  anticipating  the  proprietary's  approbation  of  their  wishes, 
desired  Lloyd  to  undertake  the  duties  of  this  office.     The  Delaware  coun- 
sellors, on  the  contrary,  protested  against  this  choice,  and  declared  their 
own  preference  of  a  board  of  commissioners.   They  refused  to  submit  to  ihe 
government  of  Lloyd,  and,  withdrawing  from  the  council,  returned  to  Dela- 
ware, where  their  countrymen  were  easily  induced  to  approve  and  sup])ort 
their  secession.     In  vain  Lloyd  endeav'oured,  by  the  most  liberal  and  gen- 
erous  offers  to  the  Delaware  colonists,  to  prevail  with  them  to  submit  to 
an  administration  which  he  had  reluctantlj-  assumed,  in  compliance  with  the 
urgent  and  unanimous  desire  of  the  Pennsylvanians  ;  they  rejected  ail  Ins 
overtures,  and,  countenanced  by  Colonel  Markham,  declared  that  they  were 
determined  to  have  an  executive  government  for  themselves  distinct  from  the 
institutions  of  Pennsylvania.    Stung  with  vexation  and  disappointment  at  this 
result,  Penn  was  at  first  inclined  to  impute  the  blame  of  it  to  L'oyd  ;  but 
soon  ascertaining  how  perfectly  disinterested  and  vvell-meaniu^  'ne  conduct 
of  this  worthy  man  had  been,  he  transferred  his  censure  to  .hA  Delaware 
counsellors,  and  bitterly  reproached  them  with  selfish  ambition  and  ingrati- 
tude.    Hoping,  however,  by  gratifying  them  in  their   present  desire,  to 
prevent  the' rupture  from  extending  any  farther,  he  granted  separate  coniinis- 


CHAP.  11] 


SCHISM  UNDER  GEORGE  KEITH. 


629 


sions  for  the  executive  government  of  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware  to  Lloyd 
and  Marklmm  ;  the  lunclions  of  legislation  still  remaining  united  in  a  council 
and  assembly  common  to  the  two  settlements.  [April,  ir.91.1  Bv  the 
friendly  cooperation  of  Lloyd  and  Markham,  this  anomalous  machinery  of 
governrnent  vvas  conducted  with  much  greater  harmony  and  success  than 
the  peculiarities  of  its  structure,  and  the  causes  from  wliich  they  arose, 
seemed  at  fust  to  portend.'  ^ 

The   following  year  L1C92]  was  signalized  in  a  manner  still   more  dis- 
creditable  to  the   province  and  offensive  to  the  proprietary,  by  a  violent 
dissension  among  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania.    This  affair  has  been  repre- 
sented, by  the  party  that  proved  weakest  in  the  struggle,  as  a  purely  eccle- 
siastical quarrel,  wherein  their  adversaries,  worsted  in  spiritual,  had  recourse 
to  carnal  weapons  ;  and  by  the  stronger,  as  a  poRical  effervescence,  which 
the  power  ol  the  tnagistrate  was  firoperly  employed  to  compose.     The  dis- 
turbance originated  with  George  Keith,  a  native  of  Aberdeen,  in  Scotland, 
a  man  remarkably  distmgmshed  by  the  vigor  and  subtlety  of  his  apprehen- 
sion, by  an  insatiable  appetite  for  controversy,  a  copious  eloquence,  a  vc- 
hement  .amper,  extreme  sincerity,  and  entire  deficiency  of  candor     To  his 
religious   associates  he    was    recommended   by  his    numerous  writings   in 
delence  of  their  tenets,  and  more  particularly  endeared  as  the  champion  of 
their  quarrel  with  the  churches,  ministers,  and  magistrates  of  New  England 
—  a  country,  which,  by  a  numerous  body  of  the  Quakers,  was  long  regarded 
with  a  feeling  to  which  it  is  difficult  to  give  any  other  name  than  that  of  vin- 
dictive dislike      He  had  travelled  in  that  country  as  a  Quaker  preacher  • 
and,  having  sharpened  by  personal  controversy  with  the  people  a  previous 
resentment  of  their  well  remembered  persecution  of  his  spiritual  kinsmen 
he  accumulated  against  them  a  hoard  of  animosity,  which  all  the  prolixity 
of  his  publications  was  incapable  of  exhausting.    With  an  animated  strain  of 
invective  and  vituperation,  which  was  reckoned  very  savory  by  the  Quakers 
as  long  as  it  was  directed   against   their  adversaries,**  he  condemned  the 
government  of  New  England  for  the  severities  inflicted  by  it  heretofore 
upon  enthusiasts,  with  whose  extravagance,  as  well  as  whose  sufferings,  it 
appeared  that  he  himself  was  too  much  inclined  to  sympathize.    Even  those 
Quakers,  who  were  imbued  with  the  moderate  spirit  which  of  late  had  been 
gaining  on  their  society,  and  allaying  the  frenzy  that  produced  such  deplora- 
ble  results  in  New  England,^  were  flattered  by  publications  which  artfully 
turned  the  shame  of  Quakerism  into  its  glory,  and  added  the  lionors  of 
martyrdom  to  the  other  evidences  of  its  claim  to  the  character  of  a  revival 
of  primitive  Christianity. 

The  favor  and  esteem  of  his  fellow-sectaries  had  recommended  Keith 
first  to  the  appointment  of  surveyor-general  of  East  Jersey,  and  more  re- 
cently to  the  presidency  over  the  Quaker  seminary  of  education  estab- 
'---^r^^""^^^'P^'^-     ^""Q"^  '•g^^  conviction,  from  an  inveterate  habit  of 

'Proud.     Clarkson.     Pcnn  exprefwed  no  disapprobatiiirrwhatever  of  the  conduct  of  Murk- 

MM.';."!'!; .1°"  f'  '"•''''"''  !;•'''*'"?'  ^'""  I''"'  ^"'^  "'«  proprietary's  confidence  and  esteem 

n W  1  r,f,„     irTiT     r^^  P^'^'l!'!'*'  ".'""y  •>«  inferred,  tf.at  the  real  purpose  of  Markham,  in 

placing  himself  at  the  head  of  the  factious  counsellors  of  Delaware,  was  to  retain  over  then. 

KU^inHuence  propitious  to  the  authority  of  the  proprietary. 

0,.„?"  "  '■|?'ro8pect  of  his  clinracter,  however,  after  they  themselves  became  his  adversaries,  the 
ihrni  I  fT'^'^f '''f  ?V'  YT  "^.^'^hism  with  them,  and  even  in  his  treatment  of 
Uie  people  of  New  England,  he  had  "had  too  much  life  in  argument,"  had  "exhibited  an 

T^??'^\-  '"'"■'P',  "."  '"'^^'"'■y  ^''"*'''y  obtained  by  him  over  his  opponents,"  and  altogether 
—.._....„...  nirnseii  -'  in  a  very  ciiravagant  manner."    i'roud. 
Anit^  Book  II.,  Chap.  III. 
VOL.    I.  67  88 


530 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  tVMERICA. 


[BOOK  vn. 


controversy,  or  from  ambilious  desire  to  gain  a  still  higher  eminence  among 
the  Quakers  than  he  had  already  attained,  he  began  at  length  to  utter  cen- 
sures of  various   abuses  and  corruptions  which  appeared   to  him  to  have 
depraved  the  system  of  Quakerism  in  Pennsylvania.     He  complained  that 
there  wag  a  great  deal  too  much  slackness  in  the  execution  of  (Quaker  dis. 
cipline,  and  that  very  loose  and  erroneous  doctrine  was  taught  by  many  of 
the  Quaker  preachers.     He  insisted,  that,  as  the  infliction  and  even  the  vio- 
lent resistance  of  e;'il  was  incompatible  with  Christian  meekness  and  broth- 
erly love,  no  Quaker  ought  to  be  concerned  in  "  the  compqlling  part  of  gov- 
ernment," and  much  less  to  retain  negroes  in  a  state  of  slavery.     His  cen- 
sures had  in  some  respects  a  substantial  reality,  and  in  others  at  least  a  rea- 
sonable show,  of  just  application,  that  rendered  them  only  the  more  irritating 
to  the   minds  of  those  whom  he  disturbed  without  being  able  to  convert. 
Supported  by  a  respectable  company  of  adherents,  and  particularly  in  some 
of  his  views  by  the  German  emigrants,  who  from  the  first  had  protested 
against  negro  slavery  as  a  monstrous  practical  departure  from  pure  Chris- 
tianity, Keith  encountered  the  opposition  which  his  new  doctrines  received 
from  the  majority  of  the  Quakers,  with  as  much  unbridled  vehemence  as  he 
had  displayed  in  his  previous  contests  with  their  common  enemies.     Im- 
petuous, uncharitable,  and  immoderate,  his  address  savored  more  of  attack 
than  of  instruction  ;  he  seemed  never  to  distinguish  between  dissent  and 
hostility,  nor  between  men  and  their  failings.  •     ,     ^    , 

A  regular  trial  of  strength  ensued  between  the  two  parties  m  the  Quaker 
society  [April,  1692]  ;  and  the  adversaries  of  Keith,  finding  themselves  sup- 
norted  by  a  numerical  majority,  published  a  declaration  or  testimony  of  de- 
nial against  him.  In  this  curious  production  they  expressed  their  deep 
regret  of  "  the  tedious  exercise  and  vexatious  perplexity"  which  their  late 
friend,  George  Keith,  had  brought  upon  them.  "  With  mourning  and 
lamentation  do  we  say,— How  is  this  mighty  man  fallen  !  — How  is  his 
shield  cast  away  !  —  How  shall  it  be  told  in  Gath  !  —Will  not  the  daughters 
of  the  uncircumcised  triumph  ? "  They  proceeded  to  accuse  him  of  utter- 
ing against  them  "  such  unsavory  words  and  abusive  language,  as  a  person 
of  common  civility  would  loathe"  ;  and  in  particular  of  having  audaciously 
declared  to  them  on  various  occasions,  "  and  upon  small  provocations,  it 
any,"  that  they  were  fools,  ignorant  heathens,  silly  sonls,  rotten  ranters,  and 
J\lu"-<'letonians,  "  with  other  names  of  that  infamous  strain  ;  thereby,  to 
our  grief,  foaming  out  his  own  shame."  They  charged  him  with  slander- 
ing Quakerism,  by  affirming  that  it  was  too  often  a  cloak  of  heresy  and  hy-  ™ 
pocrisy,  and  that  more  diabolical  doctrine  passed  current  among  the  Qua- 
kers than  among  any  other  description  of  Protestant  professors.  As  the 
r-limax  of  his  contumacy,  they  alleged,  that,  when  they  had  tenderly  dealt 
with  him  for  his  irreverent  language  and  disorderly  behaviour,  he  insultmgly 
answered,  that  he  trampled  their  judgment  under  his  feet  as  dirt  ;i  and  that 
he  had  since  established  a  separate  congregajlion,  whose  proceedings_ron- 


"Tl'liT^  very  wor(KVlongl)of.>ro  nHdrcsm-d  by  William  Perm  to  an  Ln^M.s li  inngistrate  who 
WOH  in  the  act  of  committing  hi.n  to  Ne.wgnto  for  rdusing  lo  tako  an  oath,  had  l..>«n  h.tlierto 
.•urrcnt  and  roH,.e..ted  among  the  Unakcrs,  aa  iniportms;  m,  more  thr.n  a  n.agna.Mmaus  rontempt 
or  decent  disdain.  Uoweve,  lefi.ient  in  meekness  and  ''"•'''''^v,  lluy  vvere  certamly  m  irl. 
I.-8H  so  than  a  great  deal  of  the  eontemporarv  langtiage  that  was  ex.hanjted  between  man>  o 
tho  (Inakcr  writen,  and  their  adversaries.  6n.-  Hn^g,  who  had  been  a  U"aker  havmg  al.out 
,hiH  time  qnnrrolled  with  and  deserte.l  the  -H""nn  so..M..y  n.a.n  amed  w^ 
wnrl'are  that  tended  more  .II.m  lu.iliy  to  provoke;  the  in  Hi.  -.nt-n  t-  i.!...«..  Je  ...  .  n 
mankind.  I  have  seen  an  address  to  H-mg,  from  his  original  assoeial.s,  in  which  the) 
greeted  him  with  numerous  abuaivu  ullusioiiB  lo  tiie  uiwavoriiiess  ol  Ins  immo 


rarj 


CHAP.  II.] 


SCHISM  UNDER  GEORGE    KEITH. 


631 


lore  irritating 
e  to  convert, 
larly  in  some 
lad  protested 
pure  Chris- 
ines  received 
emence  as  he 
lemies.  Im- 
ore  of  attaclc 

I  dissent  and 

II  the  Quaker 
miselves  sup- 
Hmony  of  de- 
;d  their  deep 
ich  their  late 
mourning  and 
-  How  is  his 

the  daughters 
him  of  utter- 
!,  as  a  person 
g  audaciously 
ovocations,  if 
n  ranters,  and 
;  thereby,  to 
with  slander- 
erosy  and  hy- 
long  the  Qua- 
5ors.  As  the 
tenderly  dealt 
,  he  insultingly 
irt  ; '  and  that 
breedings  ron- 

li  iMiigiMtriilc,  who 
liad  l)<'«n  liilliorto 
iniinoiiK  rontcmpt 
re  rcrtainly  inurli 
hctwcfii  miiny  of 
kor,  Imving  nhout 
vviili  it  a  littirnry 
the  pdifiration  of 
,  in  which  the)" 

10 


dered  the  religious  repute  of  the  Quakers  "  a  scorn  to  the  profane  and  the 
song  oi  the  drunkard." 

Keith,  who  had  now  collected  around  him  a  numerous  concourse  of  par- 
tisans, ivhoni  he  styled  Christian  quakers,  while  he  bestowed  on  all  the  rest 
of  the  Quaker  society  the  opprobrious  title  of  apostates,  promptly  replied 
to  this  deck  ration  by  an  address  which  contained  a  defence  of  himself  and 
his  princip  es,  and  an  illustration  of  the  various  acts  of  apostasy  wherewith 
he  reproached  his  adversaries.     This  publication  presented  so  ludicrous  a 
contrast  between  the  sectarian  professions  and  the  magisterial  conduct  of 
the  rulers  of  Pennsylvania,  that  these  Quaker  politicians  were  transported  by 
the  perusal  of  it  beyond  the  restraint  of  their  favorite  virtue,  and  fully  con- 
vinced that  what  had  been  hitherto  regarded  as  a  mere  ecclesiastical  dis- 
pute ought  forthwith  to  be  resented  as  a  political  quarrel.     They  declared, 
that,  though  a  tender  meekness  should  undoubtedly  characterize  their  noiice 
of  offences  committed   against  them  in  their  capacity  of  Quakers,  yet  a 
magisterial  sternness  was  no  less  incumbent  upon  them,  in  the  visitation  of 
offences  that  tended  to  "  lessen  the  lawful  authority  of  the  magistracy  in  the 
view  of  the  baser  sort  of  the  people.''     Keith,  the  author  of  the  address, 
and  Bradford,  the  printer  of  it,  were  both  (after  an  examination  which  the 
other  magistrates  refused  to  share  with  their  Quaker  brethren)  committed  to 
prison  ;  Bradford's  printing-press  was  seized  ;  and  iioth  Keith  and  he  were 
denounced,  by  proclamation,  as  seditious  persons,  and  enemies  of  the  royal 
authority  in  Pennsylvania.  Bradford,  who  relied  on  the  protection  of  P:nglisli 
constitutional  law,  compelled  his  prosecutors  to  bring  hira  to  trial  for  the  of- 
fences they  laid  to  his  charge  ;  but  though  he  was  acquitted  by  the  verdict 
of  a  jury,  he  incurred  great  pecuniary  loss,  and  found  himself  so  much  op- 
pressed by  the  dislike  of  a  powerful  party,  that  he  was  compelled  to  remove 
his  printing  establishment  from  Pennsylvania. 

Keith  was  arraigned  shortly  after,  along  with  Francis  Budd,  another  Qua- 
ker, for  having,  in  a  little  work  which  was  their  joint  production,  defamed 
a  Quaker  magistrate,  by  describing  him  as  too  high  and  imperious  in  icorldly 
courts.  They  were  found  guilty,  and  ontenced  to  pava  f:ne  of  five  pounds.* 
Retiring  soon  after  to  England,  Keith  published  an  account  of  the  whole 
proceedings  against  him,  in  a  pamphlet  which  he  entitled  "  JVe?c  England 
Spirit  of  Persecution  transmitted  to  Pennsylvania,  and  the  pretended  Quaker 
found  persecuting  the  true  Quaker. ''  So  extensive  was  hi:,  influence,  both 
in  England  and  America,  that  for  some  time  it  was  doubted  whether  he  and 
his  friends,  or  the  party  opposed  to  them,  would  succeed  in  eclipsing  the 
others,  and  securing  to  themselves  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  Quaker 
name.  But  the  career  of  Keith,  as  a  Quaker,  was  suddenly  abridged,  and 
his  influence  in  the  society  completely  overthrown,  by  a  consequence  which 
neither  he  nor  his  opponents  had  anticipated  at  the  commencement  of 
their  disputes.  In  the  course  of  his  labors  in  that  wide  field  of  controversy 
which  the  attacks  of  his  various  adversaries  in  Pennsylvania  and  New 
England  spread  before  him,  Keith  succeeded  (to  his  own  satisfaction  at 
|past)  in  refuting  all  the  peculiar  tenets  that  had  ever  been  common  to 
himself  and  the  Quakers ;  and,  scorning  to  conceal  the  desertion  of  his 
original  opinions,  he  hesitated  not  to  declare  himself  a  convert  from  the 
Quaker   society   to  the  church  of  England.     This  secession  was  a  dcath- 

'  Pciin,  writing  to  a  friend  in  Amorina,  Jix^tiiies  tliul  (lit!  report  of  this  triui  iind  excitnd 
much  diswiist  in  Enghind,  and  iiidiircd  mmiy  porsons  to  cxcliiiin  iigainsl  Iho  fituusa  of  Q,uaUcr» 
to  odiniiiister  muniripal  uiitliuiity.     I'roud. 


532 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


I 


t^ 


blow  to  the  influence  of  that  party  which  had  hitherto  espoused  his  senti- 
ments ;  and  which,  henceforward,  either  gradually  coalescing  with  a  more 
powerful  majority,  or  peaceably  submitting  to  a  sentence  of  expulsion,  con- 
tributed alike  to  the  ascendency  of  principles  which  originally  it  proposed 
to  subvert.  When  Keith  finally  declared  himself  the  antagonist  of  Quaker- 
ism, he  encountered  the  controversial  hostility  of  William  Penn  ;  but  till 
then  the  treatment  which  he  experienced  in  Pennsylvania  was  a  source  of 
the  utmost  regret  and  disapprobation  to  the  proprietary.^^ 

The  government  that  arose  from  the  revolution  in  England,  having  now 
completed  the  arrangements  that  were  necessary  for  its  secure  establishment 
at  home,  had  leisure  to  extend  its  cares  to  the  colonial  communities  at  the 
extremity  of  the  empire.    [1693,]     In   the  annals  of  the  other  American 
settlements  we  have  seen  instances  of  the  avidity  with  which  King  William 
and  his  ministers  endeavoured  to  appropriate  to  the  crown  the  nomination  of 
tlie  provincial  governors.     The  situation  of  the  proprietary  of  Pennsylvania, 
together  with  various  circumstances  in  the  recent  history  of  this  province, 
presented  a  favorable  opportunity  of  repealing  the  same  policy  ;  and,  indeed, 
furnished  a  much  more  decent  pretext  for  it  than  had  been  deemed  suflicient 
to  warrant  an  invasion  of  the  rights  of  the  proprietary  of  Maryland.     Penn 
was  generally  suspected  by  the  Enghsh  people  of  adherence  to  the  interests 
of  his  ".ncient  patron,  James  the  Second  ;  and,  in  consequence  of  a  charge 
that  was  preierred  against  him  of  accession  to  a  treasonable  conspiracy  in 
favoi-  of  the  evilori  tyrant,  he  had  absconded  from  judicial  inquiry,  and  was 
liviiig  in  coTiceakn.  nt.2     In  Pennsylvania,  the  laws  had  been  administered  in 
the  name  of  the  banished  king,  long  after  the  government  of  ^yiniam  and 
Mary   was  zjcDgnized  in  the   other  colonies  ;  and    the  dissensions   which 
Keith's  schism  had  excited  were  magnified  into  the  semblance  of  disorders 
inconsistent  vith  ihe  honor  of  the  British  crown.     Fortified  with  such  prcT 
texts  for  'be  '•o^al  interposition.  King  William  issued  a  warrant,  depriving 
Penn  of  all  authority  in  America,  and  investing  the  government  of  his  terri- 
tories in  Colonel  Fletcher,  who  was   likewise  appointed  governor  of  New 
York.     Penn,  regarding  this  proceeding  as  a  tyrannical  usurpation  of  his 
rights,  adopted  the  strange  defensive  precaution  of  writing  to  Fletcher,  be- 
seeching him,  on  the  score  of  private  friendship,  to  refuse  compliance  with 
the  king's  commands  ;  but  no    regard  was  paid  to  this  foolish  solicitation. 
and  the  government  was  quietly  surrendered  to  Fletcher,  who  appointed, 
first  Lloyd,  and  afterwards  JNIarkham,  to  act  as  his  deputy.  [April,  1693.] 
In  the   commissio..  to  Fletcher  no  notice  was  taken  of  the  charter  of 
Pennsylvania  ;  and  the  main  object  of  his  policy  was  to  obtain  a  recognition 
of  the  unqualified  dependence  of  the  province  on  the  crown.     This  involved 

~>  G  Thomas's  Histon/  of  Pevnsiilranitt.  Proud.  Cliirkson's  History  of  the  Molilimx  nf  Hit 
mavr-tmilfi.  ThoiTuis's  Hii-lon,  oJ'Printins  in  America.  Proud's  account  of  tliosc  procMriingi. 
ncars  rvideiit  marks  of  nartiality.  It  i.s  aiiiusifjg  to  ol)serve  his  grudge  ngninirt  Keith  ami  Uad- 
ford,  for  having  described  a  writing  which  th.7  puldishcd,  ns  the  employment  of  thuir  hours 
of  bondage  in  tkr.  prison  to  which  professed  Quakers  liad  committed  thoin. 

George  Keitli,  after  his  recantation  of  Quakerism  and  espousal  of  tiK)  doctrines  of  the 
church  of  Kiigland,  was  sent  l)ack  again  as  a  missionary  to  America,  by  the  Lnglish  t^oeioty 
for  the  Projiagation  of  the  (lospel  ;  and,  in  his  labors  to  convert  the  Indians,  is  said  to  have 
been  nmch  niore  HUccessfiii  than  any  of  Ihe  votaries  of  his  former  tenets.     OkiiiiiAon. 

«  The  author  of  li.e  charge  from  which  Penn  withdrew  himself  was  the  notorious  riiller, 
who  was  afterwards  rotidi'mncd  to  llie  pillory,  for  the  detected  (or  at  least  pretended)  (alye- 
hood  of  th''  charges  whicli  he  had  preftirred  against  other  distinguished  pwsons.  Ihe  siispi 
ciov..  cnti-'-uincdofPcnn  wf.r<!  strenijtliened  by  the  conduct  of  his  wiftn  who  appears  to  li!!' .' 
paid  frequent  visits  to  .St.  (J.riniiiiis,  and  to  have  conveyed  prcFenls  of  money  Irom  the  Eng.ish 
Jocobiton  to  the  exiled  niiecn.     Belkuap's  American  Uiogriiplnj. 


CHAP.  II.] 


ADVERSE  CIRCUMSTANCES  OF  PENN. 


633 


enn  ;  but  till 
I  a  source  of 


him  in  a  series  of  disputes  with  the  assembly,  who  unanimously  voted  a  resolu- 
tion, that  the  laws  of  this  province,  which  were  in  fc  -.e  and  practice  before 
tlie  amyal  of  this  present  governor,  are  still  in  force  "  ;  but  afterwards 
judged  It  expedient  to  acquiesce  in  the  arrogation,  that  the  hberty  of  con- 
science,  which  they  owed  to  the  wisdom  and  virtue  of  William  Penn  and 
themselves,  was  a  boon  derived  from  the  grace  and  favor  of  the  king 
l^arther  than  this  the  go/ernor  found  it  impossible  to  bend  them  to  his  wishes 
One  measure  to  which  he  strenuously  labored  to  obtain  their  assent  was  a 
contribution  of  money  in  aid  of  the  defence  of  the  frontiers  of  New  York 
against  the  arms  of  the  French.  Finding  it  necessary  to  reinforce  by  argu- 
ment the  authority  of  a  royal  letter  which  he  produced,  and  in  which  the 
contribution  was  suggested  [March,  1694],  he  reminded  them  that  the  mil- 
itary operations  at  this  frontier  contributed  to  the  defence  of  the  other  colo- 
nies as  well  as  New  York,  and  that  it  was  unjust  to  burden  that  province  with 
the  sole  charge  of  measures  which  were  indispensable  to  the  general  safety 
He  was  aware,  he  said,  that  the  Quaker  principles  which  prevailed  among 
the  1  ennsylvanians  forbade  not  only  the  use  of  offensive  arms,  but  the  em- 
ployment of  money  even  for  the  support  of  defensive  war  ;  but  he  hoped 
they  vyould  not  refuse  to  feed  the  hungry  and  clothe  the  naked,  which  were 
undeniaby  Christian  virtues,  and  which  the  hunger  and  nakedness  of  the 
Indian  allies  of  New  York  now  presented  them  with  a  favorable  opportunity 
of  exerting.  This  ingenious  casuistry,  which  the  Quakers  might  justly 
have  regarded  rather  as  an  affront  to  their  understandings  than  a  concession 
to  their  principles,  proved,  on  the  present  occasion,  quite  unavailing,— 
to  the  no  small  displeasure  of  William  Penn,  who,  on  being  reinstated  in 
his  government,  reproached  the  assembly  with  their  refusal  to  contribute 
towards  the  common  defence,  and  desired  that  a  sum  of  money  for  this  pur- 
pose should  forthwith  be  levied  and  remitted  to  New  York.^ 

In  addition  to  the  other  disappointments  and  misfortunes  that  befell  the 
proprietary  of  Pennsylvania,  he  had  now  to  lament  a  sensible  decay  of  the 
credit  which  he  had  hitherto  enjoyed  with  the  members  of  his  religious  so- 
ciety in  England.  They  reproached  him  with  having  meddled  more  with 
politics,  and  the  concerns  of  the  .English  government,  than  became  a  mem- 
ber of  their  Christian  body  ;  and  would  not  admit  the  benevolent  motives  of 
Ills  conduct,  or  the  especial  benefit  which  their  own  society  had  reaped  from 
U,  as  a  sufficient  apology  for  the  scandal  it  created  and  the  evil  example  it 
afforded.^  In  the  midst  of  so  many  adverse  circumstances,  —  involving 
the  estrangement  of  ancient  friends,  and  the  miscarriage   of  almost  every 

scheme  of  temporal  satisfaction  which  he  had  proposed  to  himself, his 

retirement  was  penetrated  by  the  grateful  kindness  of  that  illustrious  man, 
whom  once,  in  circumstances  resembling  his  own  present  situation,  he  had 
eiuleuvomed  to  befriend.  John  Locke,  who  was  now  in  the  enjoyment  of 
considerable  favor  at  the  English  court,  persuaded  of  Penn's  innocence,  and 
mindful  of  the  friendly  intercession  which  Penn  had  made  in  his  behalf  with 

'  Frond.     Diliwvn,  anud  \Vi?  terbotliuni!  ' 

»  Lowtr,  u  Ciuukcr,  the  frieiui  of  Peiir.,  and  in  good  repute  with  the  rest  of  the  societv, 
undertook  to  inediatn  a  rpconcihatioi)  b.<lvvnpii  tlioin,  and  for  this  purpose  coin|)os(Hl  the  fo'l- 
lowing  apology,  which  was  to  ho  Bid)scrihcd  and  distrihutod  by  Penn:  — "If  in  any  ihinga, 
durinir  these  hite  rovohitions,  I  liavo  roiieerned  nivsolf,  either  f)v  words  or  writings  (in  lovej 
pity,  or  good-will  to  any  in  distress),  furtlirr  than  'mnsistid  intli  tnitU's  honor  or  the  church's 
WMCf,  I  am  sorry  for  it  ;^  and  the  government  having  passed  it  by,  I  desire  it  may  be  by  you  also, 
-..jirks!!!!.  V,  bcllior  thi^  »i"-!r,gy  wiis  prerittitid  or  uol  is  unknownj  but  a  rcconciiialion  look 
place  shortly  alter  between  Penn  and  the  Quakers. 

SS  * 


534 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


King  James,  when  Locke  was  an  exile  in  Holland,^  offered  to  employ  his 
interest  to  procure  him  a  pardon  from  King  William.  But  the  dignity  of 
Penn's  virtue  was  rather  elevated  than  depressed  by  adversity  ;  and  emu- 
,  lating  the  magnanimity  with  which  his  own  similar  kindness  had  been  former- 
ly rejected  by  Locke,  he  protested,  that,  as  he  had  done  nothing  blame- 
worthy, he  would  not  consent  to  stain  his  reputation  by  accepting  a  pardon.^ 
The  retirement  thus  virtuously  preserved  contributed  no  less  to  the  refine- 
ment of  his  character  than  to  the  extension  of  his  fame,  and  was  signalized 
by  the  publication  of  a  series  of  literary  performances  replete  with  learning, 
genius,  and  mild  benevolence.  In  a  short  time  the  clouds  that  had  gath- 
ered around  his  fortunes  began  to  disperse  ;  the  Quakers  became  com- 
pletely reconciled,  and  as  much  attached  as  ever  to  him  ;  and  the  good 
ofiices  of  Lord  Somers,  Locke,  and  other  friends,  cooperating  witn  tjie 
justice  of  his  cause,  and  the  detection  of  (real  or  supposed)  impostures  com- 
mitted by  one  of  his  accusers,  succeeded  in  undeceiving  the  English  court, 
and  obviated  every  pretence  for  continuing  to  exclude  him  from  the  enjov. 
ment  of  the  privileges  to  which  he  was  entitled  by  the  charter  of  Penn- 
sylvr.iia.  A  royal  warrant  was  issued  accordingly,  for  reinstating  him  in  his 
proprietary  functions  [August,  1694]  ;  in  the  exercise  of  which,  he  forthwith 
invested  his  kinsman  Markham  with  the  office  of  deputy-governor  of  his 
whole  territories,  —  thus  again  leuniting  the  executive  administration  of 
Pennsylvania  and  Delaware.'' 

Pennsylvania  had  continued  to  increase  its  population  with  such  rapidity, 
that  now  the  number  of  inhabitants  (exclusive  of  negro  slaves)  was  estimated 
at  twenty  thousand.  [1G95.]  A  considerable  change  was  observed,  soon 
after  the  British  Revolution,  in  the  character  of  the  emigrants  resorting  to 
this  province, — who,  though  generally  respectable  persons,  yet  showed 
very  plainly,  in  many  particulars  of  their  conduct,  and  especially  in  their 
reluctance  to  embrace  the  measures  that  wore  proposed  for  mitigating  the 
evils  of  negro  slavery,  that  views  of  temporal  enrichment  had  operated 
more  powerfully  than  religious  zeal  to  conduct  them  to  America.  The 
formality  of  apparel  and  simplicity  of  manners  enjoined  by  the  constitutions 
of  the  (Quakers  tended  to  purify  their  sectarian  society,  by  confining  its 
attractions  to  sober-minded  men  ;  and  peculiarly  recommended  the  virtue 
of  industry,  by  increasing  its  efficacy  in  conducting  to  a  plentiful  estate. 
But  the  temporal  advantages  thus  closply  associated  with  Quaker  manners 
had  latterly  contributed  to  produce  a  practical  relaxation  of  the  strictness 
of  Quaker  princij)les,  and  to  adulterate  the  motives  by  which  the  profession 
of  these  principles  was  inculcated.  The  attractions  of  Pennsylvania  as  a 
sanctuary  of  liberty  of  conscience  were  comparatively  diminished  to  the 
Knglish  Dissenters  by  the  devolution  ;  but  its  allurements  in  other  respects 
continued  unabated,  and,  by  the  widely  diffused  influence  and  correspond- 
ence of  Penn,  wore  pronudgated  in  all  ]iarts  of  the  Briush  empire.  Al- 
ready many  emigrants,  who  in  l^ngland  found  it  difficult  to  gain  a  scanty 
livelihood,  had  in  Pennsylvania  amassed  estates  of  considerable  value. 
The  accounts  that  were  published  in  ICngland  of  the  liberal  wages  of  labor 
in  the  province  attracted  thither  a  great  many  persons  in  the  humblest  walks 
"  '  .'/H/r,  nook  iv.,ciinp7r"     '  _  7T~ 

*  Tliin  WHS  not  tin;  r)iilv  point  of  siniiliirity  in  tin;  liistoricH  of  tlicRO  distinguislicd  [irr- 
Mons.  lloili  lind  Imcn  tlin  "dunes  of  vcrv  bad  nion  (SliaOoshiiry  and  Jnuies  tlio  St.'cond),  iirid 
iwifh  i:!i<ri-ri«.'!  '.!s)j!!st!y  fur  their  cnnnoction  wilh  (hctn.  ISoth  were  rxpelh'd  frniii  thr.  lltiivs^r- 
»ity  of  Oxford. 

•  Frond.     Clarkson. 


CHAP.  II.] 


THIRD  FRAME  OF  GOVERNMENT. 


535 


ecame  com- 
nd  the  good 
ting  will!  ihe 
lostures  com- 
^nglish  court, 
11  the  enjoy. 
■ter  of  Penn- 
ing him  in  his 
,  he  forthwith 
ernor  of  his 
inistration  of 

luch  rapidity, 
vas  estimated 
)served,  soon 
s  resorting  to 
yet  sliowed 
[?ially  in  their 
iiiligaling  the 
bad  operated 
lerica.  The 
constitutions 
confining  its 
d  the  virtue 
mtiful  estate. 
aker  manners 
the  strictness 
lie  profession 
sylvania  as  a 
lished  to  tlie 
)ther  respects 
I  correspond- 
enipire.  Al- 
gain  a  scanty 
erable  value, 
ages  of  hihor 
uiiblest  \valks 


slinguislicd  por- 
lio  Second),  iiiul 
rntn  tho  UnivKr- 


of  life,  who  had  the  expenses  of  their  transportation  defrayed  by  wealthier 
individuals,  to  whom  they  engaged  themselves  as  servants  for  a  series  of 
years.  But  the  improvement  in  the  condition  of  these  people  was  so  rapid 
and  they  were  so  eager  to  enjoy  the  dignity  of  independence,  that  a  scarci- 
ty ol  servants,  and  the  exorbitancy  of  the  wages  that  were  necessary  to  re- 
tain hee  men  m  this  condition,  were  continual  subjects  of  complaint. i  These 
circumstances,  cooperating  with  the  example  of  the  neighbouring  colonies, 
had  originally  introduced  negro  slavery  into  the  province,  and  now  con- 
tinued to  prolong  the  subsistence  of  this  execrable  institution,  which,  de- 
grading servitude,  and  rendering  it  a  condition  still  more  uninviting  to  free 
men,  promoted  the  causes  whence  itself  had  arisen.  It  required  more  virtue 
than  even  the  Quakers  were  yet  prepared  to  exert,  in  order  to  defend  them 
from  the  contagion  of  this  evil,  and  to  induce  them  to  divide  the  produce  of 
their  lands  with  their  servants  in  such  proportions  as  might  have  enabled 
them  to  employ  only  free  labor  in  their  cultivation. 

During  the  interval  that  elapsed  between  the  restoration  of  Penn  to  his 
proprietary  authority  [1696]  and  his  second  visit  to  his  people,  some  change 
was  introduced  into  the  form  of  the  provincial  constitution.     Markham  had 
repeatedly  pressed  the  assembly  to  authorize  the  levy  of  a  sum  of  money 
to  be  remitted  to  the  governor  of  New  York,  for  the  support  of  the  war' 
—  or,  as  It  was  decently  pretended,  for  the  relief  of  the  distressed  Indians  ; 
and  Penn,  m  his  letters  from  England,  reinforced  this  application,  by  pro- 
testing that  the  preservation  of  the  proprietary  government  would  again  be 
endangered  by  a  refusal  to  comply  with  it.     This  appeared  to  the  assembly 
a  favorable  opportunity  of  obtaining  a  change  which  they  had  long  desired, 
m  the   distribution  of  the    legislative   functions    between    themselves  and 
the  governor  and  council  ;  and  liinting  plainly,  that,  without  such  equiva- 
lent, they  were  determined  not  to  waive  their  scruples  to  a  contribution  for 
martial  purposes,  they  compelled  Markham  to   assent  to   a  new  act   of 
settlement,  which  formed  the  third  frame  or  system  of  the  Pennsylvanian 
constitution.    [November,  1696.]      By  this  new  compact,  it  was  provided 
that  from  each  county  there  should  be  chosen  only  two  persons  to  repre- 
sent the  people  in  council,  and  four  as  their  representatives   in  assembly  ; 
the  council  being  thus  reduced  in  number  from  eighteen  to  twelve,  and  the 
assembly  from  thirty-six  to  twenty-four.     It  was  farther  stipulated  that  the 
assembly  should  be   empowered   to   regulate  its   own    adjournments  ;  and 
that  it  should  be  no  longer  confined  to  a  simple  assent  or  negation  to  legis- 
lanve  propositions  originating  with  the  governor  and  council,  but  should 
partake  with  them   the   privilege  of  introducing  and  discussing  laws.     On 
receiving  this   boon,  the  assembly  passed  an  order  for  raising  the  sum  of 
three  hundred   pounds,  to  be  remitted  to  the  gover-or  of  New  York,  for 
the  relief  of  the  distressed  Indians  on  the  frontiers  oi  '..s  province. ^     Gov- 
ernor Fletcher  wrote  to  Markharr.  in  the  following  year,  affirming  that  the 
money  had  been  faithfully  appl.p.l  vo  she  feeding  and  clothing  of  the  In- 
dians,   and  requesting  a  fresh  sapply   for  the    same    benevolent   purpose. 
The  assembly,  in  reply  to  this  jnoijosition,  desired  that  their  thanks  might 
be  conveyed  to  Fletcher  for  "  his  regard  and  candor  to  them"  in  applying 
their  former  subsidy  to  the  use  they  had  contemplated  ;  adding,  that,  al- 
though  for  the  present  they  must  decline  imposing  additional  burdens  ou 

I  (J.  Tlioriias.     Oldniixon.  ~        ~~ 

-  It  wua  almost  at  liio  very  smne  tiinn,  !()!••  Archdule,  the  Quaker  governor  of  Carolina,  in 
troducod  into  this  province  a  law  for  the  formation  of  a  militia.    JiiUe,  Book  IV.,  Chap.  II. 


lii  i 


636 


HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK   VII. 


the  province,  they  would  always  be  ready  to  observe  the  king's  farther 
commands,  "according  to  their  religious  persuasions  and  abilities."  Thus 
early  did  the  Quakers  experience  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  their  religious 
principles  with  the  administration  of  political  power.  It  was  but  a  few 
years  after,  that,  in  answer  to  a  requisition  from  Penn,  in  the  king's  name 
for  a  subsidy  avowedly  destined  to  the  erection  of  forts  and  batteries  at 
New  York,  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly  pleaded  its  poverty,  and  remonstrated 
against  the  partiality  which  imposed  upon  this  people  so  many  exactions 
from  which  other  and  older  colonies  were  exempted,  as  the  only  reasons  for 
deferring  to  comply  with  the  king's  commands,  "so  far  as  their  abihties  and 
religious  persuasions  shall  permit.'"  This  reservation,  which  was  always 
inserted  on  such  occasions,  for  the  honor  of  Quaker  consistency,  never 
prevented  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania  from  contributing,  as  the  subjects 
of  a  martial  monarchy,  their  full  contingent  to  the  sinews  of  war.  In 
voting  grants  of  money  which  were  expressly  demanded  as  military  subsi- 
dies, and  which  they  well  knew  would  be  employed  to  impel  the  rage  of 
war,  and  nourish  the  ferocity  of  savages  whom  they  professed  their  anx- 
ious desire  to  pacify  and  civilize,  it  was  always  attempted,  by  the  substitu- 
tion of  some  other  alleged  purpose,  to  shift  the  sin  and  scandal  of  the  trans- 
action from  themselves  to  their  military  superiors,  or  at  least  to  draw  a  decent 
veil  over  concessions  which  they  could  neither  withhold  nor  avow.^  The 
veil  was  not  without  its  use,  if  it  contributed  to  maintain  among  the  Penn- 
sylvanian Quakers  that  respect  for  their  pacific  tenets  of  which  they  made 
a  more  practical  and  honorable  display  in  the  succeeding  century,  when 
the  attempts  of  the  English  government  to  extort  from  them  a  still  more 
active  and  unequivocal  cooperation  with  military  measures  induced  them  to 
sacrifice  to  their  principles  the  possession  of  political  power. 

Accession  to  war,  though  the  most  important,  was  not  the  only  instance 
in  which  the  Pennsylvanian  Quakers  were  compelled  by  the  singularity  of 
their  situation  to  content  themselves  with  a  theoretical  profession  instead  of 
a  practical  exempHfication  of  their  principles.  By  the  constitutions  of 
Quakerism,  they  were  restricted  to  the  employment  of  a  plainness  of 
speech  remote  from  the  ordinary  style  of  colloquial  intercourse  in  the  world, 
and  totally  inconsistent  with  the  strain  of  elaborate  homage,  which,  in  regal 
governments,  pervades  the  addresses  of  inferior  magistrates  and  corpora- 
tions to  the  throne.  This  sectarian  principle  was  always  admitted  to  reg- 
ulate their  intercourse  with  the  provincial  governors,  who  were  invariably 
addressed  in  the  plain  language  of  Quakerism  by  the  Pennsylvanian  as- 
semblies. But  the  samp  assemblies,  in  their  addresses  to  the  crown,  and 
e\en  in  those  of  which  the  object  was  to  solicit  advantages  and  immuni- 
ties to  the  Quakers,  employed  the  usual  style  of  official  obeisance;  —  the 
Quaker  majority  of  the  assembly  taking  care  to  adject  to  each  address  a 
declaration  that  tliey  approved  its  substance,  "  but  excepted  against  some 
part  of  its  style.  "^ 

The  affairs  of  the  colony  continued   to  glide  on  for  some   time  in  a 

*  Dr.  Franklin  mentions  an  instance,  some  years  after,  of  a  rcqiiiHition  addressed  to  the  as- 
Demhly  of  Peiinsylvnnin,  of  tlic  sum  of  two  tliousiind  jjoiind-i  for  tlie  pur«  hase  of  gunpowder ; 
to  which  tlie  assembly  replied,  that,  eonsistently  with  Quaker  prinriples,  they  eoiild  not  grant 
a  farthing  for  such  a  purpose,  but  had  voted  two  thousand  pounds  for  the  puTthnge  of  srrnin. 
Various  instances  of  aecession  to  war,  still  more  uiiuudHj^uouH,  on  the  part  of  the  Araeri- 
f nn  OiiTik*>rB-  nrtt  related  \h  Ivuhii's  l^furftis  i?i  _Vf*r?A  .'iai^Tfc^, 

'  Proud.  S^imilar  instunres  of  Quaker  assent  to  ihi!  substance  and  d'ssent  from  the  style 
of  addrfiii  occur  in  the  transactions  of  the  assembly  of  Mew  Jersey.    S.  i^mith. 


CHAP.  II.J  SECOND  VISIT  OF  PEx\N  TO  HIS  DOMAIN. 


637 


s   time  in  a 


course  of  tranquillity,  interrupted  at  length  by  an- event  which  had  been 
now  too  Ion?  deferred  to  be  capable   of  producing  the  beneficial  conse- 
quences which  at  one  time  were  fondly  expected  to  ensue  from  it,  —  the  re- 
turn of  the  proprietary  to  his  American  dominions.  [1698,  1699.]     On  this 
second  occasion,  accompanied  by  his  family,  and  professing  his  intention 
to  spend  the  remainder  of  his  life  in  Pennsylvania,  his  arrival  was  hailed 
with  general,  if  not  universal  satisfaction,  — of  which  the  only  visible  abate- 
ment was  created  by  the  first  visitation  of  that  dreadful  epidemic,  the  yellow 
fever  (since  so  fatally  prevalent),  at  Philadelphia.'    Some  young  men,  hav- 
ing ventured,  in  opposition  to  the  commands  of  the  magistrates,  to  salute 
the  proprietary  on  his  arrival  with  a  discharge  of  artillery,  performed  this 
operation  so  awkwardly,  as  to  occasion  severe  injury  to  themselves  ;   which 
was  regarded  by  the  Quakers  as  a  providential  rebuke  of  a  tribute  so  un- 
suitable to  a  member  of  their  fraternity.     The  very  first  transactions  that 
took  place  between  Penn  and   his   provincial   assembly  were  but  ill  calcu- 
lated to  promote  their  mutual  satisfaction.     In  the  history  of  some  of  the 
other  settlements  (and  particularly  of  Carolina  and  New  York),  we  have 
remarked  that  the  American  seas  were    at   this   time  infested  by  pirates, 
whose  prodigal  expenditure  of  money  in  every  place  where  they  found  shel- 
ter and  entertainment,  and  whose  readiness  to  assist  in  evading  the  obnoxious 
Acts  of  Navigation,  recommended  them  too  successfully  to  the  countenance 
of  many  of  the  North  American  colonists.     Pennsylvania  did  not  escape 
this  reproach,  which  Penn  had  already  communicated  in  letters  to  the  as- 
sembly,-— who  readily  enacted  laws  against  the  practices  imputed  to  their 
fellow-citizens,  but  at  the  same   time  issued  proclamations  declaring  in  the 
strongest  terms  that  the  imputations  were  unfounded.     This  disagreeable 
subject  was  resumed  immediately  after  the  arrival  of  Penn  ;  and  though  the 
assembly  still  complained  of  the   injustice  of  the  reproach,  it  was  found 
necessary  to  expel  from  it  one  of  its  own    members,  the  son-in-law   of 
Colonel  Markham,  who  was  suspected  of  participating,  or  at  least  counte- 
nancing, piracy.     Still  more  productive  of  discord  were  the  frequent  de- 
mands of  pecuniary  contributions  for  the  support  of  a  military  establishment 
at  New  York,  which  Penn  was  compelled  by  the  British  government  to 
address  to  his  assembly  ;  and  which    were   answered   only  by  complaints 
of  the  hardship  of  these  exactions,  and  protestations  of  the  inability  of  the 
province  to  comply  with  them.^     But  the   most  remarkable  disagreement 
that  occurred  between  Penn  and  the  assembly  arose  from  the  measures  which 
he  now  suggested  for  improving  the  treatment  of  negro  slaves,  and  cor- 
recting abuses  that  prevailed  in  the  intercourse  between  the   colonists  and 
the  Indians. 

It  was  impossible  that  the  flagrant  evils  of  slavery,  and  the  especial  re- 
pugnance of  such  an  inhuman  institution  to  Christian  morality,  which  Baxter, 
Tryon,  and  other  writers  had  already  pressed  upon  the  attention  of  the 
Protestant   inhabitants  of  Christendom,  could   escape  the   moral  sense  of 

'  Tlmnuis  Story,  an  eminent  preacher  among  the  Quakers,  and  afterwards  recorder  of 
Philadelphia,  thus  describes  the  impression  produced  by  the  prevalence  of  this  epidemic  :  — 
"(jrcat  \Mi\H  the  majesty  and  hana  of  the  Lord;  great  was  the  fear  that  fell  upon  all  flesh  : 
I  saw  no  lull y  or  airy  countenance,  nor  heard  any  vain  jesting  to  move  men  to  langhter  ;  nor 
extravagant  feasting  to  excite  above  measure  the  lusts  of  the  Hesh  ;  but  every  fiieo  gathered 
paleness,  and  many  hearts  were  humbled,  and  countenances  fallen  and  .iin'k,  as  such  that 
waited  every  moment  to  be  summoned  to  tln^  bar."  Proud.  How  dillerent  this  from  Thu- 
cy<lides'  description  of  the  increased  gayety  and  profligacy  produced  by  the  plague  at  Atheco  . 

'  Proud.     Ciarkgon. 

VOL.  I.  68 


]      If 


■:  I 


.il 


irii 


538 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII 


those  benevolent  sectaries  who  professed  to  study  and  exhibit  a  peculiar 
and  almost  literal  conformity  to  the  precepts  of  charity,  humility,  and  self- 
denial,  interwoven  witli  the  doctrines  of  the  gospel.  When  George  Fox 
the  founder  of  Quakerism,  visited  Barbadoes,  in  1671,  he  found  the  meml 
hers  of  his  sectarian  society  within  the  island,  as  well  as  the  other  white 
inhabitants,  in  possession  of  slaves.  "Respecting  their  negroes,"  he  re- 
lates among  his  other  admonitions  to  the  Quaker  planters,  "  I  desired  llieni 
to  endeavour  to  train  them  up  in  the  fear  of  God ;  as  well  those  that  were 
bought  with  their  money,  -  those  that  were  born  in  their  families.  I  desired 
also  tliat  they  would  cause  dieir  overseers  to  deal  mildly  and  gently  with 
their  negroes,  and  not  use  cruelty  towards  them,  as  the  manner  of  some 
hath  been  and  is  ;  and  that,  after  certain  years  of  servitude,  they  should 
make  them  free.'"  How  conscientiously  the  Quakers  complied  with  this 
admonition  is  attested  by  a  law  promulgated  by  the  legislature  of  Barbadoes 
five  years  after,  conunanding  those  sectaries  to  desist  from  giving  instruc- 
tion to  negroes,  and,  in  particular,  from  admitting  them  to  their  religious 
assemblages  ;''  and  how  magnanimously  they  persisted  to  do  dieir  duty, 
in  the  face  of  this  unchristian  command,  may  be  inferred  from  an  ordinance 
very  soon  after  enacted  by  the  same  legislature,  imposing  a  penalty  on  any 
shipmaster  who  should  bring  a  Quaker  to  the  island.'  The  prosecution 
of  such  measures,  and  the  adoption  of  a  similar  policy  in  others  of  the 
West  India  plantations,  succeeded  in  banishing  from  these  colonial  settle- 
ments an  example  which  might  have  been  attended  with  the  most  beneficial 
consequences  to  the  interests  of  the  white  inhabitants  and  the  happiness  of 
the  negroes  ;  and  compelled  many  Quaker  planters  to  emigrate  from  the 
West  Indies  to  America,  whither  they  brought  with  them  their  modified 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  Some  of  these  Quakers  perhaps  en- 
tertained the  i)urpose  of  an  entire  compliance  with  the  admonitjon  of  Fox, 
bji  setting  their  negroes  at  liberty  after  certain  years  of  servitude  ;  but 
this  purposo  was  easily  overjpowered  by  the  sophistry  and  temptation  of 
self-interest,  the  contagion  ol  general  example,  and  the  influence  of  evil 
habit  in  blunting  the  feelings  of  humanity. 

By  his  acquisition  of  the  Delaware  territory,  it  is  probable  thai  Penn,  on 
coming  into  possession  of  his  American  domains,  found  the  system  of  negro 
slavery  already  established  within  them.  During  his  first  visit,  it  appears 
that  a  few  negroes  were  imported  into  Pennsylvania,  and  wvm  purchased 
by  the  Quakers,  as  well  as  the  other  settlers.  While  the  scarcity  of  servants 
enhanced  the  temptation  to  this  practice,  the  kindness  of  Quaker  manners 
contributed  to  soften  its  evil  and  veil  its  iniquity  ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  year 
16S8,  that  the  repugnance  of  slavery  itself,  however  disguised,  to  the  tenets 
of  Christianity  was  first  suggested  to  the  Pennsylvanians  by  the  emigrants 

'  Fox's  Journal.  An  earlier  and  more  uncomproniising  rosistanlx'  to  slavery  was  ninde  bv 
some  of  the  clergy  of  the  church  of  Rnne,  at  St.  Luis,  m  the  year  1C53.  South-iv's  Histuiu 
of  Brazil.  J  3 

»  Oldmixon.  The  preamble  of  this  law  sets  forth,  that, "  Whereas  many  negroes  have 
been  suffered  to  remain  at  the  meeting  of  Quakers  as  hearers  of  their  doctrine,  and  taught  in 
their  prmciplea,  whereby  the  safety  of  this  island  may  be  much  hazarded,"  &c  We  find  the 
legislature  of  Barbadoes,  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  after,  enacting  similar  laws  against  the 
Motliodist  teachers  and  nreachors,  and  declaring  that  their  doctrines  were  fitted  lo  turn  the 
world  upside  down. 

'  Chirkson's  Molition  of  the  Slave-trade.  About  sixty  years  later,  Thomas  Chalkeley,  a  re- 
nowned  Quaker  minister,  in  one  of  his  visits  to  l?arbndoes,  having  exhorted  a  meeting  of 
the  free  inhabitants  to  treat  their  negro  slaves  with  greater  mildness  (without  presuming  to 
rjrcathc  a  syiiabio  of  objc  ti..ii  (i^iiiimt  ihu  iiisliiuiMui  i>i' slavery),  wan  tired  at  aiid  wounded 
in  open  day  by  one  of  the  planters  of  the  island.    Chalkeley'e  Journal. 


CHAP.  II.]        EFFORTS  IN  FAVOR  OF  SLAVES  AND  INDIANS.  539 

t^^eli^rih'f  '°  them  from  Germany.     If  it  was  natural  for  the  Quakers 

for  them  tn  nvniH  !,.  "^.ag^^s  and  temporal  enrichment,  it  was  not  easy 
m  n  f^om  .'LtevBr?nP7h"""^^  contracting  at  least  a  practical  estrange^ 
mem  irom   ..idtever  m  their  principles  savored  only  of  unnroductive  Jlf 

itdu  planters,  might  have  derived  from  human  infirmitv    ilipv  wprp  «tin 

trirnrincioles  •"'H^'"'^"i-^°f'^^^'  ^"  '-'"^^^  ^^e  te'o'rS  pSy  of 
heir  principles  ;  and  accordingly,  in  compliance  with  the  suggestion  of  the 

adooTedld    ^^^^'f°".  declaratory   of  the   unlawfulness    orsavTryw^s 

Ss^of  Penns^vlv  nlf  V^'  '^^  ^f-  ^'  '^'^  «""-'  ^-^-S  of  the^QTa! 
Kers  ot  1  ennsylvania.     1  he  effect  of  this  deliberate  homage  to  eternal  iruth 

Strnurnhp;  nf   r  P  r^'"  '^'^  f ?*"'  °^  ^^^^^^  ^^^^Ifice  ;  and  the  in- 
creasing  number  of  the  slaves,  together  with  the  diversities  of   charirtPr 
among  the  colonists  (to  which  we  have  already  adverted)     rendered   the 
emancipation  of  the  negroes  increasingly  improbable.     In  the  yea    1696 
the  annual  meeting  of  the  Pennsylvanian   Quakers  repeated  theTr  firm!.' 

St';e"f.ain  7  '"  U  T  f"""'  ^^"'^"''•"^  '^  '^'  ibers  of  the'r 
ciety  to  refiam  from  all  farther  importations  of  negro  slaves  •  but  no  othpr 

immediate  effect  resulted  from  this  measure  than  an  inTeae'd  concern  for 
the  welfare  of  the  negroes,  who  in  some  instances  were  admkted  to  attend 
divine  worship  in  the  same  meeting-houses  with  Uieir  Quake™  masters 

On  h.s  second  arrival  in  America  [June,  1700],  Penn  veTy  soon  ner 
ceived,  that,  from  the  varieties  of  character  among  his  provSalvassT 
and  the  inevitable  tendency  of  absolute  power  to  corruption  rndab"se   the 
negro  savery  of  Pennsylvania  exhibited    in  too   many '^^nstances    the  s'ame 
odious  features  that  characterized  this  barbarous  institution    noth^    placed' 
He  was  additionally  mortified  with  the  discovery  of  numerous  frauds  a  .d 
abuses  coinmmod  by  the  colonists  in  their  traffic  with   the  Indians      Wh 
the  view  of  providing  a  remedy  for  both  these  evils,   he   presented  to   the 
assembly  three  bills  which  he  had  himself  prepared  :'the  fimX  legdati,? 
t  ITnd      '"'    '"^rriages  of  the  negroes  ;  the  second,  for 'regu lalng      f 
uaJ.  and  punishments  ot  the  negroes  ;  and  the  third,  for  preventing  abuses 
and  frauds  m  the  intercourse  between  the  colonists  and  the  Indians^      The 
ssembly  instantly  negatived  the  first  and  last  of  these  bills  ;  accedin.  onlv 
to  that  which  related  to  the  trial  and  punishment  of  their  s  aves      No  at 
coun    IS  transmitted  of  any  discussion  or  debate  on  the  b  lis   which  were 
rejected;  and,  indeed    it  is  probable  that  the  assembly,  rthrinstance 
were  glad  to  confine  themselves  to  the  ancient  formula  of  slply  anp  S 
or  rejecting  the  legislative  overtures  presented  to  them.     But^t^islis  e  ted 
conject^jrally,  T  suppose)  by  one  of  the  biographers  of  Penn,  tha   tie  feel- 
ings of  the  proprietary  received  a  conmhive  shock  on  the   occasion       In 
proposing  the  bills,  he  had   indeed  been    unanimously  supported^  by  his 

council,  which  consisted  entirelv  of  Onpkpr=  •  H,*  ^Ju./^.     '1^^  f'^ 

-  -  '-  ^ — a.-!.. .  ..(!,    ....   Mau  seen  tnciw  UC- 

»  "  ThouKl.  Pennsylvania  boagU  her  peaceful  plain7~ — 

Vet  tl.orc  la  blood  her  petty  tyrants  reign."  —  Gregory 


640 


HISTORY  OF  NORTJI  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII, 


cisively  rejected  by  an  assembly,  of  which  a  groat  majority  consisted  of 
pcTsons  of  the  same  religious  persuasion.  Tiiough  disappointerl  of  the 
more  extensive  influence  which  as  a  pohiical  legishitor  he  had  hoped  to  ex- 
ercise, he  was  yet  able,  in  his  ecclesiastical  ministry  among  the  Quakers 
to  introduce  into  their  discipline  regulations  and  practices  relative  to  the 
purposes  of  the  rejected  bills,  the  spirit  of  which,  at  least,  was,  by  the  ex- 
ample of  this  powerful  sect,  forcibly  recommended  to  general  imitation. 
Monthly  meetings  were  appointed  among  the  (Quakers,  for  the  religious  and 
moral  education  of  their  negro  slaves  [1703]  ;  and  regular  conferences 
were  established  with  the  Indians,  for  the  purpose  of  communicating  to 
then)  whatever  instruction  they  would  consent  to  accept.  Perm  finally 
obtained  leave,  or  at  least  assumed  the  power,  to  make  a  treaty  wiih  the 
Indians,  by  which  they  acknowledged  theniselves  subjects  of  the  British 
crown  and  amenable  to  the  pr'^vincial  laws  ;  and  by  which  certain  regula- 
tions were  franried  for  preventing  the  frauds  to  which  they  were  exposed  in 
their  commercial  dealings  with  the  white  population. 

Thus  was  preserved  in  the  Quaker  society  a  principle, which,  about 
seventy  years  after,  obtained  the  signal  triumph  of  procuring  emancipation 
to  all  the  negroes  in  America  belonging  to  Quakers  ;  and  thus,  mean- 
while, was  cherished  in  the  general  body  of  the  inhabitants  of  Pennsylva- 
nia such  a  sense  of  the  unalienable  rights  and  indissoluble  obligations  of 
humanity,  as  obtained  for  enslaved  negroes  in  this  province  a  treatment  fnr 
kinder  and  *  more  ecpiitable  than  they  enjoyed  in  any  other  part  of  North 
America,  except  the  States  of  New  Englaild.'  Notwithstanding  the  encour- 
agement afforded  by  the  British  government  to  the  importation  of  negroes 
into  all  the  American  settlements,  the  slaves  in  Pennsylvania  never  formed 
more  than  a  very  insignificant  fraction  of  the  whole  population  of  the  prov- 
ince. Slavery  subsisted  longer  in  Delaware  ;  and  the  slaves  in  this  settle- 
ment,  though  not  :  umerous,  were  rather  more  so  than  in  the  larger  province 
of  Pennsylvania.* 

In  addition  to  the  other  disagreeable  impressions  of  which  his  second 
visit  to  America  was  productive,  Penn  had  now  the  mortification  of  wit- 
nessing a  revival  of  the  jealousies  between  Delaware  and  Pennsylvanin, 
and  of  experiencing  the  inefficacy  of  all  his  efforts  to  promote  a  cordial  union 
between  the  inhabitants  of  these  countries.  As  a  remedy  for  their  mutual 
dissatisfaction,  he  proposed  a  change  in  the  frame  of  governmem  ;  but  the 
adjustment  of  this  compact  tended  rather  to  inflame  than  to  allay  the  existing 

'  Proud.  Clarkson's  Abolition  of  the  Slare-trade.  CinrkevnVLife  ,:f  Perm.  Wint^rbothnin. 
Wnrdon.  In  the  course  of  his  ministerial  labors  at  this  time,  Penn  visited  his  Quaker  brethren 
in  Maryland,  and  was  received  in  a  friendly  manner  by  his  ancient  adversary,  Lord  Baltimore, 
who  with  his  lady  nccompanied  him  to  a  (iuaker  meeting.  Ponn  regretted,  for  I  ho  sake  of  K\t 
noble  companions,  that  the  fervor  of  the  meeting  had  subsided  before  their  entrance  ;  and  Lady 
Baltimore  declared  herself  disappointed  of  the  diversion  she  had  expected,  lie  had  also  van 
ous  interviews  with  the  Indians,  who  listened  to  him  willingly  as  long  as  he  confined  him 
self  to  general  allusions  to  religion.  Butwhrn  ho  desired,  on  one  occasion,  to  direct  theii 
minds  to  the  search  of  an  internal  manifestatio  i  of  the  Kedcemer  of  the  human  race,  his  in 


tion  of  many  members  of  Christianized  communities  on  whom  tlic  doctrine  has  been  incul 
catrd  from  their  infancy. 

To  Ponn  himself  the  Indians  very  readily  paid  a  degree  of  respect  which  they  refused  to 
extend  to  nis  religious  tenets.  Many  of  them  believed  liim  a  being  of  higher  order  than  the 
rest  of  mankind  ;  "nor  could  they  for  a  long  timo  credit  the  news  of  his  death,  not  believina 
him  subject  to  the  accidenla  of  nature.'     Planner  s  yuw  of  the  Policy  of  Great  lirilaiii,  &c. 


CHAP.  II.] 


FOt'RTH   FRAME  OF  GOVERNMENT. 


541 


animosities.    He  endeavoured  to  defer  the  extremity  to  which  their  disputes 

manifestly  tended,  by  varions  acts  of  conciliation  towards  the  weaker  am 

more  irntah^  party,  and  particularly  by  convoking  at  Newcastle,  the  me- 

tropoiis  of  I>elaware,  another  assembly,  which  was  held  in  the  close  of  the 

present  year  [1700].     But  although  he  succeeded,  after  much  adroit  exe!-! 

tion,  in  obtaining  from  this  assembly  a  .subsidy  for  the  support  of  his  gov- 

TZT'     f  "'"''%'"'"«  P'-«g'-««s  in  arranging  with  them  tHe  terms  of  a  new 

ch.   ter  or  frame  of  government, -the  mutual  jealousies  between  the  two 

e  tlements  were  displayed  with  such  unreserve,  that,  in  almost  every  de- 

bate,  the  Delaware  representatives  suggested  and  supported  precisely  the 

reverse  of  whatever  was  proposed  or  approved  by  the  Pennsylvanians.  The 

subsidy  a,  counted  to  £  2  000,  of  which  £  1,573  was  the  proportion  imposed 

upon  Pennsylvania,  and  the  remainder  upon  Delaware.     It  was   unwise 

llnTl     .     T  '"^  :"^•^^h's  people  to  the  acceptance  of  a  new  social 

compact,  at  a  time  when  they  were  so  much  heated  by  mutual  irritation, 

and  when  the  union  between  the  two  settlements  was  evidently  so  precari- 

tTi'n  l!v  A-.  •  P'^'^^'f  •  "°^  '""S  after  for  taxing  him  with  converting 
the  public  distractions  to  his  own  advantage,  and  practising  devices  for  the 
enlargement  of  his  power,  while  the  minds  of  hii  people  were  too  much 
occupied  with  their  mutual  dissensions  to  perceive  the  drift  of  his  proceed- 
ings. 

But  Perin  had  now  determined  again  to  leave  America  [17011,  and 
return  to  England  ;  and  while  he  naturally  desired  to  have  tlw  frame  of 
the  provincial  government  finally  established  before  his  departure,  his  recent 
experience  had  doubtless  impressed  on  him  the  conviction,  that  an  exten- 
sion ol  his  own  magisterial  prerogative  would  render  the  constitution  more 
instrumental  to  the  welfare  of  the  people,  and  afford  a  freer  scope  to  the 
promotion  of  views  and  the  exertion  of  influence  impartially  directed  to 
the  general  advantage. 

In  the  last  assembly  which  he  convoked  before  his  departure  [September, 
1/01  J,  he  had  occasion  to  exert  all  his  authority  and  address,  in  order  to 
prevent  the  representatives  of  Delaware  and  Pennsylvania  from  coming 
to  an  open  rupture,  and  also  to  guard  his  own  interests  in  the  sale  and  lease 
of  vacant  lands  from  an  attempt  of  the  legislative  body  to  assume  a  control 
over  them.  Various  laws  were  passed  ;  of  which  the  nost  remarkable 
were  those  for  the  establishment  of  a  post-oflice,  for  the  punishment  of  the 
•vices  ot  scolding  and  drunkenness,  for  restraining  the  practice  of  drinking 
healths,  and  for  the  destruction  of  wolves.  [October,  1701.]  But  the  most 
important  transaction  on  this  occasion  was  the  establishment  of  the  new 
charter  or  frame  of  government,  which  Penn  finally  tendered  to  the  assem- 
bly, and  prevailed  with  a  great  majority  of  the  members  to  accept,  and 
even  thankfully  acknowledge.  By  this  instrument,  it  was  provided  fin 
conforniity  with  the  municipal  compact  of  1696)  that  a  legislative  assembly 
should  be  annually  elected  by  the  freemen,  and  should  consist  of  four  per- 
sons  from  each  county,  or  of  a  greater  number,  if  the  eovemor  and  assembly 
should  so  determine  ;  that  the  assembly  should  nominate  its  own  officers, 
and  decide  with  exclusive  jurisdiction  all  questions  relating  to  the  qualifi- 
cations and  elections  of  its  members  ;  that  it  should  prepare  legislatorial 
bills,  impeach  criminals,  and  redress  grievances  ;  and  possess  all  the  other 
powers  and  privileges  of  a  representative  assembly^  accordant  witli  ths 
rights  of  the  ireeborn  subjects  of  England,  and  the  customs  observed  in  the 


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33  WEST  MAIN  STREtT 

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642 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


British  plantations  in  America.  The  governor  was  empowered  to  con- 
voke, prorogue,  and  dissolve  the  provincial  legislature  ;  to  nominate  his 
council ;  to  discharge  singly  the  whole  executive  functions  of  government  • 
and  to  share  the  legislative  functions,  by  affirming  or  rejecting  the  bills  of  the 
assembly.  The  Pennsylvanian  council  differed  from  all  the  other  provincial 
councils  in  this  respect,  that  it  did  not  form  a  distinct  branch  of  the  legis- 
lature, but  was  considered  as  a  court  of  assistants  to  the  acting  governor, 
and  a  check  on  his  authority,  —  rather  a  privy  council  than  a  senatorial 
Dody.  It  was  declared  that  liberty  of  conscience  was  the  inviolable  right 
of  the  colonists  ;  that  Christians  of  every  denomination  should  be  qualified 
to  occupy  the  offices  of  government ;  and  that  no  act  or  ordinance  should 
ever  be  made  to  alter  or  diminish  the  form  or  effect  of  the  charter,  with- 
out the  consent  of  the  governor,  and  six  parts  in  seven  of  the  assembly. 
But  as  it  was  now  plainly  foreseen  that  the  representatives  of  the  province 
and  those  of  the  territories  would  not  long  continue  to  unite  in  legislation, 
it  was  provided  that  they  should  be  allowed  to  separate  within  three  years 
from  the  date  of  the  charter,  and  should  enjoy  the  same  privileges  when 
separated  as  when  united.  In  exercise  of  the  new  authority  thus  vested 
in  himself,  Penn  nominated  a  council  of  state^  to  consult  with  and  assist 
the  governor  or  his  deputy,  and  to  administer  his  functions  in  case  of  his 
death  or  absence.  The  office  of  deputy-governor  ^  he  bestowed  on  Colonpl 
Andrew  Hamilton,  who  had  formerly  been  governor  of  New  Jersey. 

One  of  the  latest  acts  which  Penn  performed  before  his  final  departure 
from  America,  the  incorporation,  by  charter,  of  the  city  of  Philadelpliia, 
has  been  justly  charged  with  great  illiberalitjr ;  though,  according  to  the 
apology  which  his  friends  have  suggested  for  it,  the  blame  must  be  divided 
between  himself  and  others.  By  this  charter  he  nominated  the  first  mayor, 
recorder,  aldermen,  and  common  councilmen  of  the  city  ;  and,  among  other 
privileges  and  franchises,  empowered  them  to  elect  their  successors  in 
office,  and  even  to  increase  their  own  number  according  to  their  own  dis- 
cretion. The  city  lands  were  granted  to  them,  under  the  title  of  the  Mayor 
and  Commonalty  of  the  City  of  Philadelphia  ;  but  the  commonalty  had  no 
share  in  the  government  or  estate  of  tlie  city ;  the  civic  functionaries  be- 
ing self-elective,  and  not  accountable  to  their  fellow-citizens  in  any  respect. 
It  has  been  asserted,  that  this  municipal  constitution,  which  was  copied 
from  the  charter  of  the  town  of  Bristol,  in  England,  was  conceded  by 
Penn  to  the  desires  of  certain  of  his  colonists  who  were  natives  of  that 
place  ;  and  it  is  admitted  that  the  functionaries  whom  he  himself  appointed 
were  men  of  talent  and  integrity.  But  the  possession  of  power,  divested 
of  control  and  responsibility,  produced  its  usual  effect  on  this  corporate 
society;  and  the  abuses  engendered  by  its  administration  were,  from  a 
very  early  period,  a  theme  of  continual  discontent  and  complaint  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  city  and  the  provincial  assembly.  Having  concluded 
these  transactions,  and  once  more  renewed  the  engagements  of  peace  and 
good-will  with  the  Indians,  Penn  addressed  to  his  people  a  farewell  couched 
in  friendly  and  benevolent  terms,  but  far  less  tender  and  affectionate  than 
his  former  valediction  ;  and,  embarking  with  his  family,  returned  to  Eng- 
land.«  [October  31,  1701.] 

»  No  mention  ii  made  of  the  ni^nl  confirmation  of  this  appointment,  which  is  expressly  re- 
ferred  to  in  the  appointment  of  Lvnns,  the  8iicr<«':si>r  of  Hamilton.  Br  an  act  of  parliament, 
already  noticed  in  the  hintnry  nf  !VT>!rv!and^  H  ^vns  re'^uisite  now  that  s\\  ths  s^tin**  "ovi^rnors 
:n  the  proprietary  jiiriHdintion  »lionld  lie  approved  by  tne  king. 

»  Proud.     Winterbothnm.    Dillwyn,  npud  eundem.    Clarkion. 


CHAP,  II.] 


PENNS  FINAL  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND. 


643 


The  only  reason  that  Penn  assigned  to  the  colonists  for  this  second  de- 
parture was  the  intelligence  he  had  received  of  a  project  of  the  English 
court  to  abolish  all  the  proprietary  jurisdictions  in  North  America,  and  the 
expediency  of  his  own   appearance  in  England  to  oppose  a  scheme  so 
derogatory  to  his  interest ;  but  as  he  found,  on  his  arrival  in  this  country, 
that  the  measure  had  been  abandoned,  and  yet  never  again  returned  to 
America,  it  seems  very  unlikely  that  this  was  the  sole  or  even  the  main 
reason  for  his  conduct.     The  disagreements  between  himself  and  his  col- 
onists had  rendered  their  intercourse  far  less  satisfactory  than  he  could  have 
desired,  and  had  mduced  hini  to  supply  the  inadequacy  of  his  own  personal 
influence  by  a  large  addition  to  his  political  power ;  and  from  the  numer- 
ous demands  of  the  British  government  for  contributions  in  aid  of  military 
purposes,  it  was  manifest  that  this  power  must  be  frequently  exerted  for 
tlie  attainment  of  objects,  which,  as  a  professor  of  Quakerism,  he  could 
pursue  with  more  decency  and  more  firmness  by  the  intervention  of  a  dep- 
uty than  by  his   own    personal   agency.      The   disagreeable  tidings  that 
pursued  him  from  America  must  have  increased  his   aversion  to  return 
thither  ;  and  the  favor  he  enjoyed  with  Queen  Anne,  on  her  accession  to 
the  throne  [January,  1702],  perhaps  reawakened  the  views  and  hopes  that 
had  led  him  once  before  to  prefer  the  courtly  shades  of  Kensington  to  the 
wild  woods  of  Pennsylvania.     His  attendance  at  court,  however,  was  soon 
interrupted  by   the  perplexity  and  embarrassment  of  his   private   affairs 
(arising  from  the  fraud  of  his  steward),  which  compelled  him  to  mortgage 
his  American  territory  ;  and  the  same  cause,  uniting  with  increased  dissen- 
sions between  him  and  the  colonists,  induced  him  subsequently  to  treat  with 
the  British  government  for  a  sale  of  his  proprietary  functions.*     The  com- 
pletion of  the  bargain,  however,  was  suspended  by  his  sickness,  and  in- 
tercepted by  his  death,  which  transmitted  the  proprietary  government  to  his 
descendants,    by  whom   it  was  enjoyed  till  the  period  of  the  American 
Revolution. 

Penn  had  scarcely  quitted  America  when  the  disputes  between  the 
province  and  the  territories  broke  forth  with  greater  bitterness  than  before. 
The  Delaware  representatives  protested  against  the  charter;  and,  refusing 
to  sit  in  the  same  assembly  with  the  Pennsylvanians,  chose  a  separate 
place  of  meeting  for  themselves  in  Philadelphia.  After  continuing  for  some 
time  to  indulge  their  jealous  humor,  and  to  enjoy  whatever  satisfaction  they 
could  derive  from  separate  legislation,  they  were  persuaded  by  the  suc- 
cessor of  Hamilton,  Governor  Evans  (who  was  much  more  agreeable  to 
them  than  to  the  people  of  Pennsylvania),  to  demonstrate  a  more  reasonable 
temper  [1703'^],  and  to  propose  a  reunion  with  the  Pennsylvania  assembly. 

•  He  demanded  as  the  price  of  this  surrender  twenty  thousand  poundi,  but  agreed  to  accoDt 
twelve  thousand  pounds.  r  i  e  «      i»» 

*  This  year  (if  we  may  believe  the  representation  of  Colonel  Quarry)  was  remarkably  pro- 
ductive of  crime  in  Pennsylvania.  In  Quarry's  Memorinl  to  tht  Lords  of  Trade,  it  is  stated 
that  the  iail  of  Philadelphia  was  then  crowdetl  with  felons,  and  that  justice  was  greatly  ob- 
structed by  the  refusal  of  Quaker  judges,  jurymen,  and  witnesses  to  take  an  oath;  insomuch, 
that  at  a  recent  sessions,  where  many  guilty  persons  were  indicted,  only  one  murderer  was 
convicted,  and  "  all  Quakers  and  others  for  rapes  and  less  crimes  were  discharired."  Quarry's 
Memorial,  in  the  British  Museum.  ' 

From  the  Joumai  of  Thomas  Chalkeley,  the  Quaker,  it  appears  that  some  of  his  fellow- 
sectaries  in  1  ennsylvonia  were  not  exempt  from  occasional  lapses  into  very  immoral  and  dis 
orderly  conduct.    "  It  is  worthy  of  commendation,"  ho  reports.  "  'hat  ~" 


.,     j'  .   -      .-- -.-•'  ~:  "" -..««..«..,    ..V  I <.:pui u.     -imi  our  governor,  Thoriihs 

L.loyd,  sometimes,  in  the  evening,  before  he  went  to  rest,  usea  to  go  m  person  to  public  houses, 
sr.«  ofue.' iiie  people  no  found  there  to  their  own  houses,  liii  ai  tength  ho  was  instrumentai  to 
promote  better  order,  and  did  in  a  great  measure  suppress  vice  and  immorality  in  the  city." 


1544 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


But  this  body,  provoked  and  disgusted  at  the  refractory  spirit  which  the 
Delaware  representatives  had  already  displayed,  now  refused  to  entertain 
their  overtures  of  reconciliation.  The  breach  thus  became  irreparable  • 
and  in  the  following  year  [1704]  the  separate  legislature  of  Delaware  was 
permanently  established  at  Newcastle.  In  addition  to  the  tidings  of  these 
prolonged  disagreements  and  final  rupture  between  the  two  setdenients, 
JPenn  was  harassed  by  complaints  against  the  government  of  Evans,  whose 
exertions  to  promote  a  militia,  though  they  rendered  him  popular  in  Dela- 
ware, made  him  odious  in  Pennsylvania.  Deriding  the  pacific  scruples  of 
the  Quakers,  Evans  falsely  proclaimed  the  approach  of  a  hostile  invasion, 
and  invited  all  who  wer?  willing  to  defend  their  liberty  and  property  to  take 
arms  against  the  enemy.  A  few  individuals,  and,  among  these,  four  Qua- 
kers, duped  by  this  stratagem,  flew  to  arms,  and  prepared  to  repel  the 
threatened  attack.  But  the  chief  effect  of  the  proclamation  was  to  cause 
many  persons  to  bury  their  plate  and  money,  and  to  fly  from  their  homes  ; 
and  the  detection  of  the  falsehood  was  followed  by  an  impeachment  of  the 
governor,  and  of  Logan,  the  secretary  of  the  province,  who,  though  inno- 
cent of  accession  to  the  fraud,  made  himself  suspected  by  endeavouring  to 
palliate  the  guilt  of  it.  Penn,  however,  supported  these  accused  officers, 
and  thereby  increased  the  displeasure  that  was  gathering  among  his  people 
against  himself.  He  was  now  little  disposed  to  consider  with  indulgence 
the  conduct  of  the  inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania  ;  who,  no  longer  engrossed 
with  the  interest  of  the  discussions  they  had  maintained  with  the  people 
of  Delaware,  but  perhaps  animated  by  the  temper  which  such  discussions 
commonly  imply  or  produce,  began  widi  very  dissatisfied  spirit  narrowly  to 
inquire  into  the  whole  course  of  tlieir  proprietary's  policy  with  respect  to 
themselves. 

The  assembly  of  Pennsylvania  not  only  assailed  him  with  repeated  de- 
mands, that  the  quitrents,  which  he  deemed  his  own  private  estate,  should 
be  appropriated  to  the  support  of  the  provincial  government,*  but  trans- 
mitted to  him  a  remonstrance,  entitled  Heads  of  Complaint,  in  which  they 
alleged  that  it  was  by  his  artifices  that  the  constitution  of  the  province  had 
been  subjected  to  so  many  successive  alterations  ;  that  he  had  violated  his 
original  compact  by  the  recent  enlargement  of  his  authority  so  far  beyond 
the  limits  within  which  he  at  first  engaged  to  confine  it ;  and  that  he  had 
received  large  sums  of  money,  during  his  last  visit  to  the  province,  in  return 
for  benefits  which  he  promised  to  procure,  but  had  never  yet  obtained,  for 
the  people  from  the  English  government.  They  censured  the  original  an- 
nexation of  Delaware  to  Pennsylvania  ;  reminding  him  that  his  title  to  the 
government  of  Delaware,  not  having  been  founded  on  a  royal  grant,  was 
from  the  first  extremely  precarious  ;  and  lamenting  with  great  grief  that  the 
privileges  granted  to  the  Pennsylvanians  by  his  first  charters  were  exposod 
to  perish  with  the  baseless  fabric  of  the  Delaware  institutions  wherewith 
he  had  associated  them.     Numerous  extortions  of  his  officers  were  at  the 

■  "  Pcnn's  first  purchnacR  of  land  from  the  Indians,"  says  Belknap,  "  were  mnde  at  his  own 
(ixpense ;  and  ihe  goods  delivered  on  these  occasions  went  by  the  name  of  prfsents.  In 
course  of  time,  when  a  treaty  and  a  purchase  went  on  together,  tho  governor  and  his  siiccos 
sors  made  the  speeches,  and  the  assembly  were  at  tho  expense  of  the  presents.  When  one 
paid  the  cost,  and  the  other  enjoyed  the  profit,  u  subject  of  altercation  arose  between  the  pro- 
prietary and  the  popular  interests,  which  other  causes  contributed  to  incr«aso  and  inflsme." 
American  Biography.  From  the  work  of  Proud  it  appears,  that,  lon^  before  Penn's  death,  th» 
payments  which  the  Indians  were  continually  receiving  were  deriKodfrom  assessinonts  in- 
poficd  by  iba  piovinciai  aaB<uiibiy  on  their  constituents. 


CHAP.  11] 


COMPLAINTS  AGAINST  PENN. 


546 


same  time  complained  of;  and  these  were  attributed  to  his  refusal,  in  the 
year  1701,  to  affirm  a  bill  that  had  been  framed  by  the  assembly  for  the 
regulation  of  official  fees.  Probably  some  of  the  foregoing  complaints 
were  founded  in  misapprehension,  or  suggested  by  factious  malignity  ;  and, 
doubtless,  the  discontent,  which  both  on  this  and  other  occasions  was  ex- 
pressed towards  the  proprietary,  owed  in  some  degree  its  origin  to  the 
peculiar  relation  which  he  held  to  the  members  of  his  own  religious  society 
in  the  province.  These  persons  had  always  regarded  the  civil  and  polit- 
ical institutions  of  Pennsylvania  as  subordinate  to  the  establishment  and 
patronage  of  Quakerism  ;  and  expected  a  degree  of  equality  to  result  from 
the  legislation  of  a  Quaker  minister,  which  they  would  never  have  looked 
for  from  a  lawgiver  of  any  other  persuasion.  His  own  assurances,  at  tlie 
beginning,  that,  in  acquiring  the  province,  his  main  purpose  was  to  serve 
the  cause  and  the  people  of  God  (which  they  understood  to  signify  Quaker- 
ism and  the  Quakers),  contributed  to  exaggerate  their  expectations  in  this 
respect. 

Indignant  at  the  charges  levelled  against  himself,  and  prejudiced  by  this 
feehng  against  the  accusers  of  Evans,  Penn  continued  to  support  that 
worthless  functionary,  till  his  conduct  had  gone  far  to  excite  the  peopl^  of 
Delaware  to  actual  hostilities  against  their  Pennsylvanian  neighbours,  in 
prosecution  of  an  unjust  demand  of  a  toll  on  the  navigation  of  the  Delaware, 
which  Evans  suggested  to  them.  Receiving  complaints  of  this,  as  well 
as  of  otlier  instances  of  official  malversation,  on  the  part  oi,  t  .13  deputy-gov- 
ernor, and  having  ascertained,  by  deliberate  examination,  that  they  were  too 
well  founded,  Penn  hesitated  no  longer  to  supersede  Evans,  and  appointed 
in  his  place  Charles  Gookin  [1708],  a  gentleman  of  an  ancient  Irish  family, 
retired  from  the  army,  in  which  he  haH  served  with  repute,  and  who 
seemed  qualified,  by  his  age,  his  experience,  and  the  mildness  of  his  man- 
ners, to  give  satisfaction  to  the  people  over  whom  he  was  sent  to  preside. 
Gookin  carried  with  him  an  affectionate  letter  from  Penn  to  the  assembly, 
in  which  their  recent  disagreements  were  passed  over  without  any  other 
notice  or  allusion  than  was  couched  in  an  invocation  for  his  people,  as 
well  as  himself,  of  that  humiHty  with  which  men  ought-  to  remember  their 
own  imperfections,  and  that  charity  which  they  ought  to  extend  to  the  in- 
firmities of  others.  But  the  assembly  proved  far  less  placable  and  indul- 
gent than  he  expected.  [1709.]  While  they  congratulated  Gookin  on  his 
arrival,  they  reproduced  in  their  address  every  murmur  and  complaint  that 
they  had  ever  before  expressed.  Their  ilMiumor  was  augmented  by  the 
number  of  applications  which  Gookin  was  from  time  to  time  constrained 
to  make,  in  the  queen's  name,  for  contributions  in  aid  of  the  various  military 
operations  that  related  more  immediately  to  the  American  colonies.  To  all 
these  applications  the  assembly  invariably  answered  that  their  religious  prin- 
ciples would  not  suffer  them  to  contribute  to  the  support  of  war  ;  but,  with 
mechanical  regularity,  they  voted  the  sums  that  were  demanded,  as  presents 
to  the  queen. 

Finding  his  people  more  estranged  from  him  and  more  obduratfe  to  his 
overtures  of  conciliation  than  he  had  been  willing  to  believe,  Penn,  now  in 
his  sixty-sixth  year,  for  the  last  time  addressed  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly, 
in  a  letter  whereof  the  reproachful  tenor  was  moderated  by  a  tone  of  calm 
solemnity  and  dignified  concern.  [April  29, 1710.)     It  was  a  mournful  con- 

„(,.r:s .;?„„,,   i„  iiiuij  lie   suiu,    lUal  i:x:   v-raa  iurv;uu,  uy    uiu  iil   Usugc  uuu  Uia* 
VOL.    I.  69  TT* 


546 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  vn. 


appointment  which  had  fallen  to  his  share  in  this  life,  to  speak  to  the  people 
of  that  province  in  a  language  he  once  hoped  never  to  have  occasion  to 
employ.  In  a  strain  of  serious  remonstrance,  he  appealed  to  them,  if,  at 
the  expense  of  his  own  fortune  and  personal  exertions,  he  had  not  con- 
ducted them  into  a  land  where  prosperity  and  liberty,  far  beyond  the  com- 
mon  lot  of  mankind,  had  been  made  their  portion  ;  and  if  this  work  of  his 
hands  had  yielded  him  aught  else  than  the  sorrow,  disquiet,  and  poverty,  that 
now  pressed  heavily  on  his  old  age.^  "  I  must  desire  you  all,"  he  proceed- 
ed, "  in  a  serious  and  true  veightiness  of  mind,  to  consider  what  you  are 
or  have  been  doing  ;  why  matters  must  be  carried  on  with  these  divisions 
and  contentions  ;  and  what  real  causes  have  been  given  on  my  side  for 
that  opposition  to  me  and  my  interest  which  I  have  met  with,  as  if  I  xoere 
an  enemy ^  and  not  a  friend,  after  all  I  have  done.  I  am  sure  I  know  not 
of  any  cause  whatsoever.  Were  I  sensible  you  really  wanted  any  thing 
of  me,  in  the  relation  between  us,  that  would  make  you  happier,  I  should 
readily  grant  it,  if  any  reasonable  man  would  say  it  were  fit  for  you  to 
demand."  He  recapitulated,  with  minute  deduction,  the  various  alterations 
that  the  constitution  of  the  province  had  undergone,  and  endeavoured  to  show 
tha^  every  one  arose  out  of  inconveniences  of  which  all  were  sensible  at 
the  time,  and  which  all  had  willingly  united  in  thus  correcting.  It  was  right, 
he  contended,  that  the  proprietary,  who  was  personally  responsible  to  th^ 
crown  for  an  administration  conformable  to  the  royal  charter,  should  be 
vested  exclusively  with  the  executive  power.  He  could  liO  longer,  he  pro- 
tested, impute  the  treatment  he  met  with  to  honest  misconception  ;  seeing 
that  he  had  such  injuries  to  complain  of  as  repeated  attacks  on  his  reputa- 
tion, —  numerous  indignities  offered  to  him  in  writings  sent  to  England  by 
the  hands  of  men  who  could  not  be  expected  to  make  the  most  discreet  or 
charitable  use  of  them,  —  insinuations  against  his  integrity,  —  attempts  upon 
his  estate,  —  and  disfavor  shown  to  individuals  (particularly  Logan,  the  sec- 
retary of  the  province)  on  account  of  their  reputed  attachment  to  him. 
*'  I  cannot  but  mourn,"  he  added,  "  the  unhappiness  of  my  portion  dealt 
to  me  from  those  of  whom  I  had  reason  to  expect  much  better  and  different 
things  ;  nor  can  I  but  lament  the  unhappiness  that  too  many^  are  bringing 
on  themselves,  who,  instead  of  pursuing  the  amicable  ways  of  peace, 
love,  and  unity,  which  I  at  first  hoped  to  find  in  that  retirement,  are  cher- 
ishing a  spirit  of  contention  and  opposition,  and,  blind  to  their  own  interest, 
are  oversetting  that  foundation  on  which  your  happiness  might  be  built. 
Friends  !  the  eyes  of  many  are  upon  you  ;  the  people  of  many  nations  of 
Europe  look  on  that  country  as  a  land  of  ease  and  quiet,  wishing  to  them- 
selves in  vain  the  same  blessings  they  conceive  you  may  enjoy  ;  but  to  see 
tlie  use  you  make  of  them  is  no  less  the  cause  of  surprise."  He  con- 
cluded by  declaring  that  the  opposition  he  had  encountered  from  the  peo- 
ple of  Pennsylvania  now  compelled  him  to  consider  more  closely  his  own 
private  and  declining  circumstances  in  relation  to  this  province.  He  was 
willing  to  continue  his  kindness  to  them,  if  they  should  think  him  deserving 
of  recifjrocal  regard.  If  it  should  be  otherwise  deemed  by  a  majority  of 
them,  let  them  say  so  at  once ;  and  he  would  know  what  he  had  to  rely  on. 

'  Notwithstanding  this  desponding  strain,  it  is  manifest,  from  Penn's  competition  with  I^cke 
for  the  praise  of  superior  leeislation  (see  a  note  to  Booii  HI.,  ante),  that  he  was  by  no  tneani 
insensible  to  the  imperishable  fame  assured  to  him  as  the  founder  of  Pennsylvania.  The  ser- 
vices of  Penn  were  not  only  more  liberally  remunerated,  but  more  gratefully  remomberod 
by  ilia  p«opin,  tiian  were  tiiose  of  Lord  Bulliniore  by  the  coluniiits  of  Mary  laud. 


CHAP.  II.]  CIVIL  CONDITION  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  AND  DELAWARE.    547 

And  yet  he  would  hope  that  God  might  so  direct  them,  by  the  impartment 
of  heavenly  wisdom  and  holy  fear,  that  "  we  may  once  more  meet  good 
friends,  and  live  so  to  the  end." 

This  touching  and  forcible  appeal  was  not  fruitlessly  addressed  to  the 
people  of  Pennsylvania.  On  all  the  more  generous  and  considerate  spirits 
m  the  assembly  it  prevailed  with  an  efficacy  at  once  instantaneous,  profound, 
and  enduring.  Awaking  to  impressions  of  which  faction  had  suspended 
the  enjoyment  without  efikcing  the  relish,  they  were  touched  with  a  tender 
remembrance  of  Penn's  long  labors  and  venerable  age ;  they  began  to 
cherish  a  filial  devotion  to  the  father  of  his  country  ;  to  excuse  his  frailties 
with  a  kind  indulgence  ;  and  to  appreciate,  with  noble  elation,  their  own 
interest  in  his  distinguished  fame.  This  revolution  of  sentiment  was  rapidly 
propagated  throughout  the  province  ;  and  its  effect  was  apparent  at  the 
next  annual  election,  when  not  one  of  the  persons  who  had  signaHzed 
themselves  by  their  enmity  to  Penn,  and  encouraged  the  rest  of  their  coun- 
trymen to  think  unfavorably  of  him,  was  elected  a  member  of  the  provincial 
assembly.  [Oct.,  1710.]  But  it  b  more  than  doubtful  if  this  gratifying 
proof  of  restored  confidence  and  regard  was  ever  known  to  its  illustrious 
object,  who  was  attacked  shortly  after  by  a  succession  of  apoplectic  fits, 
which,  suspending  almost  entirely  the  exercise  of  his  memory  and  under- 
standing, prevented  him  alike  from  completing  an  arrangement  he  had  made 
with  the  crown  for  the  sale  of  his  proprietary  ights,  and  from  receiving  the 
intelligence  that  might  have  induced  him  to  consider  such  an  arrangement 
unnece  sary.* 

Little  remains  to  be  added  to  the  view  that  has  already  been  exhibited 
of  the  condition  and  institutions  of  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware,  at  the 
close  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Pennsylvania  retained  the  constitution 
defined  by  Penn's  last  charter,  in  1701,  till  the  era  of  American  inde- 
pendence ;  and  Delaware  continued  to  enjoy  its  own  assembly,  and  to  be 
subject  to  the  executive  administration  of  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  till 
the  year  1755,  when  it  was  formally  erected  into  a  separate  State,  and  en- 
dowed with  a  separate  government.  No  fixed  salary  was  allotted  to  the 
governor  of  Pennsylvania  ;  but  sums  of  money  were  voted  to  him,  from 
tune  to  time,  to  defray  the  expenses  of  his  government ;  and  the  amount 
of  these  sums  was  proportioned  to  the  favor  he  enjoyed  with  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  people.  In  the  assembly  which  was  held  by  Penn  at  New- 
castle, in  the  close  of  the  year  1700,  the  remuneration  allotted  to  the  mem- 
bers consisted  of  six  shillings  a  day  for  attendance,  and  threepence  per  mile 
for  travelling  charges.  The  speaker's  daily  allowance  was  ten  shillings. 
The  meeting  of  the  assembly  was  indicated  by  the  ringing  of  a  bell  ;  and  any 
member  entering  half  an  hour  after  the  appointed  time  was  fined  tenpence. 
The  humane  code  of  criminal  law,  which  we  have  remarked  among  the 
first  fruits  of  Pennsylvania  legislation,  continued  in  force  till  the  year  1705, 
when  it  yvas  abolished  by  Queen  Anne,  as  too  little  consonant  with  the  spirit 
of  English  jurisprudence  ;  but  it  was  soon  after  reestablished  by  the  same 
princess,  at  the  intercession  of  William  Penn.  For  the  prevention  of  law- 
suits, three  functionaries  were  appointed  by  each  county  court  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  who  were  invested  with  the  honorable  title  of  Peacemakers,  and  tho 
blessed  office  of  mediating  between  contending  parties,  and  accommodating 
their  differences  by  friendly  arbitration.     Twice  a  year  an  orptian^s  court 

'  *!r°"'^-  j4J'«'n»o"     Dlllwyn,  rt/»wrf  WinTerbotham.    Oldmixon  (3d  edition).    ClarksoBU 
Sm  Nole  XXX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


548 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


was  held  in  every  county  for  the  inspection  and  regulation  of  the  affairs 
of  widows  and  orphans.' 

Ahhough  Quakerism  continued  long  to  be  the  most  prevalent  religious 
persuasion  in  Pennsylvania,  yet  from  a  very  early  period  the  province  had 
mvited  and  gained  the  resort  of  Christian  professors  of  various  other  denom- 
inations  ;  and  an  ecclesiastical  edifice  was  already  built  in  Philadelphia  for 
the  reception  of  a  congregation  of  seven  hundred  persons  attached  to  the 
tenets  and  ritual  of  the  church  of  England.  Some  displeasure  was  mani- 
fested by  the  Quakers  at  the  fijrst  proposal  of  this  Episcopal  party  to  erect 
an  organ  in  their  church.  In  the  years  1698,  1706,  1709,  and  1711,  the 
population  of  Pennsylvauia  was  augmented  by  successive  emigrations  sup- 
plied by  the  sect  of  Mennonists  in  Germany  and  Flanders.  These  relig. 
ionists,  derived  from  the  parent  society  of  Anabaptists,  resembled  the  Qua- 
kers in  renouncing  oaths  and  arms,  and  suffered,  as  the  Quakers  had  once 
done,  for  the  reproach  which  the  frenzy  of  their  sectarian  parents  had 
brought  upon  their  tenets.  Apprized  of  the  circumstances  of  these  people, 
Penn  conveyed  to  them  information  of  the  liberal  institutions  that  were 
(?stablished  in  his  proprietary  domains  ;  and  considerable  numbers  of  them, 
partly  for  the  sake  of  religious  liberty,  and  partly  with  the  hope  of  temporal 
advantage,  transported  themselves  from  Europe  to  Pennsylvania.  The 
Episcopalians,  and  most  of  the  other  colonists  who  were  not  professors  of 
(Quakerism,  made  frequent  propositions  for  the  establishment  of  a  militia  ; 
but  the  Quakers  steadily  refused  to  sanction  such  a  proceeding  by  an  act 
of  the  provincial  government ;  though  all  who  deemed  the  use  of  arms 
lawful  were  permitted  to  train  themselves,  and  to  adopt  every  military  pre- 
caution for  their  defence  that  was  not  inconsistent  with  peace  and  good  or- 
der in  the  province.'^  Most  of  the  offices  of  government  were  filled  by 
Quakers  ;  and  neither  the  conduct  of  forensic  controversy,  nor  the  admin- 
istration of  judicial  power,  was  deemed  incompatible  with  their  religious 
profession.'  Though  they  disapproved  of  oaths,  the  Quaker  judges  seem 
never  to  have  hesitated  to  administer  them  to  those  witnesses  who  did  not 
partake  their  scruples.  So  early  as  the  year  1686,  a  printing-press  was 
established  at  Philadelphia  ;  and  an  almanac,  for  the  following  year,  v-as 
printed  at  this  press  by  Bradford.* 

When  the  Swedish  colonists  first  occupied  Delaware,  they  found  the 
country  infested  with  wolves,  whose  ferocity  was  soon  after  inflamed  to 
an  extraordinary  pitch  by  the  mortality  which  the  small-pox  occasioned 
among  the  Indians,  and  the  increased  quantity  of  prey  derived  from  the 
unburied  corpses  of  the  victims  of  this  pestilence.  Both  in  Pennsylvania 
and  Delaware,  bounties  continued  to  be  paid  for  the  destruction  of  wolves 
so  late  as  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.*  ' 

*■  Warden.  Clarkson.  Oldmixon.  Similar  to  the  institution  of  the  Pcnnsylvanian  Peace- 
makers  was  the  Tribunal  of  Conciliation  established  in  Denmark,  and  described  by  Cattcau 
in  his  Tableau  des  Elats  Danois. 

•  Oldmixon.     Proud. 

'  In  the  case  of  Kinsey,  a  Quaker  lawyer  (afterwards  attorney-general  and  finally  chief- 
justice  of  Pennsylvania),  it  was  determined,  after  solemn  debate,  by  the  provincial  govern- 
ment, that  Quaker  lawyers  should  not  be  obli|cd  to  uncover  their  heads  in  addressmz  the 
judges.  Proud.  Lord  Fountainhnll,  a  Scottish  judge,  in  his  published  report  of  a  legal  decis- 
ion pronounced  by  himself  and  his  brethren,  observes,  that  one  of  the  parties  in  the  case 
was  the  celebrated  Robert  Barclay  of  Urie,  who  pleaded  in  person  for  himself,  and  proved 
the  victorious  litigant.  On  this  occasion  (says  Lord  F.),  Mr.  Barclay  stood  within  the  bar 
with  his  hat  off,  •'  and  gave  to  the  president  the  compellation  of  Mij  Lord."  Yet  tliis  wa» 
the  sSiBc  iisan  who,  had  pcraiiibiilaicd  Aberdeen  in  iackc.oth  and  ashes. 

•  Thomas's  History  of  Printing  in  .America. 

•  Kolnx'a  TraveU  m  J^ortb  Ammcn^ 


CHAP.  11] 


DOMESTIC  STATE  OF  PENNSYLVANIA. 


549 


The  province  and  the  territories,  but  especially  the  former,  enjoyed  from 
an  early  period  a  thriving  trade  with  the  parent  state,  with  the  southern 
English  colonies  in  America,  and  with  the  British  West  India  settlements. 
Their  exports  consisted  of  corn,  beef,  pork,  fish,  pipe-staves,  hides,  tallow, 
and  wool,  to  the  West  Indies  ;  horses  and  other  live  cattle  to  the  southern 
plantations  ;  and  peltry  to  England.  Their  direct  trade  with  England 
was  afterwards  increased  by  the  cultivation  of  tobacco,  which  was  com- 
menced under  Blackwell's  administration,  and  so  rapidly  extended,  that,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  fourteen  ships  sailed  annually  with 
cargoes  of  that  commodity  from  Pennsylvania.  Their  expoits,  however, 
were  abridged  in  the  year  1699  by  an  act  of  parliament  (already  noticed  in 
the  history  of  New  Jersey)  which  prohibited  the  exportation  of  wool, 
whether  raw  or  manufactured,  from  the  American  colonies.  The  prov- 
ince, at  the  same  time,  imported  the  produce  of  various  English  manufac- 
tures to  the  value  of  about  eighteen  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and  yielded 
a  revenue  of  three  thousand  pounds  to  the  customs  of  the  crown.  The 
consumption  of  English  manufactures  would  probably  have  been  larger, 
but  that  the  German  colonists  imported  with  them  into  Pennsylvania  the 
manufactures  of  paper,  linen,  and  woollen  cloth. ^ 

According  to  Oldmixon,  whose  history  was  first  published  in  1708,  the 
total  number  of  inhabitants  within  the  domains  of  William  Penn  then 
amounted  to  thirty  five  thousand  ;  a  computation  which  the  author  him- 
self terms  a  modest  one,  and  which,  as  it  included  Indians  and  negroes, 
was  probably  short  of  the  truth.  The  town  of  Philadelphia,  in  1696,  con- 
tained more  than  a  thousand  houses,  most  of  which  are  described  as  sub- 
stantial structures  of  brick ;  and  Newcastle,  the  metropolis  of  Delaware,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  possessed  two  thousand  five  hundred 
inhabitants.*'  For  many  years  after  its  first  occupation  J)y  the  English,  Penn- 
sylvania continued  to  witness  a  rapid  growth  of  its  people,  not  only  from  a 
constant  resort  of  emigrants,  whom  its  attractions  invhed  from  all  parts  of 
Europe,  but  from  a  native  increase  more  vigorous  than  any  other  society, 
since  the  infancy  of  the  world,  has  ever  exhibited.  Gabriel  Thomas,  who 
published  his  account  of  this  province  in  1696,  affirms  that  barrenness  among 
women  wds  unknown  in  Pennsylvania,  and  their  celibacy,  after  twenty 
years  of  age,  a  very  rare  occurrence  ;  and  that  it  was  impossible  to  meet 
a  young  married  woman  there  who  had  not  a  child  in  her  body  or  one 
in  her  arms.  The  children  born  in  the  province  he  describes  as  in  general 
"  better-natured,  milder,  and  more  tender-hearted  than  those  born  in  Eng- 
land.'] ^  The  fertility  of  the  soil,  the  general  healthiness  of  the  climate 
(notwithstanding  the  severe  epidemics  occasionally  prevalent  at  Philadel- 
phia), the  liberal  reward  of  labor,  and  the  moral,  frugal,  and  industrious 
habits,  promoted  by  the  powerful  example  of  the  Quakers,  contributed  to 
the  production  of  this  large  increase,  and  rendered  Pennsylvania  distin- 
guished, even  among  the  North  American  communities,  as  a  scene  of  hap- 
piness and  virtue.  The  manners  of  a  numerous  portion  of  the  first  race 
of  Quaker  settlers,  and  of  their  immediate  descendants,  have  been  cited  as 

'G.Thomas.  Oldmixon.  Penn,  apud  eundem.  In  the  De^tripf.io  PennsylvanicB  of  Thomaa 
Makin,  the  Pennsylvania  farmer  is  represented  as  deriving  both  his  food  and  raiment  from 
the  produce  of  his  own  possessions  :  — 

"  Esurient,  dulces  epulas  depromit  inemptas, 
Et  proprio  vestis  vellere  texta  placet." 
'  Oldmixon.     G.  Thomas.  s  q  Thomas. 


650 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[BOOK  VII. 


a  remarkable  exemplification  of  courteous  benevolence,  corresponding  to  the 
))urpose  with  which  their  migration  to  America  was  undertaken,  —  of  facili- 
tating  the  enjoyment  of  that  affectionate  intercourse  which  their  sectarian 
tenets  peculiarly  enjoined.  Some  of  the  leading  persons  among  the  ear- 
liest Quaker  settlers  were  men  who  traced  their  lineage  to  the  stock  of  the 
most  ancient  nobility  of  England,  and  in  whom  a  sense  of  ancestral  distinc- 
tion was  so  tempered  with  the  meekness  of  genuine  Quakerism,  as  to  im- 
part  only  a  patriarchal  dignity  to  their  deportment.  Their  hospitality,  in 
particular,  was  conducted  with  a  grace  and  simplicity  entirely  patriarchal.' 
The  people  of  Delaware  appear  to  have  been,  in  general,  a  less  refined  and 
enterprising,  but  not  a  less  virtuous  race.  Penn  himself  has  celebrated  the 
good  morals  and  sobriety  of  demeanour  of  the  Swedish  and  Dutch  agri- 
culturists. The  Swedish  church  at  Wilmington  is  reputed  one  of  the  oldest 
churches  in  North  America.^ 

Among  the  first  race  of  Pennsylvanian  settlers  were  various  persons 
whose  attainments  in  science  and  literature  would  have  entitled  them  to  an 
honorable  distinction  in  the  most  refined  and  enlightened  societies.  James 
Logan,  a  Quaker,  and  secretary  of  the  province,  was  the  correspondent 
of  the  most  illustrious  scholars  and  philosophers  in  Europe  ;  and  several 
of  his  works,  written  in  the  Latin  tongue  (particularly  a  treatise  on  the 
generation  of  plants,  and  another  on  the  properties  of  light),  were  pub* 
lished  with  much  applause  at  Leyden.  He  enriched  Philadelphia  with  a 
valuable  library  ;  and,  in  his  old  age,  composed  an  admirable  translation 
of  Cicero's  treatise  De  Setiectute,  which  was  afterwards  printed  with  an 
encomiastic  preface  by  Dr.  Franklin.  Thomas  Makin,  another  Quaker,  and 
one  of  the  earliest  settlers  in  Pennsylvania,  produced,  in  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  a  descriptive  and  historical  account  of  the  prov- 
ince, in  a  Latin  poQjn,  entitled  Descriptio  Pennsylvanicc,^  exhibiting,  with 
great  force  of  thought  and  beauty  of  language,  one  of  the  most  delightful 
pictures  of  national  virtue  and  happiness  that  have  ever  invited  the  admira- 
tion of  mankind. 

'  Warden.  Gait's  Life  uf  West.  "  In  tlio  houses  of  the  principal  funiilies,  the  patricians  of 
the  country,"  says  Mr.  Gait,  "  unlimited  hospitality  formed  a  part  of  their  regular  economy. 
It  was  the  custom  among  those  who  resided  near  the  highways,  afler  supper  and  the  last  re- 
ligious exercises  of  the  evening,  to  make  a  large  fire  in  the  liall,  and  to  set  out  a  table  with 
refceshments  for  such  travellers  as  might  have  occasion  to  pass  during  the  night;  and  when 
the  families  assembled  in  the  morning,  they  seldom  found  that  their  tables  had  been  un- 
visited." 

*  Winterbotham. 

^  Proud.  The  original  portrait  of  Makin  bears  some  resemblance  to  the  later  and  fanciful 
representation  of  the  bard  of  Wyoming,  who  reports  of  his  favorite  Pennsylvanian  settlement, 
that  it  long  was  ignorant  of  both  war  and  crime,  except  from  the  testimony  of  European 
"itory,  — 

"  For  here  the  exile  mot  from  every  clime. 

And  spoke  in  friendship  every  distant  tongue."  —  Campbell. 


APPENDIX    I. 


State  and  Proapectg  of  the  North  American  Provinces  at  the  Close  of  the  Serenteenth 
Century.  —  Sentiments  and  Opinions  of  the  Colonists  respecting  the  Sovereignty  and  the 
Policy  of  Great  Britain,  &c. 

At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  British  settlements  in  North 
America  contained  a  population  of  more  than  three  hundred  thousand  per- 
sons, distributed  among  the  various  colonial  establishments  whose  origin 
and  early  progress  have  engaged  our  attention.!  The  formation  of  these 
colonies  is  by  far  the  most  interesting  event  of  that  memorable  age.** 

"  Speculative  reasoners  during  that  age,"  says  a  great  historian,  "  raised 
many  objections  to  the  planting  of  those  remote  colonies,  and  foretold,  that, 
after  draining  their  mother  country  of  inhabitants,  they  would  soon  shake 
off  her  yoke,  and  erect  an  independent  government  in  America  ;  but  time 
has  shown  that  the  views  entertained  by  those  who  encouraged  such  gen- 
erous undertakings  were  more  just  and  solid.  A  mild  government,  and 
great  naval  force,  have  preserved,  and  may  slill  preserve,  during  some  time, 
the  dominion  of  England  over  her  colonies.  And  such  advantages  have 
commerce  and  navigation  reaped  from  these  establishments,  tliat  more  than 
a  fourth  of  the  English  shipping  is  at  present  computed  to  be  employed  in 
carrying  on  the  traffic  with  the  American  settlements."^  The  apprehen- 
sions of  depopulation  to  which  this  author  has  adverted  are  considered  at 
greater  length  in  the  prior  work  of  Oldmixon,  who  asserts  that  "  on  this 
argument  are  founded  all  the  reasons  to  excuse  the  ill-usage  the  plantations 
have  met  with "  ;  and  after  combating  the  absurd  and  groundless  alarm, 
appeals  to  the  large  increase  already  derived  to  the  trade  and  the  revenue 
of  England  from  the  colonies,  as  affording  a  juster  and  stronger  reason  for 
repairing  that  ill-usage,  and  introducing  more  liberal  provisions  into  the  Eng- 
lish commercial  code.*  The  apprehensions  of  Afnerican  independence  were- 
no  less  the  object  of  ridicule  to  the  best  informed  writers,  in  the  beginning 
of  that  century  which  was  destined  to  witness  the  American  Revolution.  "  It 
will  be  impossible,"  says  Neal,  "  for  New  England  to  subsist  of  itself /or 

'  From  a  comparison  of  the  calculations  of  various  writers,  each  of  whom  almost  invaria- 
bly contradicts  all  the  others,  and  not  unfrequently  contradicts  himself,  I  am  inclined  to  think 
the  following  estimate  of  the  population  of  tlie  colonies  at  this  period  nearly,  if  not  entirely, 
correct.  Virginia,  60,01)0  ;  Massachusetts  (to  which  Maine  was  then  attached),  between 
70,000  and  80,000 ;  Connecticut,  30,000;  Rhode  Island,  10,000;  New  Hampshire,  10,000; 
Maryland,  30,000  ;  North  and  South  Carolina,  10,000 ;  New  York,  30,000 ;  New  Jersey, 
15,000 ;  and  Pennsylvania,  35,000.  Even  writers  so  accurate  and  sagacious  ns  Dwight  and 
Holmes  have  been  led  to  underrate  the  early  population  of  North  America,  by  relying  too 
far  on  the  estimates  ivhich  the  provincial  governments  furnished  to  the  British  ministry  for  the 
ascertainment  of  the  numbers  of  men  whom  they  were  to  be  required  to  supply  for  the  pur- 
poses of  naval  and  military  expeditions. 

*  See  Note  XXXI.,  at  tne  end  of  the  volume. 
'  Hume's  England. 

*  Oldmixon,  Introduct.  Some  part  of  this  author's  reasoning  seems  to  have  been  derived 
ftom  a  work  of  William  Penn,  entitled  The  Benefit  of  Plantations  or  Colonies.  Oldmixon  refers 
to  another  work,  in  which  the  same  topics  had  been  enforced,  entitled  Groans  of  the  Plan- 
talions,  by  Judge  Littleton  of  Barbadoes.  A  still  more  distinguished  writer  on  the  same  sidu 
of  the  question  was  Sir  Dalby  Thomas,  'n  eminent  merchant,  and  author  of  .4n  Historical  Ac- 
want  of  the  Rise  and  Growth  of  the  West.fndia  Colonies. 


662 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[APP.  I. 


$ome  centuries  of  years  ;  for,  tliough  they  might  maintain  themselves  against 
their  neighbours)  on  the  continent,  they  must  starve  without  a  free  trade 
with  Europe,  the  manufactures  of  the  country  being  very  inconsiderable  ; 
so  that,  if  we  could  suppose  lliem  to  rebel  against  England,  they  must  throw 
themselves  into  the  arms  of  some  other  potentate,  who  would  protect  them 
no  longer  than  he  could  sell  them  with  advantage."  '  So  slightly  were  the 
colonies  conr.ected  with  each  other,  and  so  much  of  mutual  repugnance  wa* 
created  by  religious  and  political  distinctions  between  them,  that  the  prob- 
ability of  their  uniting  together  for  common  defence  against  the  parent  state 
never  occurred  to  this  author.  Nor  will  this  be  deemed  an  impeachment 
of  his  sagacity,  when  we  consider,  that,  seventy  years  afterwards,  the  pros- 
pect, which  had  then  begun  to  dawn,  of  an  effectual  confederacy  of  those 
colonies  against  England,  was  declared  bv  an  eminent  philosophical  histori- 
an to  be  perfectly  delusive  and  chimerical.^ 

If  Hume  had  accurately  examined  the  history  and  condition  of  the  British 
colonies,  or  if  Neal  and  Oldmixon  had  added  to  this  acquirement  the  sagaci- 
ty and  penetration  of  Hume,  it  is  probable  that  he  would  not  have  cited  the 
mildness  of  the  English  government  ^  as  one  of  the  circumstances  that  were 
likely  to  retard  the  independence  of  America,  which  he  perceived  must 
ere  long  ensue  ;  and  that  they  would  have  discerned  in  the  policy  of  the 
English  government  an  influence  strongly  tending  to  counteract  the  princi- 
ples that  separated  the  American  communities  from  each  other,  and. to  unite 
them  by  a  growing  sense  of  common  interest  and  common  injury  in  a  con- 
federacy fatal  to  the  prerogative  of  the  parent  state.     Every  added  year 
tended  no  less  to  weaken  the  divisive  influence  of  the  distinctions  imported 
by  the  original  colonists  into  their  settlements,  than  to  enhance  the  sense  of 
united  interest,  and  to  augment  the  power  by  which  this  interest  might  be 
sustained  and  defended.     The  character  of  generous  undertakings,  which 
Hume  justly  applies  to  those  colonial  establishments,  expresses  a  praise  which 
the  EngUsh  government  had  no  pretension  to  share  with  the  private  individuals 
by  whom  they  were  founded  ;*  and  the  mild  policy,  whether  spontaneous  or 
accidental,  which  permitted  the  liberal  institutions  erected  by  these  men  for 
themselves  to  contmue  in  existence,  tended  rather  to  abridge  than  to  pro- 
long the  British  dominion, t)y  nourishing  in  the  colonies  a  spirit  and  habit  of 
liberty  repugnant  to  the  unjust  and  oppressive  strain  of  the  British  commer- 
cial restrictions.**     The  colonial  empire  of  Spain  would  not  have  boasted  a 
longer  duration  than  that  of  England,  if  her  settlements  in  South  America 
had  enjoyed  as  liberal  constitutions  as  the  North  American  colonies.    "  The 
policy  of  Europe,"  says  a  writer  who  perhaps  equalled  Hume  in  political 
sagacity,  and  certainly  excelled  him  in  acquaintance  with  colonial  history, 
"  has  very  little  to  boast  of,  either  in  the  original  establishment,  or,  so  far 
as  concerns  their  internal  government,  in  the  subsequent  prosperity,  of  the 
colonies  of  America."     Folly  and  injustice  he  pronounces  to  have  been 

3  .^if'?'"'^  "/.JVe'o  F.ngland.  ■  ""Raynars  Jlmerica. 

Uritam,    says  another  fiistorian,  »  behaved  like  an  unnatural  parent  to  her  own  colo- 
nies,  and  treated  them  like  aliens  and  rivals."     Smollett's  England. 

«  The  colonization  of  Georgia,  which  did  not  occur  till  1732,  was  the  only  instance  in 
which  the  Lnglish  government  contributed  to  the  foundation  of  any  of  the  North  American 
States. 

*  See  an  account  of  the  commercial  restrictions  that  were  imposed  prior  to  the  British  Rev- 
olution, and  an  examination  of  their  policy,  ante.  Book  I.,  Chap.  III.  To  the  restrictions 
there  described,  there  was  added,  before  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  a  prohibition 
(noticed  m  the  histories  of  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania)  of  the  exportation  of  wool  from  the 


APP.  I] 


STATE   AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLOMIF.S. 


663 


er  own  coIo- 


tlio  principles  that  presided  over  the  formation  of  all  ihe  colonial  settle- 
ments ;  avarice  of  gold  impelling  the  adventurers  to  the  southern,  and 
tyranny  and  persecution  promoting  the  emigrations  to  the  northern  partJi 
of  America.  The  governments  of  the  several  parent  states,  he  remarks  with 
truth,  contributed  little  or  nothing  towards  the  plantation  of  their  colonies, 
and  yet  invariably  attempted  to  enrich  their  own  exchequers,  and  secure 
to  themselves  a  monopoly  of  the  colonial  commerce,'  by  regulations  injuri- 
ous to  the  freedom  and  prosperity  of  the  colonists,  —  a  policy  in  which  the 
f (articular  procedure  of  England  was  distinguished  only  as  somewhat  less  il- 
iberal  and  oppressive  than  that  of  the  other  European  states.  "  In  what 
way,  therefore,"  demands  this  great  writer,  "  has  the  policy  of  Europe  rnn- 
tributed  either  to  the  first  establishment  or  to  the  present  grandeur  of  iho 
colonics  of  America  ?  In  one  way,  and  in  one  way  only,  it-has  contributed 
a  great  deal.  Magna  mater  virum !  It  bred  and  formed  the  men  who 
were  capable  of  achieving  such  great  actions,  and  of  laying  the  foundations 
of  so  great  an  empire  ;  and  there  is  no  other  quarter  of  the  world  of  which 
the  policy  is  capable  of  forming,  or  has  ever  actually  and  in  fact  formed, 
such  men.  The  colonies  owe  to  the  policy  of  Europe  the  education  and 
great  views  of  their  active  and  enterprising  founders  ;  and  some  of  the  great- 
est and  most  important  of  them,  so  far  as  concerns  their  internal  govern- 
ment, owe  to  it  scarce  any  thing  else."^ 

In  the  colonial  establishments  of  the  French,  the  Spaniards,  and  the 
Portuguese,  the  royal  government  was  stronger  and  more  despotic,  and 
subordination  was  more  strictly  enforced,  than  in  the  relative  parent  states. 
Illiberal  institutions,  remote  from  the  power  and  splendor  of  the  thrones 
to  which  they  were  allied,  required  to  be  giiarded  with  peculiar  care  from 
the  approach  of  opinions  and  practices  that  savored  of  freedom.  It  was 
otherwise  in  the  British  colonies,  where  the  grafts  of  constitutional  liberty 
that  were  transplanted  from  the  parent  state  expanded  with  a  vigor  pro- 
portioned to  their  distance  from  the  rival  shoots  of  royalty  and  aristocracy 
with  which  they  were  theoretically  connected.  Though  a  great  diversity 
of  views  and  motives  contributed  to  the  foundation  of  these  colonial  com- 
munities, yet  a  considerable  similarity  of  character  and  disposition  was  pro- 
duced among  their  inhabitants  by  the  similarity  of  the  fortune  which  they 
encountered,  and  of  the  social  positions  which  they  attained  in  America. 
Not  only  did  the  British  colonies  enjoy  domestic  constitutions  favorable  to 
liberty,  but  there  existed  in  the  minds  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  people  a 
democratic  spirit^  and  determination  that  practically  reduced  the  power 
of  the  parent  state  even  below  the  standard  of  its  political  theory.  Many 
causes  contributed  to  the  production  of  this  spirit,  and  to  the  nurture  and 
development  of  its  vigor  and  efficacy.  All  the  colonial  charters  were  ex- 
torted, by  interest  or  importunity,  from  princes  noted  for  arbitrary  designs 
or  perfidious  characters  ;  and  no  sooner  had  the  charters  produced  the 
effect  of  collecting  numerous  and  thriving  communities  in  America,  than 
some  of  them  were  annulled,  and  all  of  them  would  have  shared  the  same 

'  See  Note  XXXII.,   at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

*  Sinith'8  Wealth  of  JVations.    See  also  Postlethwayt's  Universal  Dietwnary  of  Trade. 

'  Colonel  Quarry,  in  his  Memorial  to  the  Lords  of  Trade,  in  1703,  after  reprobating  the  re- 
publican spirit  that  prevailed  in  Virginia,  protested,  that  "  Now  or  never  is  tlie  time  to  main- 
tain the  queen's  prerogative,  and  put  a  stop  to  tliose  wrong,  pernicious  notions  whiv  i  are 
improving  daily,  not  only  in  Virginia,  but  in  all  her  Majesty's  other  governments."  "  A  frown 
now  from  her  Majesty,  he  adds,  "could  do  more  than  an  array  hereafter."  See  also  thn 
statements  cited  in  Note  XXVIII. 

VOL.   I.  70  vu 


654 


HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[APP.  1. 


fate,  if  the  dynasty  of  the  Stuarts  had  endured  a  little  longer.  The  designs 
of  these  princes  were  not  sincerely  or  substantially  repudiated  by  their  suc- 
cessors. For  many  years  after  the  British  Revolution,  the  American  colo- 
nists  were  provoked  to  continual  contests  in  defence  of  their  charters,  which 
the  English  court  made  successive  attempts  to  qualify  or  abolish.  These 
defensive  efforts,  and  the  success  vv^ith  which  they  were  generally  crowned 
tended  strongly  to  keep  alive  an  active  and  vigilant  spirit  of  liberty  in 
America.  The  ecclesiastical  constitutions  and  the  religious  sentiments  that 
prevailed  in  the  majority  of  the  provinces  were  no  less  favorable  to  the 
growth  of  liberal  and  independent  sentiments.  In  Virginia,  Maryland,  and 
Carolina,  alone  of  all  the  States, — in  the  first  from  its  earliest  settlement, 
and  in  the  others  by  unjust  usurpation, — the  church  of  England  was  pos- 
sessed of  a  legal  preer^inence,  and  supported  at  the  expense,  not  only  of 
its  own  adherents,  but  of  all  the  other  inhabitants,  of  whatever  Christian 
denomination.  In  every  one  of  the  other  States  there  existed,  about  the 
r  ''the  seventeenth  century,  either  an  entire  political  equality  of  re- 

L  -,ects,  or  at  least  a  very  near  approach  to  it  ;  and  in  these  States, 

no  /  were  the  inhabitants,  by  their  general  character  of  Protestants, 
the  votaries  of  a  system  founded  on  the  acknowledged  supremacy  of  pop- 
ular and  individual  judgment, — but  the  majority  of  them,  belonging  to  that 
class  which  in  England  received  the  title  of  Protestant  Dissenters,  pro*- 
fessed  tenets  which  have  been  termed  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant 
faith,  and  which  naturally  predispose  the  minds  that  harbour  tliem  to  a  jeal- 
ous regard  for  civil  liberty,  and  a  promptitude  to  repel  every  arbitrary  exer- 
tion of  municipal  authority.  Even  the  Episcopal  churcn,  where  it  existed, 
whether  as  the  preeminent  establishment,  or  as  one  of  many  coequal  asso- 
ciations, was  stripped  of  the  aristocratical  appendages  which  it  enjoyed  in 
the  parent  state,  and  exhibited  neither  a  titled  hierarchy  nor  a  gradation  of 
ranks  among  the  ministers  of  religion.  In  civil  life  a  similar  equality  of  con- 
dition generally  prevailed.  No  attempt  was  ever  made  to  introduce  the 
haughty  privilege  of  titular  nobility  into  any  of  the  provinces  except  Caro- 
lina, where  the  institution  soon  withered  and  died.^  Unaccustomed  to  that 
distinction  of  ranks  which  the  policy  of  Europe  has  established,  the  peo- 
ple were  generally  impressed  with  a  conviction  of  the  natural  equality  of 
all  freemen ;  and  even  in  those  provinces  where  negro  slavery  obtained 
the  greatest  prevalence,  the  possession  of  this  tyrannical  privilege  seems 
rather  to  have  inflamed  and  adulterated  the  spirit  of  freedom  with  a  con- 
siderable tinge  of  arrogance,  than  to  have  contributed  at  all  to  mitigate  its 
ardor.  Slave-owners  regarded  every  approach  to  the  condition  of  slavery 
with  stern  aversion  and  disdain.  Except  that  inhuman  institution,  every 
circumstance  in  the  domestic  or  relative  condition  of  these  provinces  had 
a  tendency  to  promote  industry,  good  morals,  and  impressions  of  equality. 
The  liberal  reward  of  labor  and  the  cheapness  of  land  placed  the  enjoy- 
ment of  comfort  and  the  generous  dignity  of  independence  within  the  reach 
of  all  the  inhabitants;  the  luxuries  and  official  dignities  of  England  at- 
tracted the  wealthy  voluptuary  and  the  votary  of  ambition  to  that  fitter 
sphere  of  enjoyment  and  intrigue;^  and  the  vast  wastes  or  uncultivated 

'  Yet  the  mysterious  nonsense  of  freemasonry  was  introduced  pretty  early,  and  has  contin- 
ued  to  maintain  a  footing  among  the  Americans. 

•  William  I'enn,  in  his  treatise  on  The  Benefit  of  Plan'  ns  or  Colonics,  declares,  that 
mau-f  persons,  who  had  been  constrained  by  poverty  to  omigraie,  had  reluinea  wiUi  large  ibr- 
tunes,  accumulated  in  the  colonies,  to  reside  in  England. 


APP.  I.] 


STATE  AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLONIES. 


566 


d  has  contin- 


districts  attached  to  ev^ry  province  presented  salutary  outlets  by  which  the 
population  was  drained  of  those  restless,  disorderly  adventurers  who  were 
averse  to  legal  restraint  and  patient  labor,  and  who,  in  the  roving  occupa- 
tion of  hunters  and  backwoodsmen  (as  they  have  been  termed),  found  a  re- 
source that  diverted  them  from  more  lawless  and  dangerous  pursuits,  and 
even  rendered  them  useful  as  a  body  of  pioneers  who  paved  the  way  for 
an  extension  and  multiplication  of  the  colonial  settlements.  Feudal  ten- 
ures were  little  known  in  America,  where  almost  every  farmer  was  a 
freeholder  and  absolute  proprietor  of  the  ground  which  he  cultivated.  No 
trading  corporations  or  monopolies  restrained  the  freedom  with  which  every 
man  might  employ  his  industry,  capital,  and  skill ;  and  no  forest  laws  nor 
game  laws  confined  the  sports  of  the  field  to  a  privileged  class  of  the  com- 
munity. No  entails  were  admitted,  to  give  adventitious  aid  to  natural  in- 
equalities, and  perpetuate  in  the  hands  of  idleness  and  incapacity  the  sub- 
stance that  had  been  amassed  by  industry  and  talent.*  Happily  for  the  sta- 
bility of  American  freedom,  it  wa^  impossible  for  the  first  generation  of 
colonists  to  succeed  in  rearing  their  settlements,  and  attaining  a  secure 
and  prosperous  establishment,  without  the  exercise  of  virtues  and  the  for- 
mation of  a  character  that  guarantied  the  preservation  of  the  blessings  to 
which  they  had  conducted.^  Even  the  calamities  of  French  and  Indian 
war,  which  long  harassed  some  of  the  provinces,  contributed  to  preserve 
a  spirit  and  habits  without  which  their  people  would  probably  have  been 
unable,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  to  achieve  their  independence.'  In  Vir- 
ginia we  have  already  seen  the  preparations  elicited  by  an  Indian  war  ren- 
dered instrumental  to  a  rebellion  against  the  parent  state  ;  and  the  annals 
of  New  England  and  New  York  have  shown  us  nearly  half  of  the  Ameri- 
can provinces  induced  to  unite  then-  counsels  and  forces  in  common  efforts 
against  the  French  and  their  Indian  allies.  If  the  later  settlements  of  New 
Jersey  and  Pennsylvania  were  exempted  in  some  degree  from  the  dis- 
cipline of  those  hardships  and  difficulties  with  which  the  commencement 
of  all  the  other  settlements  was  attended,  they  were  peopled  chiefly  by 
a  class  of  religious  professors  whose  habits  and  manners  are  peculiarly 
favorable  to  industry  and  good  morals,  and  congenial  to  the  spirit  of  re- 
publican institutions.  The  Quakers,  indeed,  have  been  much  more  suc- 
cessful in  leavening  American  society  with  manners  favorable  to  liberty 
than  with  principles  allied  to  their  own  political  doctrines. 

To  England  thj  acquisition  of  these  colonial  settlements  was  highly 
advantageous.  They  enlarged  her  trade  and  revenues  ;  they  afforded  a 
boundless  field  in  which  her  needy  and  superfluous  children  might  improve 
their  condition  and  dissipate  their  discontent ;  and,  finally,  they  created  for 
het  a  new  nation  of  friends  interested  in  her  happiness  and  renown,  and  of 
customers  whose  growing  wants  and  wealth  stimulated  and  rewarded  the 
manufacturing  industry  of  her  domestic  population.  Every  British  emigrant 
to  North  America,  by  his  secession  from  his  native  country,  contributed  to 
extend  the  imitation  of  her  manners,  the  popularity  of  her  literature,  and 
the  prevalence  of  her  language,^  character,  and  institutions  ;  and  the  British 

•  At  a  subsequent  period,  ihe  system  of  entails  became  prevalent  in  Virginia.  Wirt's 
Life  of  Henry.  It  was  productive  of  great  dislilte  and  jealousy  between  the  aristocracy  and 
the  yeomanry  of  the  province.  Ibid.  It  was  abolished  three  months  after  the  declaration  of 
American  Independence. 

-  See  ?*ote  *t..-vXIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  *  See  Judges,  iii.,  1, 2. 

*  "  Our  solid  ond  increasing  establishments  in  America,  where  we  need  little  dread  the 
inundation  of  barbarians,  promise  a  superior  stability  and  duration  to  the  English  language." 
Hume  to  Gibbon,  1767.  • 


b56 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[A  PP.  I 


shoot,  that  with  so  much  elaborate  virtue  was  grafted  on  America,  will  re- 
flect glory  on  the  pareni  stem,  when  Britain  herself  may  sleep  under  the 
shade  of  a  mighty  name.  It  was  the  calculation  of  Sir  Josiah  Child,  that 
every  colonist,  by  the  produce  of  his  labor  in  the  plantations,  furnished 
employment  and  maintenance  to  four  persons  in  the  mother  country.  All 
the  nations  of  Europe  derived  advantage  from  the  formation  of  the  Ameri- 
ca!) settlements,  which  disburdened  their  territories  of  great  numbers  of 
men,  whom  the  pressure  of  poverty  aggravated  by  defective  civil  institu- 
tions, and  an  aversion  to  the  systems  of  their  national  churches  inflamed 
by  ecclesiastical  intolerance,  must  have  rendered  either  martyrs  or  rebels  m 
their  native  land.  The  emigration  from  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  es- 
pecially from  Germany,  to  America,  during  the  greater  part  of  the  eio-h- 
teenth  century,  was  much  more  copious  than  the  emigration  from  England. 
To  the  colonists  the  subsistence  of  their  peculiar  connection  with  England 
was  likewise  attended  with  considerable  advantage.  The  acknowledged 
sovereignty  and  implied  protection  of  England  deterred  all  other  European 
powers  who  were  not  at  war  with  her  from  molesting  them  ;  while  their 
chartered  or  traditionary  constitution  opposed  (after  the  British  Revolu- 
tion) a  barrier  to  gross  and  open  encroachments  of  the  parent  state  herself 
on  the  provincial  rights  and  liberties.  As  their  own  strength  and  resources 
increased,  the  benefit  of  England's  protection  was  proportionally  diminished, 
while  the  inconvenience  of  her  commercial  restrictions,  and  of  participa- 
tion in  her  military  policy,  was  more  sensibly  experienced. 

A  remarkable  variety  and  indistinctness  of  opinion  prevailed,  both  in  Brit- 
ain and  America,  respecting  the  precise  nature  and  import  of  the  political 
relation  that  united  the  two  countries.     It  was  at  first  the  maxim  of  the 
court,  that  the  crown  was  the  only  member  of  the  British  constitution  which 
possessed  jurisdiction  over  the  colonies.'     All  the  charters  were  framed 
m  conformity  with  this  view,   except  the  charter  of  Pennsylvania.     The 
colonists  were  by  no  means  uniform  in  the   sentiments  they  expressed  on 
this  subject.     They  all  condemned  the  unjust  power  usurped  over  them  by 
the  British  parliament,  when  the  Navigation  Laws  were  passed  ;   and  openly 
asserted,  on  various  occasions,  that  an  act  of  the  British  parliament  was 
not  obligatory,  by  its  own  mere  intrinsic  efficacy,  on  America.   Yet,  in  many 
instances,  they  scrupled  not  to  complain  of  their  incidental  grievances  to 
the  houses  of  parliament,  and  to  invoke  the  interposition  of  parliamentary 
authority  in  their  behalf     The  New  England  States  alone  perceived  from 
the  first  the  advantage  they  might  one  day  derive  from  adhering  to  the 
maxim,  that  they  were  politically  connected  only  wjth  the  king,  and  not  at 
all  with  the  parliament ;  and  with  singular  prudence  forbore  to  solicit  favors 
even  from  a  parliament  by  which  they  were  regarded  with  especial  good- 
will, lest  they  should  seem  to  sanction  parliamentary  interference  in  their 
concerns.    When  the  parliament  enjoyed  only  an  accidental  existence,  and 
was  frequently,  indeed  generally,  opposed  to  the  court,  the  English  mon- 
archs  resolutely  maintained  their  exclusive  jurisdiction  over  the  colonies. 
When  the  parliament  acquired  greater  power  and  stability,  it  compelled 
both  the  court  and  the  colonies  to  acknowledge  its  supreme  legislatorial 
jurisdiction.      The  colonists  murmured  against  the   trade   laws  ;  they  fre- 

'  A  bill  having  been  introduced  inToThc~Hoiige  orConinioris,  in  the  reign  of  Junics  the 
fjrst,  for  rej^ulatmg  the  American  fisheries,  Sir  George  Calvert,  secretary  of  state,  conveyed  to 
t>.e  lipase  Ihc-  lolimviiig  intimation  from  the  king  :—"  America  is  not  annexed  to  the  realm, 
nor  within  the  lurisdiction  of  parliament ;  you  have,  tlierefore,  no  right  to  interfere."  Colo- 
nial Tracts  tn  Harvard  Library,  opud  Holmes. 


APP.  I] 


STATE  AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLONIES. 


657 


quently  evaded  those  obnoxious  regulations  ;  and  many  persons  still  main- 
tamed  that  the  parliament  had  no  right  to  impose  them.  This  opinion  contin- 
lied  to  prevail,'  and  would  have  been  more  generally  and  openly  asserted, 
il  the  colonists  had  been  less  overawed  by  the  power  of  England,  or  had 
received  encouragement  from  the  crown.     But  the  English  ministers  were 
now  always  (by  a  necessity  of  the  constitution)  possessed  of  a  command- 
ing majority  m  parliament,  and  found  it  easier  and  safer  to  act  through 
the  instP-m-iitahty  of  this  organ,  than  through  a  prerogative  employed  on  a 
variety  of  distant  provincial  assemblies.    The  Revolution  of  1688  establish- 
ed firmly  the  supreme  authority  of  the  parliament,  and  consequently  the 
submission  of  America  to  its  legislative  control.     No  taxation  of  the  colo- 
nies was  practically  attempted  by  the  parliament,  except  what  arose  from 
the  regulation  of  commerce ;   but  an  abstract  right  of  indefinite  taxation 
was  repeatedly  proclaimed,  and  a  power  was  assumed  to  alter  the  Ameri- 
can charters,  or  at  least  to  modify  the  constitutions  which  these  charters  had 
created.      There  was  one  point,  indeed,  in  which  the  relation  of  the  col- 
onies to  the  royal  prerogative  appeared  still  to  be  acknowledged.    It  was 
not  to  the  House  of  Lords,  or  to  any  of  the  ordinary  tribunals  of  Eng- 
land, that  appeals  were  preferred  from  the  judgments  of  American  courts, 
but  to  the  king  in  council ;  and  it  was  the  same  organ  that  enjoyed   the 
privilege  of  modifying  and  rescinding  the  provincial  laws  which  were  deemed 
repugnant  to  English  jurisprudence.^ 

Yielding  not  lo  conviction,  but  to  necessity,  —  overawed  by  the  strength 
of  Britam,— and  embarrassed  by  the  dangerous  vicinity  of  the  French  in 
Canada,  — the  colonists  submitted  to  the  power  of  parliament,  and  rendered 
to  It  even  that  degree  of  voluntary  acknowledgment  which  may  be  inferred 
from  numerous  petitions  for  the  redress  of  grievances.^  Yet  the  submission 
actually  obtained  was  yielded  with  undisguised  reluctance  ;  and  the  pre- 
tensions, in  conformity  with  which  that  submission  might  be  still  farther 
extended,  were  regarded  with  the  most  jealous  apprehension.  So  early  as 
the  year  1696,  a  pamphlet  was  published  in  England,  recommending  the 
parliamentary  imposition  of  a  domestic  tax  on  one  of  the  colonies.  Thi«! 
suggestion  was  instantly  and  vigorously  impugned  by  two  responsory 
pamphlets,  in  which  the  right  of  taxing  the  colonies  was  expressly  denied  to 
a  parliament  in  which  they  were  not  represented.* 

There  were  various  particulars  in  the  supremacy  exercised  and  the  pol- 
icy pursued  by  the  parent  state,  that  were  offensive  to  the  colonists,  and 
regarded  by  them  as  humiliating  badges  of  dependence.  The  royal  pre- 
rogative  exerted  in  the  nomination  of  certain  of  the  provincial  governors  not 

i  f'^'i  M^'^c  "?!"*  °'"<^°'?ne'  N'clioUon,  cited  in  Note  XXVIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
r„..  .  "i?^""-  n  repeatedly  pronounced  that  it  was  within  the  competency  of  the  English 
th^LoL      ^"^  ^      uu  *"  f?"**  "  V''^.f  ''"'"""'  '='"'^«*  '"'«  America;  but  he  remarked  that 

?is.ro7;j5jSr'f '  •'^^^''  "^  '"^^'^'^"•^  ^'"^  p-p-'^  «'«•'-  - '"» 

i»Pti)!l['l^"  "'"^  '!""'"'',  •"""^.^^""•thy  and  powerful,  and  found  that  the  parliament  was  pro- 
jecting to  usurp  their  domestic  taxation,  they  rtfrained  from  sending  petitions  to  it,  and  ore- 
sen  ef  them  pnTy  to  the  kin^;-see  FrankliVs  fVorks;-and  at  length  boldly  revived '^ibe 

sovTL'".'""'!!',!^"^^  't-  '""^•'  rt  •""'  "'"  ^'"S'  ''"■''^'  ''"•1  '=°'""»°n«  collectively,  is  their 
sovereign  and  that  the  kmg,  with  their  respective  assemblies,  is  their  only  legislator."  Ibid. 
Ihus  the  Americans,  in  contending  for  their  independence,  finally  took  tlieir  stand  on  a  prin- 
ciple originally  introduced  by  despotic  princes,  and  intended  to  secure  the  subjection  of  the 
colonies  to  arbitrary  government  and  royal  prerogative. 
A*^  ^'"■^?"'''  "'"'"Ky  "f  thtUniled  Stales.    "  The  pamphlets  against  taxation  (said  Lord  Cam- 

X'l'^'l  ,h  ^  '"  '""■  '^°"^?  "'  ^°';'^*'  ^i*'*'^  *^*'^)  •••='■  """=•>  •■ead,  and  no  answer  was 
given  to  them,  no  censure  passed  upon  them ;  nor  were  ,nen  startled  at  the  doctrine."    Ihid. 

UU* 


658 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[APP.  I. 


only  created  discontcut  in  the  provinces  which  were  thus  debarred  from  a 
privilege  enjoyed  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  other  States,  but  excited  in 
those  others  a  continual  apprehension  of  being  levelled  in  this  respect  with 
the  condition  of  their  neighbours.  The  manner,  too,  in  which  this  roval 
prerogative  was  frequently  administered,  tended  to  render  it  additionally 
disagreeable.  It  was  no  less  the  interest  than  the  duty  of  the  parent  state, 
that  the  provincial  viceroys  whom  she  appointed  should  be  men  whose 
talents  and  characters  were  fitted  to  communicate  impressions  of  the  dig- 
nity of  her  supreme  dominion  and  the  benevolence  of  her  superintending 
care.  Yet  the  general  practice  of  the  English  ministers  was  to  com- 
mit the  royal  governments  to  needy  dependents,  whose  chief  aim  was  to 
repair  a  shattered  fortune,  and  to  recommend  themselves  to  their  patrons 
by  a  headlong  zeal  for  the  assertion  of  every  real  or  pretended  prerogative 
of  the  crown. ^  In  thus  partially  straining  and  illiberally  exerting  her 
power,  the  parent  state  pursued  towards  the  colonies  a  policy  at  once  un- 
just, offensive,  and  inefficient.  It  would  perhaps  have  been  more  politic  to 
have  usurped  the  appointment  of  all  the  provincial  governors,  and  to  have 
bestowed  these  offices  on  men  of  splendid  rank  and  fortune,  salaried  by  the 
crown,  and  capable  of  maintaining  in  the  provinces  the  appearance  of  a  court. 
The  transportation  of  felons  to  America  was  also  a  practice  of  the  British 
government,  which  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  multiplication  of  negro  slaves 
rendered  increasingly  offensive  to  the  colonists.  We  have  seen  the  assem- 
bly of  Maryland,  as  early  as  the  year  1676,  endeavour  to  obstruct  the 
stream  of  vicious  and  perilous  example  which  was  thus  directed  by  the 
parent  state  among  the  laboring  classes  of  her  colonial  subjects.  The  as- 
sembly of  Pennsylvania  made  an  attempt  to  discourage  the  importation  of 
convicts  into  its  territory  by  imposing  a  duty  of  five  pounds  on  every 
convict  that  should  be  imported.  But  it  was  not  till  a  later  period  that  the 
practice  excited  general  disapprobation  in  America.  So  pressing  in  most 
places  was  the  demand  for  laborers,  thst't  their  moral  character,  and  the 
terms  on  which  they  were  obtained,  were  considerations  to  which  the 
planters  had  not  leisure  to  attend.  Nay,  in  some  instances,  felons  were  not 
the  only  involuntary  emigrants  from  England  whose  labor  they  appropriated. 
It  became  at  one  time  a  common  practice  for  captains  of  vessels  to  entice 
ignorant  persons,  by  flattering  promises  of  wealth  and  preferment,  to  accom- 
pany them  to  America,  where  they  had  no  sooner  arrived,  than  they  were 
sold  as  bondsmen  to  defray  the  cost  of  their  passage  and  entertainment. 
So  early  as  the  year  1686,  an  order  of  council**  was  issued  for  the  pre- 
vention of  this  practice.  In  process  of  time,  all  the  provincial  governments, 
and  ail  the  wealthy  inhabitants  of  the  provinces  (especially  of  those  in  which 
negro  slaves  were  most  numerous),  united  in  petitioning  the  British  gov- 

'  Sir  William  Keith's  History  of  Virginia.  Williamson's  JVor/A  Carolina.  We  have  al- 
ready seen  nhundant  confirmation  of  the  testimony  of  these  writers  in  the  histories  of  Vir- 
ginia, New  York,  and  New  Jersey.  See  the  observations  on  the  general  efleot  of  the  Enslish 
Revolution  on  the  American  colonies,  at  the  close  of  the  history  of  Virginia,  Book  I.,  Chap. 
III.,  ante. 

*  This  ('oRumont  is  preserved  in  the  British  Museum.  The  system  of  inveigling  and 
kidnapping  was  not  confined  to  England.  It  was  carried  on  to  a  great  extent  in  Suabia  and 
other  German  cantons  by  Dutch  factors,  whom  Raynal  asserts  to  have  been  hired  by  the  Brit- 
ish government.  But  that  this  charge  was  unjust  in  some  instances,  and  probably  in  ell, 
may  be  collected  from  a  curious  and  interesting  article  in  the  Annmil  Hrgister  for  1764. 

Young  persons  of  blighted  reputation  or  feeble  understanding  were  sometimes  conveyed 
by  their  friends  to  the  American  plantations,  in  order  to  bury  memorials  of  family  disgrace. 
Benjamin,  the  eldest  son  of  the  poet  Waller,  appeiiring  deficient  in  capacity,  waa  disiniieriied 
by  his  father  ard  Mnt  to  New  Jersey.    Jo[\n»»n'%  Lift  of  Wtdltr. 


APP.  I]  STATE  AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLONIES. 


6m 


ons  were  not 


ernment  to  discontinue  the  practice  of  sending  felons  to  America  ;  ^  but 
rfieir  complaints  of  this  evil,  as  well  as  of  the  continued  importation  of  ad- 
ditional negro  slaves,  were  entirely  disregarded.  "  Very  early,"  says  an 
American  writer,  "  it  had  been  the  fashion  to  suppose,  that  the  colonists,  by 
emigrating,  had  lost  a  portion  of  their  dignity,  and  that  at  best  they  should 
be  regarded  only  as  an  inferior  order  of  Englishmen,  whose  duty  it  was  to 
labor  for  the  dory  and  advancement  of  the  nation." ^  Qne  consequence 
that  resulted  from  this  arbitrary  and  degrading  treatment  was  the  existence 
e  SJ'PS^  '§"o'"a"?e  or  illiberal  prejudice  with  regard  to  the  social  condition 
ot  North  America,  in  the  minds  of  all  classes  of  people  in  England.^ 
Though  persons  connected  with  the  colonies,  by  commerce  or  otherwise, 
might  entertain  juster  notions  of  their  condition,  it  is  certain  that  till  a 
very  late  period  these  territories  were  commonly  regarded  in  England  as 
wild,  inhospitable  deserts,  infested  by  savages  and  beasts  of  prey,  and 
cultivated  only. by  criminals  or  by  enslaved  negroes  and  kidnapped  Europe- 
ans. Though  Bishop  Berkeley  prophesied  a  destiny  of  unequalled  glory  to 
this  region,  m  his  Verses  on  the  Prospect  of  planting  Arts  and  Literature  in 
America,  and  though  Thomson  celebrated  the  happiness  of  the  colonies,  and 
their  instrumentalness  to  the  grandeur  of  the  British  empire,"  the  encomiastic 
strains  of  these  writers  were  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  sarcastic 
and  opprobrious  imputations  which  were  circulated  by  other  and  more  pop- 
alar  authors.^    The  conquest  of  Louisburg  from  the  French,  in  1745, 

'  An  American  patriot  humorously  proposed  that  a  reciprocal  transportation  of  American 
rattleBnakes  to  England  should  in  equity  be  indulged  to  the  colonists.    Franklin's  Memoirs. 

*  Burk  s  History  of  Virginia.  * 

»  Preface  to  Smith's  JVe»  York.    See  Note  XXXIV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
*  "  Lo !  swarming  o'er  the  new-discovered  world 
Gay  colonies  extend  ;  the  calm  retreat 

Of  undeserved  distress 

.  .  .  Bound  by  social  freedom,  firm  they  rise ; 
OfBritain's  empire  the  support  and  strength."  —  Thomson. 

*  Smollett  alludes  to  the  colonies  of  North  America  in  the  following  strain  :  —  "  I%e  galleys 
of  France  abound  with  abbfis ;  and  many  templars  may  be  found  in  our  .American  vlantatiotJ:' 
Count  Fathom.  Among  the  bad  company  assembled  at  Bath,  the  same  wri,  snumerates 
"  planters,  ne^ro  drivers,  and  hucksters  from  our  American  plantations."  Humphrey  Clinker. 
"  Our  people, '  he  adds,  "  have  a  strange  itch  to  colonize  America,  when  the  uncultivated 
parts  of  our  own  island  might  be  settled  to  greater  advantage."  Ibid.  Fielding  sends  his 
hero,  Jonathan  Wild,  to  fortify  his  vice  and  viflany  in  Virginia ;  and  in  various  other  allusions 
to  the  colonies,  always  represents  them  as  the  suitable  refuge  of  deserved  distress.  In  Reed'f 
farce.  The  Register  Office,  a  miserable  Irishman  is  exhibited  as  on  the  point  of  being  trepamied 
to  America,  to  bo  there  sold  as  a  slave.  A  similar  scene  is  depicted  in  Goldsmith's  Kicor 
ofWakifietd,  where  an  unfortunate  man  of  letters  is  nearly  kidnapped  by  an  insidious  offer  of 
being  appointed  "  Secretary  to  an  embassy  from  the  Synod  of  Pennsylvania  to  the  Chicka- 
saw Indians."  Even  in  this  author's  poem.  The  Traveller,  where  the  expulsion  of  an  English 
peasant  and  his  family  from  their  homo  is  represented  as  an  ordinary  consequence  of  the. 
pride  and  luxury  of  English  landlords,  the  exiles  are  supposed  to  find  a  tenfold  addition  to  their 
woes  in  North  America.  Nay,  this  strain  seems  not  yet  to  have  ceased  ;  and  the  grief  of 
"  heart-sick  exiles  "  in  America  has  been  deplored  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  nineteenth  centu- 
ry. Alluding  to  the  wild,  melancholy  song  of  Scottish  Highlanders,  this  great  bard  observes,— 

"  I  thought  how  sad  would  be  that  sound 

On  Susquehannah's  swampy  ground, 

Kentucky's  wood-encumbered  hri;ko, 

And  wild  Ontario's  boundless  laKP. 

Where  heart-sick  exiles  in  the  strui' 

Recalled  fair  Scotland's  hills  again.'  — .tfrnrmioti. 
Since  the  time  when  Waller  and  Marvell  eulogized  the  tranquil  retreat  of  Bermudas,  I  am 
not  aware  that  any  other  British  poets  but  Thomson,  Mrs.  Barbauld,  Campbell,  and  Lord 
Byron,  have  celebrated  the  happy  scenes  and  circumstances  of  American  life.  There  is  m.  . 
of  pathos  than  of  animation  in  tne  strain  in  which  my  revered  and  amiable  kinsman,  the  late 
author  of  The  Sabbath,  has,  in  that  delightful  poem,  depicted  the  feelings  of  Scottish  soUlers  in 
America.  Emigrants  may  entertain,  not  propeHy  a  regretful,  but  a"fbnd,  and  even  melan- 
oholy,  remembrance  of  their  nativ«  land,  amid  circumstances  fbr  happier  than  that  land  could 
mbrd  them.  "  . 


660 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[APP.  1. 


an  enterprise  originally  projected  by  the  genius,  and  maimy  accomplished 
by  the  vigor,  of  the  government  of  Massachusetts,  —was  the  circumstance 
that  first  prepared  the  people  of  England  to  receive  more  just  impressions 
of  the  dignity  and  importance  of  the  American  provinces. 

But  no  particular  of  the  treatment  which  the  colonists  experienced  from 
England,  during  the  early  part  of  their  connection  with  her,  was  so  generally 
offensive  to  them  as  the  restrictions  she  imposed  upon  their  trade  and  in- 
dustry.    This  system  not  only  disgusted  them  by  its  injustice,  but  seems 
in  some  instances  to  have  perverted  their  sentiments  and  infected  their  coun- 
sels  with  a  correspondmg  strain  of  selfish  illiberality.     In  some  of  the  com- 
mercial ordinances  that  were  framed  by  the  colonists,  we  may  discern  i.lie 
reflection  of  that  narrow  and  grasping  spirit  that  pervaded  the  policy  of  the 
parent  state,  —  a  defensive  or  vindictive  reaction  of  the  illiberal  principles 
to  whose  operation  they  were  themselves  exposed.     An  act  of  the  assem- 
bly of  Virginia,  in  16S0,  imposed  a  duty  on  all  tobacco  exported  from, 
and  on  all  emigrants  imported  into,  the  colony  in  vessels  not  belonging  to 
Virginian  owners.     By  an  ordinance  of  Massachusetts,  a  tonnage  duty  was 
imposed  on  all  ships  casting  anchor  in  any  port  within  its  jurisdiction, 
excepting  vessels  owned  by  inhabitants  of  the  State.     A  similar  duty  was 
imposed  by  the  assembly  of  Rhode  Island,  in  the  year  1704,  on  all  vessels 
not  wholly  owned  by  inhabitants  of  this  colony.     In  1709,  the  legislature 
of  New  York  imposed  a  tonnage  duty  on  every  vessel  of  which  one  half 
did  not  belong  to  citizens  of  this  State.     By  a  law  of  Maryland,  in  1715, 
the  duties  imposed  on  the  importation  of  negroes,  servants,  and  liquors  were 
declared  not  to  extend  to  cargoes  imported  in  vessels  whose  owners  were 
all  residents  in  the   colony.     The   legislature   of  the  same  province  had 
eleven   years  before  prohibited  the   collection   of  cebts   due   to   English 
bankrupts,  till  security  were  given  that  the  claims  of  provincial  creditors  on 
the  bankrupt's  estate  should  first  be  wholly  discharged. V    Even  the   Penn- 
sylvanians,  who  in  this  respect  professed  a  more  liberal  consideration  of 
the  claims  of  foreign  creditors  than  any  of  the  other  provincial  communities, 
enacted  a  law  for  securing  priority  of  payment  from  the  estates  of  bank- 
rupts to  the  inhabitants  of  their  own  province.     Among  other  apologies  for 
this  policy  with  regard  to  the  recovery  of  debts  (which  obtained  a  general 
prevalence  throughout  the  colonies),  it  has  been  urged,  with  unquestioned 
and   perhaps   unquestionable   accuracy,  that  the  planters  were  commonly 
treated  with  great  illiberality  by  the  merchants  to  whom  they  consigned 
their  produce  in  England,  —  who  took  advantage  of  their  necessities,  while 
the  sales  of  provincial  produce  were   in  suspense,  to  lend  them  money 
at  exorbitant  interest,  and  on  the  security  of  their  mortgaged  plantations.^ 
Almost  all  the  American  planters  and  merchants  were  continually  in  debt  to 
their  English  correspondents  ;  and  so  partial  was  the  parent  state  to  their  in- 
terests, that  in  the  year  1768  she  prohibited  the  province  of  Massachu- 
setts from  adopting  the  bankrupt  law  of  England,  lest  its  operation  should 
be  perverted  to  the  injury  of  English  creditors  of  American  debtors.     In 
1701,  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina  imposed  a  duty  of  three  farthings  a 
skin  on  hides  exported  by  the  colonists  in  their  own  ships,  but  double 
this  amount  if  the  exports  were  loaded  in  English  vessels,' — a  distinction 

'In  the  history  of  Maryland  we  have  already  seen  the  first  inatanceor~n  law  disabling  all 
•ettlers  from  enjoying  provincial  offices  till  by  residence  for  a  term  of  yeara  they  might  be  sup- 
pofed  to  _have  contracted  provinciallmbits.  views,  and  notions. 

*  Sec  Nolo  XXXV.,    Al  tile  vud  of  liio  voruino. 

»  In  the  year  1718,  an  act  of  the  assembly  of  Sduth  Carolina  imposed  ■  heavy  duty  on 


APP.  r.]  STATE  AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLONIES.  ^gj 

Lo„"do?„nhLr.l,'''"«  Y"'"""  "•""*'  new  and  standing  council  a, 

eLence      ThL        °^?'-  '"'^  '""""'"  documents  and  articles  of  official  in 
In  the  year  17 14   ^Z  \        S«^ernors  were  appointed   by  the  people. 

fervS    nform^^^^^^  correspondence  with  our  office,  and  we  are 

InlJllt  Ki-  ?•  °^  "^^^  ''  ''^'"S  m  these  governments  ;  they  not  beine 
under  any  obligation  to  return  authentic  copies  of  their  laws  to  the  crown  fo? 
SreZZ  d,sallowance  or  to  give  J  account  of  thJr  ;rSL;in;^- 
There  was  a  considerable  variety  in  the  civil  and  political  constitutions 
of  the  several  provinces  at  the  commencement  of  the^ightLth  cenTrv 
In  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania,  the  property  of  the  soil  and  th^  SS' 
tration  of  the  executive  p'ower  belonged  tS  o2^  or  morrpropri tables  Tl^^^ 
was  also  the  situation  of  the  Carolines  and  New  Jersey,^  dlf  he  su^rende 
t^^A  P|;°P^'«^«'-y.J""«dictions  ;  when  the  soil  belonged  to  the  proprieta- 

«tv  of  Ihe  ^dlTf "  P°T-  ''':^'  ^'•°""-     '"  MasLhusetts,  Z^prZ 
erty  of  the  soil  was  vested  m  the  people   and   their  representatives    and 

YorrSThe'^Tr  ^7.----d  b/the  crown.  In VirgirindNew 
lork,  both  the  soil  and  the  executive  authority  belonged  to  the  crown 
In  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  both  the  soil  and  ever?  functbn  of 
government  were  vested  in  the  corporation  of  the  freemenTf  th^  coTonv 
Jht/h'th  ""'"°"'  promoted  frequent  disputes  respecting  bounlarier in 
which  the  crown  was  supposed,  and  not  without  reason,  to  favor  the  claim" 
of  those  States  wherein  its  prerogative  was  greatest  and  tl  e  qu  treitL  enlaS 

he  Tl-T'-""-     ^"*.  '^''l  '""'''''^^  ^  "•^^^  beneficial  inflCSice  ulon 
the  colonists,  m  prompting  them  to  canvass   and  discuss   the    merits  of 

VOL.    I.  tl 


562  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [APP.  I. 

animating  circulation  of  political  sentiment  and  opinion.  All  the  provinces 
were  nearly  on  the  same  footing  in  respect  of  the  structure  of  that  im- 
portant organ  of  liberty,  their  representative  assemblies. 

No  encouragement  was  ever  afforded  by  the  British  government  to  the 
cultivation  of  science  or  literature  in  the  American  provinces,  except  in 
the  solitary  instance  of  a  donation  by  William  and  Mary,  in  aid  of  the 
college  which  took  its  name  from  them  in  Virginia.*  The  policy  of  the 
parent  state  in  this  respect  was  thus  delineated  by  one  of  the  royal  govern- 
ors, in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century:  —  "As  to  the  college 
erected  in  Virginia,  and  other  designs  of  the  like  nature  which  have  been 
proposed  for  the  encouragement  of  learning,  it  is  only  to  be  observed  in 
general,  that,  although  great  advantages  may  accrue  to  the  mother  state 
both  from  the  labor  and  luxury  of  its  plantations,  yet  they  will  probably  be 
mistaken,  who  imagine  that  the  advancement  of  literature  and  the  improve- 
ment of  arts  and  sciences  in  our  American  colonies  can  be  of  any  service 
to  the  British  state."  ^  We  have  already  beheld  the  instructions  that  were 
communicated  to  the  royal  governors  by  the  British  court,  both  prior  and 
subsequent  to  the  Revolution  of  1688,  to  restrain  the  exercise  of  printing 
within  their  jurisdictions.  Many  laws  were  framed  in  New  England,  after 
that  event,  for  enlarging  the  literary  privileges  and  honors  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege ;  but  they  were  all  abolished  by  the  British  government.^ 

The  first  printing-press  employed  in  North  America  was  established  in 
Massachusetts,  in  the  year  1638.  It  was  not  till  half  a  century  later  that 
printing  commenced  in  any  other  part  of  British  America.  In  1686,  a 
printing-press  was  established  in  Pennsylvania  ;  in  1 693,  at  New  York  ;  in 
1709,  in  Connecticut;  in  1726,  in  Maryland  ;  in  1729,  in  Virginia  ;  and 
in  1730,  in  South  Carolina.  Previous  to  the  year  1740,  more  printing  was 
performed  in  Massachusetts  than  in  all  the  other  colonies  together.  From 
1760  till  the  commencement  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  the  quantities  of 
printing  executed  in  Boston  and  Philadelphia  were  nearly  the  same.  The 
first  North  American  newspaper  was  published  at  Boston,  by  Campbell,  a 
Scotchman,  the  provincial  postmaster,  in  1704.  The  second  made  its 
appearance  in  the  same  city  in  1719  ;  and  in  the  same  year,  the  third  was 
published  in  Philadelphia.  In  1725,  New  York,  for  the  first  time,  published 
a  newspaper  ;  in  1732,  Rhode  Island  obtained  the  same  advantage  ;  and  after 
this  period  similar  journals  were  gradually  introduced  into  the  other  colonies.* 

The  press,  in  America,  was  nowhere  entirely  free  from  legal  restraint 
till  about  the  year  1755.  In  1723,  James  Franklin  (brother  of  Dr.  Ben- 
jamin Franklin)  was  prohibited  by  the  governor  and  council  of  Massachu- 
setts from  publishing  The  JSTew  England  Courant^  without  previously  sub- 
mitting its  contents  to -the  revision  of  the  secretary  of  the  province  ;  and 
in  1754,  one  Fowle  was  imprisoned  by  the  House  of  Assembly  of  the 

'  Dartmouth  College,  in  New  Hampshire,  which  was  founded  in  the  year  1769,  received, 
indeed,  some  patronage  From  the  British  monarch,  Gcorzc  the  Third.  But  the  object  of  royal 
patronace,  on  this  occasion,  was  not  the  improvement  of  the  colonists,  but  the  instruction  of 
the  Indiana. 

'  Sir  William  Keith's  History  of  Virginia.  I  have  termed  Keith  a  royal  governor.  He 
was,  it  is  true,  the  governor  of  a  proprietary  settlement,  Pennsylvania.  But  the  appointment 
of  all  these  governors  was  now  controlled  l)y  the  necessity  of  royal  approbation  ;  and  Keith's 
nomination,  in  constquence  of  William  Pcnn's  mental  incapacity  at  the  time,  proceeded  al- 
together  from  th«  crown. 

■  Holmes. 

♦  John  l^untOR  iti  the  pros'^ctus  f>f  the  'oiimal  which  he  be"an  to  'jublish  at  London  in 
1G96,  states  that  there  were  then  but  eisht  newspapers  published  in  England.  None  wera 
published  in  Scotland  till  after  the  accession  of  William  and  Mary. 


ment  to  the 


APP.  I.]  STATE   AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLONIES.  5^3 

same  province,  on  suspicion  of  having  printed  a  pamphlet  containlne  can- 

TlTthl'T'"'  ""  T'  "'''"^'''  °^  '^^  gaveJnme^nt.  After  thi  Jear 
/icnhrlir'  no  officer  appointed  in  Massachusetts  to  exercise  a  par- 
ticular control  over  the  press  ;  but  prior  to  that  period,  the  impnmatur 

The  fi  stT..r  '"'"'^'^.  T   "I'^^y  °f  '^'  New^End'and  pubhcat  ons 

es  ablfshcd'lv  t^'f  "T"'^  ^^  ^u""^^  ^"^•^""^y  •"  ^^''^  America  was 
esiaDiisJied  by  act  of  parliament  m  the  year  1710  ' 

n.otTT'^  ^vhere  labor  was  so  dear,  and  proprietors  of  land  were  so  nu- 
me  ous,  as  ,n  North  America,  might,  not  unreasonably,  be  supposed  pecu- 

Llv  Whl  V^'.  ^'""'"'^  f,*^  ^"^"f"'  «"d  -°-"^-«l  sy^fem  ofTis- 
bandry      While  the  dearness  of  labor  restrained  expensive  cultivation,  the 

mems  toln^TT  "^  f-  °"""^^'^  °^  ^'"^  ^"^^^^^  -^  multipli  dTn'cite- 
ments  to  mdustry  and  improvement.     But  the  influence  of  these  causes  was 

wUh  whIcL  thp'  'h',  ''""P""'  '"^  "^""^^"^^  °f  '-^1'  -d  the  vast   or  s 
enoM.h  ro  ^ff   AU-'  '°""i^ ■''''  ^^'^''S'-own.     Every  man  possessed  land 
enough  to  aftord  him  a  sufficient  subsistence  by  the  simplest  and  coarsest 
agricultural  process  ;  and  a  great  deal  of  industry  was  absorbed  in  the  op 
e  auon  of  disencumbering  the  ground  of  wood.     Rotation  of  crops  and  the 
art  of  manuring  obtained  little  regard  from  farmers  whom  the  woodman's 
axe  supplied  with  continual  accessions  of  fresh  and  fertile  soil  to  replace 
he  portions  that  had  been  fatigued  by  culture.     Although  every  one  of 
the  settlements  already  possessed  numerous  substantial  edifices  of  brick  and 
stone,  yet,  from  the  dearness  of  labor  and  the  abundance  of  wood,  the 
grea  er  number  of  du'ell.ng-houses  were  everywhere  constructed  of  this  ma^ 
terial,— a  practice  which  was  prolonged  till  a  very  late  period  by  the  erro- 
neous notion  that  wooden  houses  contributed  a  better  defence  than  stone 
buildings  against  the  humidity  of  the  atmosphere.^ 

In  every  state  of  society  we  may  discern  the  operation  of  a  levellinc 
principle  which  restricts  or  counteracts  the  beneficial  influence  of  favorable 
circumstances,  and  mitigates  or  countervails  the  pressure  of  circumstances 
unfavorable  to  human  happiness  and  prosperity.     Density  of  population  and 
the  convergence  of  wealth  and  authority  in  a  few  hands  promote  the  divis- 
ion,  the  neatness,  and  the  mechanical  perfection  of  labor.     Where  wealth 
and  population,  on  the  contrary,  are  dispersed,  and  equality  of  rights  pre- 
vads,  the  dearness  of  labor  and  the  scarcity  and  independence  of  laborers 
obstruct  the  division  ol  employments;   every   man  is   constrained  to   dis- 
pense as  far  as  possible  \yith  hired  service,  and,  doing  almost  every  thing 
lor  himself,  to  do  much   in   a  coarse   find   inferior  style.     The  mechan- 
ical workmanship  is  less  perfect ;  but  a  superior  development  of  intelli- 
gence characterizes  the  workman.     In  old  and  crowded  societies,  where 
aristocratical    institutions   prevail,   hired   labor   produces   the  most  ele-ant 
commodities,  the  finest  and  amplest  provision   of  conveniences  to  the  em- 
ployers  of  the  laboring  classes  ;  in  thinly  peopled  and  improving  com- 
munities, devoid  of  aristocratical  institutions,  it  produces  most  advanlag.. 
o  the  laborers  themselves  ;  and  of  course  in  the  latter,  the  general  des-    ' 
tmation  of  mankind  to  labor  is  a  circumstance  more  propitious  to  human 
happiness  than  m  the  former.     But   in  crowded  and  aristocratical  slates, 
the  elegance  which  the  wealthy  and  privileged  classes  are  enabled  to  enjoy 
liwnjh^rojwnjeisiire  and  the  cheapness  and  perfection  of  hired  labor,  de- 

•    lanlali     Tl^».n_.'_     £».•-. /•    .»    ■     ..     ; T — : 


^'oiiections  11/  t/te  MassU' 


ehusfUn  Historical  Siir.ielif. 

J  SZ"  '\nm^^?tT'*-  Tr^%^  i^  '■'""^'  t'"^  «"«'  «'■'"«  countrymen,  in  his  JVo/« 


im 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA. 


[APP.I, 


scends  by  imitation  to  the  laborers  themselves,  and  tends  to  refine  iho 
accommodations  of  their  comparatively  meagre  estate  ;  while  in  communi- 
ties tiiinly  peopled  and  unacquainted  with  aristocratical  distinctions,  the  rich 
have  less  leisure  for  the  cultivation  of  refinement,  and  the  poor  are  straneers 
to  that  dependence  which  begets  imitation.  Where  labor  is  cheap,  and  la- 
borers consequently  much  dependent  on  their  employers,  only  neatness  and 
economy  can  enable  them  to  enjoy  comfort ;  social  progression  is  slow  ; 
the  laborer  is  more  likely  to  succeed  in  embellishing  his  actual  condition  than 
in  rising  beyond  it  ;  and  refinement  of  habits  and  manners,  aided  by  the 
strong  influence  of  imitation,  is  generally  proportioned  to  advancement  of 
condition.  Where  labor  is  dear,  and  dependence  and  aristocratical  distinc- 
tions are  unknown,  a  great  deal  of  coarse  comfort  may  consist  with  neglect 
of  neatness  and  economy  ;  the  very  richness  of  the  rewards  of  labor  sup- 
plies  a  strong  temptation  to  indolence  and  sensuality,  which  frequently  over- 
powers the  attractive  hope  of  advancement  ;  and  from  the  absence  at  once 
of  models  consecrated  by  public  homage,  and  of  a  disciplined  spirit  of  imi- 
tation,  enlargement  of  estate  is  often  greatly  disproportioned  to  the  polish 
and  improvement  of  manners,  tastes,  and  accommodations.  Inelegant  ease 
and  slovenly  plenty  are  said  to  have  characterized  the  manners  and  circum- 
stances of  a  considerable  portion  of  the  colonists  of  North  America,  and 
especially  of  the  Middle  and  Southern  States.  This  reproach  has  doubt-, 
less  been  exaggerated ;  and  even  those  who  must  be  esteemed  its  unexcep- 
tionable supporters  nave  acknowledged  the  restriction  which  it  derived  from 
the  influence  of  Puritan,  Quaker,  and  latterly  of  Methodist  and  Moravian 
manners.  The  cultivation  of  the  spirit  and  principles  of  Christianity  is  the 
most  certain  and  the  purest  process  tliat  can  be  employed  for  the  refinement 
of  human  tastes,  manners,  and  habits.  It  is  religion  alone,  which,  teaching 
mankind  duly  to  appreciate  the  dignity  and  felicity  of  their  lot,  preserves 
them  from  that  worst  of  all  evils,  the  abuse  of  blessings,  causes  the  senti- 
ment of  liberty  to  impart  elevation  without  arrogance,  and  the  possession  of 
firealth  to  refine  without  relaxing  the  springs  of  exertion. 

America  has  owed  to  Europe  not  only  a  race  of  civilised  men,  but  a 
breed  of  domestic  animals.  Oxen,  horses,  and  sheep  were  introduced  by 
the  English,  French,  Dutch,  and  Swedes  into  their  respective  settlements. 
Bees  were  imported  by  the  English.  The  Indians,  who  had  never  seen 
these  insects  before,  gave  them  the  name  of  English  flies ;  and  used  to  say 
to  each  other,  when  a  swarm  of  bees  appeared  in  the  woods,  "  Brothers, 
it  is  time  for  us  to  decamp,  for  the  white  people  are  coming."' 

Every  one  of  the  provinces  beheld  the  Indian  tribes,  by  which  it  was 
surrbunded,  melt  away  more  or  less  rapidly  under  the  influence  of  a  civil- 
ized neighbourhood.^  In  none  of  the  provinces  (with  the  exception,  per- 
haps,  of  South  Carolina)  were  wars  undertaken  against  that  unfortunate  race 

»  Knim.    Morso,  Art.  KeiUmky.    Oldmixon  a.<)8crt8  (2d  edit.)  that  America  had  neither  rats 
nor  mice  till  the  nrrival  of  the  European  vessels.     In  the  year  1701,  a  few  camels  were  im- 
ported into  Virginia  in   certain   vcs,«cls  from  Guinea;  but  the  attempt  tp  rear  a  breed  of 
these  animals  in  the  colony  proved  iinsucccssfUI.     OlJmixon.    Wynne. 
•  "  So  the  red  Indian,  by  Ontario's  side, 

Nursed  hardy  on  the  brindled  panther's  hide, 
As  fades  his  swarthy  race,  with  anguish  sees 
The  white  man's  cottaj^n  rise  beneath  the  troet. 
He  leaves  the  shelter  of  his  native  wood, 
He  leaves  the  murmur  of  Ohio's  flood, 
isrH 


AnA  Cp 


hsdignjsn?  sn? 


Where  never  fi^ot  has  trod  the  fallen  leaf. 

Ho  bends  his  course  where  twilight  reigns  subUm* 

Oer  (brest?  sjl?nt  sincfl  tbe  bjrth  of  tiro*,"— Leydt* 


APP.  I.]  STATE  AND  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  COLONIES. 


665 


for  the  sake  of  conquest ;  yet  none  of  the  colonies  whose  history  we  have 
h  her  o  traced,  except  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  were  abi^  to  avo^d 
a  ogether  a  contest,  of  which  the  issue  was  always  unfavorable  to  the  ji 

n  Jh  w-.K  P""  ""'•  '^'  °"^y  I""°'''"*=«  °f  which  the  soil  had  been  occu- 
p^d  without  a  previous  purchase  from  the  Indians  ;  and  in  South  Caroli- 
na alone  had  the  treatment  which  these  savages  experienced  from  an  Fng- 
inS  CS  S? ^'•""J^nt  been  justly  chargeable  wifh  defect  of  forbearancl 
nnlv  H  r^'  -^  hostile  aggressions  of  the  Indians  were  provoked  not 
on  y  by  the.r  own  jealousy  of  the  rapid  progress  of  the  colonial  settlements, 
CO  nn^^tl"''"?'  ,^'rh  they  sustainecT  from  particular  individuals  among  the 
colonists,  and  winch  their  political  maxims  and  habits  taught  them  to  avenge 

nL  J  n  ly ^''"'^^^lf  T^t  '^^'^'"""ity  to  which  those  individuals  were  re! 
puted  to  belong.  The  back  settlements  of  all  the  provinces,  on  account  of 
the  r  remoteness  from  the  seats  of  justice,  were  nalurally  resorted  to  by  the 
most  worthless  and  disorderly  classes  of  the  emigrant  population, -by 
fugitive  felons  and  idle  vagabonds,  whose  behaviour  to  their  savage  neigh^ 
in."tn  on  "?^"'7y«  ^°'"«'de  with  the  precepts  of  natural  equity.^  ScoL 
ing  to  complain  of  such  wrongs,  and  unaccustomed  to  a  limited  or  discrim- 
inative revenge,  the  Indians  were  too  frequently  incited  by  those  private 
quarrels  to  general  hostilities,  which  invariably  terminated  in  thdr  own  d  s! 
comfiture  and  destruction.  But  the  friendship  of  the  colonists  commonly 
proved  no  less  fatal  than  their  hostihties  to  the  Indians.  The  taste  fd^ 
spirituous  liquors,  which  they  communicated,  was  indulged  by  the  savages 
with  an  avidity  that  amounted  to  frenzy  ;  and  the  European  diseases  whS 
they  imported  both  from  pecuharities  in  the  physical' constitution  of  he 
Indians  and  from  the  unskilful  treatment  occasioned  by  their  inexperience 
ot   such  maladies,  were  productive  of  a  havoc  among  the  tribes  that  far 

SuTt  f  '^"  PJ^'r  "^'^T^"  ^°^^"''^     A  vitiated  and  debilitated 
habit  of  body  spread  through  the  people  of  every  tribe  in  proportion  to 
the  closeness  and  duration  of  their  intercourse  with  Europeans.     The  ne- 
cuhar  mortahty  which  the  small-pox  occasioned  among  the  Indians  has  been 
ascribed   by  some  writers  to  their  practice  of  anointing  themselves  with 
bear  s  grease,  ,n  order  to  repel  the  attacks  of  noxious  insects  in  summer, 
and  to  exclude  the  extreme  cold  of  winter,  -  which  is  supposed  to  have 
repressed  the  cutaneous  eruption  requisite  to  a  favorable  issue  of  the  dis- 
emper.     (^uided,  in  this  instance,  by  their  own  sensations,  the  Indians  an- 
tjcipated  he  Europeans  in  the  use  of  the  cold  regimen  in  small-pox;  and 
the  mortality  that  the  disorder  produced  among  them  was  at  first  erroneously 
ascribed  to  this  practice.'    Even  the  acquired  relish  for  superior  comforts 
and  finer  luxuries,  which  might  have  been  expected  to  lead  the  Indians  to 
more  civihzed  modes  of  life,  was  productive  of  an  opposite  effect,  and 
tended  to  confirm  them  in  savage  pursuits  ;  as  those  luxuries  were  now  gen- 
erally tendered  to  them  in  exchange  for  the  peltry  which  they  procured  bv 
hunting.     Almost  all  the  Indian  tribes  were  engaged  in  wars  with  each 
otHer  ;  and  all  were  eager  to  obtain  the  new  instruments  of  destruction  which 
the  superior  science  of  the  Europeans  had  created.    Wielding  this  improved 
machinery  of  death  with  the  same  rage  and  fury  that  characterized  their  pie- 
vious  warfare  ^ylth    ess  efTicaclous  weapons,  their  mutual   hostilities  were 
rendered  additionally  destructive  by  the  communication  of  an  invention, 
which,  among  civilized  rations,  has  shortened  the  duration  and   Himini^hpd 


'  Kalm. 


?7 


566 


HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA. 


[APP.  1. 


«lie  carnage  of  war.  But  as  tlie  intercourse  of  mankind  with  each  other  must 
always  ho  mutually  beneficial  or  mutually  injurious,  the  Europeans  themselves 
incurred  the  most  serious  disadvantage  from  their  association  with  the  In- 
dians. Besides  the  misery  and  desolation  produced  by  the  sanguinary  hos- 
tilities  of  the  savage  tribes,  the  fraud,  the  vice,  injustice,  and  hazard  incident 
to  the  Indian  trade  depraved  the  manners  and  debased  the  disposition  and 
character  of  almost  all  the  colonists  who  engaged  in  it.  Europe  received 
the  vilest  of  human  diseases  from  America,  and  in  return  communicated 
the  small-pox.  How  a  civilized  people  may  commingle  with,  or  even  in- 
habit tlie  vicinity  of,  savage  tribes,  without  mutual  corruption  and  the  de- 
clension and  final  extinction  .f  the  weaker  race,  is  a  problem  which  has 
hitherto  eluded  human  solution. 

At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Indian  tribes  of  New  England 
could  still  muster  ten  thousand  fighting  men  ;  ^  those  of  New  York,  one 
thousand  ;  and  those  of  Virginia,  five  hundred.  There  were  six  thousand 
Indians  altogether  in  Pemisylvania  ;  four  thousand  in  North  Carolina  ;  prob- 
ably as  many  in  South  Carolina  ;  three  thousand  in  Maryland  ;  and  only 
two  hundred  in  New  Jersey. ** 

The  danger  which  the  European  colonists  must  have  incurred,  during 
the  infancy  of  thoir  settlements,  from  a  coalition  between  their  negro  slaves 
and  the  Indians,  was  obviated  by  the  violent  dislike  and  antipathy  which 
long  prevailed  between  these  two  degenerate  races.  The  gentle  and  ef- 
feminate Indians  of  South  America  were  regarded  from  the  first  with  scorn 
and  disdain  by  the  negro  slaves  of  the  Spaniards  ;  and  the  freer  and  hardier 
Indians  of  North  America  demonstrated  the  fiercest  aversion  and  contempt 
fot^  the  negroes  imported  into  the  settlements  of  the  English. ^ 

'  Wlion  Connecticut  wus  first  settled,  there  were  computed  to  be  twenty  thousand  Indians 
witliin  Its  boundttnos  alone.  Trumbull.  In  Gookin's  Historical  Collecliona  of  the  Indians  in 
-Wio  £rt^/«7irf  some  illustration  is  aftbrded  of  the  rapid  decline  which  these  tribes  sustained 
during  the  short  interval  between  the  settlement  of  the  New  England  Slates  and  the  year 
1G74.  The  Pequods  were  reduced  from  four  thousand  to  three  hundred  warriors  ;  the  Nor- 
raganscta,  from  'hree  thousand  to  one  thousand  ;  the  Pawtuckets,  from  three  thousand  to 
two  hundred  and  fifty  ;  the  Massachusetts  (who  have  given  their  name  to  the  principal  State 
in  New  England),  from  three  thousand  to  three  hundred  ;  and  the  Pawkunnakuts,  n  tribe 
which  had  formerly  numbered  three  thousand  warriors,  was  almost  entirely  extinct.  Collec- 
tions of  the  Massachusetts  Uislorical  Society. 

*  Oldmixon.  Warden.  The  most  accurate,  I  believe,  and  certainly  the  most  interesting, 
picture  of  Indian  manners  that  exists  in  the  English  language  is  contoined  in  that  adniirabfe 
production  of  learning  and  genius,  Southey's  Hislunj  of  Brazil.     Much  curious  information 

respecting  the  '■•-* —  — '  ' ''  ■'      »    >•        ■  • 

Albert  Gallotir  .    ;,    ,    -    .,  - .„,    . 

Transactions  of  the  Ameriam  Antiquarian  Society. 

^  Soon  after  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  interniarri.d^cs  began  to  take  plam 
between  the  negroes  and  the  declining  remnant  of  the  Indian  communities  in  Massachuse'  i 
and  "  the  mixed  race  increased  in  numbers,  and  improved  in  temperance  and  indust 
Collections  of  tlie  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  About  thirty  years  after,  the  historian  of  the 
Moravian  missions  relates  that  "  the  negroes  and  Indi.ins  intermarry  without  any  scruple." 
Loskiel.  "  As  for  the  usurnation  of  territory  from  the  natives  by  the  American  States,"  snys 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  organs  of  literary,  moral,  and  political  criticism  in  England, 
"be  must  be  a  feeble  moralis.  who  regards  that  as  an  evil ;  the  same  principle  upon  which 
that  usurpation  is  condenine.'  would  lead  to  the  nonsensical  opinions  of  the  Brahmins,  thai 
agriculture  is  an  unrighteous  f.^np' ^viT|p,nt,  because  worms  must  sometimes  be  cut  by  the 
ploughshare  and  the  spade.  li '"  '.o^  .^rder  of  nature  that  beasts  should  give  place  to  man,  and 
among  men  the  savage  to  the  -  r  ii.;.. .';  nn  >  nowhere  has  this  order  been  carried  into  effect 
with  so  little  violence  as  in  'Sntih  /  ■  lenua.  Sir  Thomas  More  admits  it  to  bo  a  ju.stifiablo 
cause  of  war,  even  in  Utopia,  if  i  pople,  who  have  territory  to  spare,  will  not  cede  it  to 
those  who  ore  in  want  of  room."     quarterly  Review.    See  Wisdom  of  Solomon ,  xli.,  3,  7. 


respecting  the  history  and  language  of  the  Indians  lias  recently  been  given  to  the  world  in 
in's  Syniijms  of  the  Indian  Tribes,"  &c.,  published  in  the  second  volume  of  thi' 


NOTES 


TO 


THE     FIRST     VOLUME. 


NOTE  I.     Page  36. 


Thi 


important  instruction,  both  moral  and  political,  which  may  bo  derived  from 

a  considernt.on  of  the  origin  of  the  slave-trade,  is  forcibly  depicted  by  tliat  distin- 

gumhed  phdanthropist  (Ti^omas  Clarkson)  whose  virtue   pfomotedfanS  who^ 

gonus  has  recorded,  the  abolition  of  this  detestable  traffic.     It  is  a  remarkable 

fact,  that  he  pious  and  benevolent  Las  Cnsas,  actuated  by  an  earnest  desire  to 

emancipate  the  feeble  natives  of  South  America  from  the  bondage  of  the  Spanish 

colonists,  was  the  first  person  who  proposed  to  the  government  of  Spain  the  im- 

portation  of  negroes  from  Africa  to  America.     His  proposition  was  rejected  by 

Cardinal  Ximenes,  who  considered   it  unlawful  to  consign  innocent  people  to 

slavery  at  all,  and  was,  moreover,  struck  with  the  moral  inconsistency  of  deliver- 

Jng  the  inhabitants  of  one  country  from  a  state  of  misery,  by  transferring  it  to  the 

inimbitants  of  another.    "After  the  death  of  Cardinal  Ximenes,  the  Emperor 

Charles    he  Fifth  encouraged  the  slave-trade.     In  1517,  he  granted  a  patent  to 

1      o'  .h's  r'emish  favorites,  containing  an  exclusive  right  of  importing  four 

housand  Africans  into  America.     But  he  lived  long  enough  to  repent  of  what 

he  had  thus  inconsiderately  done.     For  in  the  year  1542,  he  maoe  a  code  of  laws 

for  the  better  protection  of  the  unfortunate  Indians  in  his  foreign  dominions  ;  and 

he  stopped  the  progress  of  African  slavery  by  an  order  that  all  slaves  in  his 

American  islands  should  be  made  free."     This  order  was  subsequently  defeated 

by  his  own  retirement  into  a  monastery ;  but  "  it  shows  he  had  been  ignorant  of 

What  he  was  doing,  when  he  gave  his  sanction  to  this  cruel  trade.    It  shows,  when 

legislators  give  one  set  of  men  an  undue  power  over  another,  how  quickly  they 

abuse  It ;  or  he  never  would  have  found  himself  obliged,  in  the  short  space  of 

twenty-five   years,  to  undo  that  which  he  had  countenanced  as  a  great  state 

measu  e      And  while  it  confirms  the  former  lesson  to  statesmen,  of  watching  the 

beginnings  or  principles  of  things,  in  their  political  movements,  it  should  teach 

them  never  to  persist  in  the  support  of  evils,  through  the  false  shame  of  being 

obhged  to  confess  that  they  had  once  given  them'  their  sanction ;  nor  to  delay 

the  cure  of  them,  because,  politically  speaking,  neither  this  nor  that  is  the  proper 

season  ;  but  to  do  them  away  instantly,  as  there  can  be  only  one  fit  or  proper 

time  in  the  eye  of  religion,  namely,  on  the  conviction  of  their  existence."  — 

Clarkson  s  History  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave-trade. 

Louis  the  Thirteenth  of  France  was  at  first  staggered  by  the  same  scruples 
ol  conscience  that  prevailed  with  the  Emperor  Charles,  and  could  not  be  per- 
suaded  to  authorize  the  slave-trade  till  he  was  induced  to  believe  that  he  would 
promote  the  religious  conversion  of  the  negroes  by  suffering  them  to  be  trans- 
ported to  the  colonies.  —  Ibid.  o  j  o 


568 


NOTES. 


NOTE  II.     Page  59. 

Captain  Smith  was  so  obnoxious  to  the  leading  patentees,  that,  even  if  he  had 
remained  in  the  colony,  it  is  highly  improbable  that  they  would  ever  again  have 
intrusted  him  with  official  authority.  They  neither  rewarded  nor  relmployed 
him  after  his  return  to  England.  They  were  bent  on  deriving  immediate  sup- 
plies  of  gold  or  rich  merchandise  fiom  Virginia;  and  ascribed  their  disappoint- 
ment  in  a  great  measure  to  his  having  restricted  his  views  to  the  establishment 
of  a  solid  and  respectable  frame  of  provincial  society.  This  is  apparent  from 
many  passages  of  his  writings,  and  particularly  from  his  letter  to  the  patentees 
while  he  held  the  presidency.  An  honester  but  absurder  reason,  that  prompted 
sonie  ol  them  to  oppose  his  pretensions  to  office,  was,  that  certain  fortune-tellers 
had  predicted  that  he  would  be  unlucky;  a  prediction  that  sometimes  contributes 
to  Its  own  fulfilment. 

In  various  parts  of  his  history,  Smith  applies  himself  to  refute  their  unreason- 
able  charges,  and  account  for  the  disappointment  of  their  expectations.  For  this 
purpose  he  has  drawn  a  parallel  between  the  circumstances  of  the  Spanish  and 
the  ±.nglish  colonists  of  America.  "  It  was  the  Spaniards'  good  hap,"  he  ob- 
serves, "  to  happen  in  those  parts  where  were  infinite  numbers  of  people,  who 
had  manured  the  ground  with  that  providence  it  afforded  victuals  at  all  times 
And  time  had  brought  them  to  that  perfection,  that  they  had  the  use  of  gold  and 
silver,  and  the  most  of  such  commodities  as  those  countries  afforded :  so  that 
what  the  Spaniards  got  was  chiefly  the  spoil  and  pillage  of  those  country  people 
and  not  the  labors  of  their  own  hands.  But  had  these  fruitful  countries  been 
as  &ivage,  as  barbarous,  as  ill  peopled,  as  little  planted,  labored,  and  manured, 
as  Virginia,  their  proper  labors,  it  is  likely,  would  have  produced  as  small  profit 
as  ours.  And  had  Virgmia  been  peopled,  planted,  manured,  and  adorned  with 
such  store  of  precious  jewels  and  rich  commodities  as  were  the  Indies ;  then  had 
we  not  gotten  and  done  as  much  as,  by  their  examples,  might  be  expected  from 
us,  the  world  might  then  have  traduced  us  and  our  merits,  and  have  made  shame 
and  infamy  our  recompense  and  reward." 

Were  we  to  confine  our  attention  to  the  superficial  import  of  this  isolated  pas- 
sage.  It  would  be  difhcult  not  to  suppose  that  this  excellent  pei-son  was  deterred 
less  by  want  of  inclination  than  by  lack  of  opportunity  from  imitating  the  robberies 
and  cruelties  of  the  Spanish  adventurers.     But  the  general  strain  of  his  book,  as 
well  as  the  more  credible  evidence  supplied  by  the  whole  scope  and  tenor  of  his 
hie,  would  fully  refute  the  unjust  supposition.     That  he  was  unacquainted  with 
the  enormities  committed  by  the  Spaniards  in  Mexico  and  Peru  may  be  collected 
ironi  the  praises  he  bestows  on  their  exploits,  and  from  his  appealing  to  the  glorv 
of  these  exploits  as  an  incentive  that  should  stimulate  the  ardor  of  the  English  io 
the  exercise  of  laborious  virtue,  and  the  prosecution  of  humble  but  honest  emolu- 
ment 'n  North  America.    Thus  nobly  we  find  him  expressing  ihe  sentiments  of  a 
mind  which  the  condition  of  humanity  did  not  exempt  from  being  deceived,  but 
which  piety  preserved  from  gross  depravation  or  perversion  :  — "  Who  can  desire 
more  content,  that  hath  small  means,  or  but  only  his  merit,  to  advance  his  fortunes, 
han  to  tread  and  plant  that  ground  he  hath  purchased  by  the  hazard  of  his  life  ? 
it  he  have  but  the  tas.e  of  virtue  and  magnanimity,  what  to  such  a  mind  can  be 
more  pleasant  than  planting  and  building  a  foundation  for  his  posterity,  ^ot  from 
he  rude  earth  by  God's  blessing  and  his  own  industry,  without  prejudice^to  any  > 
If  he  have  any  grain  of  faith  or  zeal  in  religion,  what  can  he  do  less  hurtful  to 
any,  or  more  agreeable  to  God,  than  to  seek  to  convert  those  poor  savages  to  know 
Christ  and  humanity,  whose  labors  with  discretion  will  triple  thy  charge  and  pains  ? 
What  so  truly  suits  with  honor  and  honesty  as  the  discovering  things  unknown, 
erecting  towns,  peopling  c-mtries,  informing  the  iffnorant.  refnrminrr  tl,ina«  un- 
jual,  teaciiing  virtue;  and  gaining  to  our  mother  country  a  kingdom  to  attend  her; 


NOTES. 


569 


ven  if  he  had 
3r  again  have 
r  reemployed 
nmediate  sup- 
ir  disappoint- 
establishment 
pparent  from 
the  patentees 
hut  prompted 
fortune-tellers 
es  contributes 

leir  unreason- 
ms.  For  this 
!  Spanish  and 
hap,"  he  ob- 
people,  who 
at  all  times, 
of  gold  and 
•ded:  so  that 
untry  people, 
ountries  been 
nd  manured, 
s  small  profit 
adorned  with 
!s ;  then,  had 
cpected  from 
made  shame 

isolated  pas- 
was  deterred 
the  robberies 
'  his  book,  as 

tf  nor  of  his 
uainted  with 

be  collected 

to  the  glory 
e  English  in 
uncst  emolu- 
Uiments  of  a 
leceived,  but 
10  can  desire 
his  fortunes, 
I  of  his  life  ? 
mind  can  be 
ty,  got  from 
lice  to  any  ? 
ss  hurtful  to 
ges  to  know 
i  and  pains  ? 
fs  unknown, 
£T  ihin"H  un-! 

attend  her ; 


finding  employment  for  those  that  are  idle  because  they  know  not  what  to  do:  so 
far  Jrom  wrongmg  any,  as  to  cause  posterity  to  remember  thee,  and,  remember- 
ing  thee,  ever  to  honor  that  remembrance  with  praise .?  "  It  is  probably  such  ex- 
pressions as  these  that  have  led  certain  writers  to  charge  Smith  with  enthusiasm,— 
a  term  by  which  some  persons  denote  every  elevation  of  view  and  tone  that  re- 
hgion  imparts,  — and  by  which  many  others  designate  every  quality  and  senti- 
ment above  the  pitch  of  their  own  nature. 

Smith  proceeds  as  follows :  — "  Then  who  would  live  at  home  idly,  or  think 
m  himself  any  worth  to  live,  only  to  eat,  drink,  and  sleep,  and  so  die ;  or  con- 
suming that  carelessly  his  friends  got  worthily,  or  using  that  miserably  that  main- 
tained virtue  honestly ;  or,  being  descended  nobly,  pine,  with  :b.e  vain  vaunt  of 
great  kindred,  in  penury;  or,  to  maintain  a  silly  show  of  bravery,  toil  on;  il.y 
heart,  soul,  and  time  basely,  by  shifts,  tricks,  cards,  and  dice ;  or,  by'relating  news 
ot  other  men  s  actions,  shark  here  and  there  for  a  dimier  or  supper,"  &c., 
though  thou  seest  what  honors  and  rewards  the  world  yet  hath  for  them  that  will 
seek  them  and  worthily  deserve  them .?  "  He  adds,  shortly  after,  "  It  would  be  a 
history  of  a  large  volume,  to  recite  the  adventures  of  the  Spaniards  and  Portugals, 
their  affronts  and  defeats,  their  dangers  and  miseries,  which,  with  such  incompar- 
able honor  and  constant  resolutici,  so  far  beyond  belief,  they  have  attempted  and 
endured,  in  their  discoveries  and  plantations,  as  may  well  condemn  us  of  too  much 
imbecility,  sloth,  and  negligence.  Yet  the  authors  of  these  new  inventions  were 
held  as  ridiculous  for  a  long  time,  as  now  are  others  that  but  seek  to  imitate  their 
unparalleled  virtues." 

I  should  contend  neither  wisely  nor  honestly  for  the  fame  of  Captain  Smith, 
were  I  to  represent  him  as  a  faultless  character,  perfectly  divested  of  the  imper- 
fections of  humanity.  The  sufferings  of  others  were  able  to  provoke  him  to  an 
intemperance,  at  least  of  language,  which  none  of  his  own  trials  and  provocations 
ever  elicited,  and  with  which  none  of  his  actions  ever  corresponded.  Indi^^nant 
at  the  cruel  massacre  of  the  Virginian  colonists  in  1622,  long  af\er  he  had  lef\ 
them,  he  pronounced  in  haste  and  anger  that  the  colony  could  not  be  preserved 
without  subduing  or  expelling  the  Indians,  and  punishing  their  perfidious  cruelty, 
as  the  Spaniards  had  punished  "the  treacherous  and  rebellious  infidels"  in  South 
America.  These  expressions  afford  a  farther  proof  of  the  very  imperfect  ac- 
quaintance he  had  with  the  real  circumstances  that  attended  the  subjugation  of 
South  America  by  the  Spaniards,  "  Notwithstanding  such  a  stern  and  invincible 
resolution  as  Captain  Smith  displayed,"  says  an  intelligent  historian  of  Virginia, 
"  there  was  seldom  seen  a  milder  and  more  tender  heart  than  his  was."     Stith. 

Smith  expatiates  at  great  length,  and  with  much  spirit  and  ability,  on  the  ad- 
vantages of  colonial  establishments  in  America ;  and  propounds  a  variety  of  in- 
ducements to  embark  in  them,  appropriate  to  the  various  classes  of  society  in 
England.  Colonies  he  characterizes  as  schools  for  perpetuating  the  hardy  virtues 
on  which  the  safety  of  every  state  depends.  He  ascribes  the  fall  of  Rome  and 
the  subjugation  of  Constantinople  to  the  indolence  and  covetousness  of  the  rich, 
who  not  only  passed  their  own  lives  in  slothful  indulgence,  but  retained  the  poor 
in  factious  idleness,  by  neglecting  to  engage  them  in  safe  and  useful  employment ; 
and  strongly  urges  the  wealthy  capitalists  of  England  to  provide  for  their  own  se- 
curity, by  facilitating  every  foreign  vent  to  the  energies  of  active  and  indigent 
men.  He  enlarges  on  the  pleasures  incident  to  a  planter's  life,  and  illustrates 
his  description  by  the  testimony  of  his  own  experience.  "  I  have  not  been  so  ill- 
bred,"  he  declares,  "  but  I  have  tasted  of  plenty  and  pleasure,  as  well  as  want 
and  misery.  And  lest  any  should  think  the  toif  might  be  insupportable,  I  assure 
myself  there  are  who  delight  extremely  in  vain  pleasure,  that  take  much  more 
pains  in  England  to  enjoy  it  than  I  should  do  there  to  gain  wealth  sufficient ;  and 
yet  1  tiiink  they  should  not  iiavc  half  such  sweet  content."  To  gentlemen  he  pm- 
poses,  among  other  inducements,  the  pleasures  of  fishing,  fowling,  and  hunting,  to 


VOL.    I. 


72 


vv 


570  NOTES. 

an  unbounded  extent ;  and  to  laborers,  the  blessings  of  a  vacant  soil,  of  unequalled 
cheapness  and  unsurpassed  fertility.  He  promises  no  mines  to  tempt  sordid  ava- 
rice, nor  conquests  to  allure  profligate  ambition  ;  but  the  advantages  of  a  temper- 
ate clime  and  of  a  secure  and  exhaustless  subsistence,  —  the  wealth  that  agriculture 
may  extract  from  the  land,  and  fisheries  from  the  sea.  "  Therefore,"  he  con- 
cludes, "  honorable  and  worthy  countrymen,  let  not  the  meanness  of  the  word  fish 
distaste  you  ;  for  it  will  afford  as  good' gold  as  the  mines  of  Guiana  or  Potosi,  with 
less  hazard  and  charge,  and  more  certainty  and  facility." 

I  have  given  but  a  mere  outline  of  Smith's  exposition  of  this  subject.  The  de- 
tails with  which  he  has  filled  it  up  are  highly  interesting  and  well  deserving  of 
perusal.  I  think  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  has  treated  the  subject  of  coloni- 
zation with  more  both  of  the  practical  skill  of  a  politician  and  the  profound  sagaci- 
ty of  a  philosopher,  than  Lord  Bacon  has  siiuwn  in  either  or  l)oth  of  his  produc- 
tions, the  Essay  on  Plantations,  and  tlie  Considerations  touching  the  Plantation 
in  Ireland. 

The  name  of  Smith  has  not  yet  gathered  all  its  fame.  The  lustre  it  once  pos- 
sessed is  somewhat  obscured  by  time,  and  by  the  circumstances  that  left  America 
so  long  to  depend  on  England  for  the  sentiments  and  opinions  that  literature  pre- 
serves or  produces,  and  consequently  led  her  to  rate  her  eminent  men  rather  by 
the  importance  of  their  achievements  in  the  scale  of  British  than  of  American 
history.  But  Smith's  renown  will  break  forth  again,  and  once  more  be  commen- 
surate with  his  desert.  It  will  grow  with  the  growth  of  men  and  letters  in  Amer- 
ica ;  and  whole  nations  of  its  admirers  have  yet  to  be  born.  As  the  stream  be- 
comes more  illustrious,  the  springs  will  be  reckoned  more  interesting. 

Smith  Wc.„  born  in  the  year  1579,  and  died  on  the  21st  of  June   1631. 


NOTE  III.    Page  62. 

Robertson's  credit  as  a  historian  is  not  a  little  impeached  by  the  strange  in- 
accuracy  of  his  account  of  Sir  Thomas  Dale's  administration.  He  not  only  im- 
putes to  the  Company  the  composition  and  introduction  of  the  arbitrary  code  trans- 
mitted by  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  but  unfolds  at  length  the  (imaginary)  reasons  that 
prevailed  with  them  to  adopt  a  measure  so  harsh  and  sanguinary ;  though  of  this 
measure  itself  they  are  expressly  acquitted  by  Stith,  the  only  authority  on  the  sub- 
ject that  exists,  and  the  very  authority  to  whom  Robertson  himself  refers.  Among 
the  other  reasons  which  he  assigns  is  the  advice  of  Lord  Bacon,  which  he  unhesi- 
tatingly charges  this  eminent  person  with  having  communicated,  and  the  Compa- 
ny with  having  approved.  In  support  of  an  accusation  so  distinct  and  so  remark- 
able,  he  refers  merely  to  a  passage  in  Lord  Bacon's  Essay  on  Plantations.  It 
would  be  well  for  the  fame  of  Bacon,  if  all  the  charges  witli  which  his  character  is 
loaded  were  supported  only  by  such  evidence.  For  supposing  (which  is  doubtful) 
tliat  this  essay  was  published  before  the  collection  of  Sir  Thomas  Smith's  system 
of  martial  law,  and  supposing  it  to  have  been  read  by  the  compiler  of  that  system, 
it  is  surely  more  than  doubtful  if  the  passage  alluded  to  would  yet  support  Dr. 
Robertson's  imputation.  It  merely  recommends  that  a  provincial  government 
should  "  have  commission  to  exercise  martial  laws,  with  some  limitation"  ;  a  pow- 
er inseparable  from  such,  and  indeed  from  every  system  of  government.  The 
twenty-fourth  section  of  King  James's  second  charter  to  the  Company  liad  already 
invested  the  provincial  governors  with  "  full  power  and  authority  to  use  and  ex- 
ercise martial  law,  in  cases  of  mutiny  or  rebellion  "  ;  and  the  preceding  section  of 
the  same  charter  authorizes  them,  "  in  case  of  necessity,"  to  rule,  correct,  and 
punish,  according  to  their  own  "  good  discretions."  No'  blame  can  attach  to  the 
faai'tj  aulliorizulion  of  an  extraordinary  power,  reserved'  in  every  society,  for  ex. 


NOTES.  ^«j 

traordinary  occasions  What  alone  seems  deserving  of  blame  is  Sir  Thomas 
Smith  8  violent  and  illegal  substitution  of  the  most  sanguinary  code  of  martial 
law  that  was  ever  framed,  in  the  room  of  the  original  constitution,  and  for  the  or- 
dinary govemnrient  of  the  colony;  and  Dr.  Robertson's  very  hasty  and  unfounded 
imputation  of  this  measure  to  the  act  of  the  council  and  the  advice  of  Lord  Bacon. 
It  had  been  well,  if  the  council  had  paid  more  attention  to  the  maxim  of  this  great 
man,  that     Those  who  plant  colonies  must  be  endued  with  great  patience." 


NOTE  IV.     Page  118. 

An  illustration  of  this  remark  may  perhaps  be  derived  from  the  apologetic  the- 
cry  philosophical  slave-owntrs  have  introduced  into  the  world,  — that  the  negroes 
are  a  separate  and  inferior  race  of  men ;  a  notion  by  which  the  degradation  that 
human  beings  mflict  on  their  fellows,  in  reducing  them  to  the  level  of  the  brute 
creation,  IS  charged  upon  God,  whose  word  assures  us  that  he  created  man  after 
his  own  image,  and  that  he  fashioned  all  souls  alike.  Interest  and  pride  harden 
the  heart;  a  deceived  heart  perverts  the  understanding,  and  men  are  easily  per. 
suaded  to  consider  those  as  brutes  whom  they  deem  it  convenient  to  treat  as  such. 
Ihe  best  refutation  of  this  theory  that  I  have  ever  seen  is  the  production  of  an 
American  writer.  It  occurs  in  Dr.  S.  Smith's  interesting  Essay  on  the  Causes  of 
the  Variety  of  Figure  and  Complexion  in  the  Human  Species.  See,  also,  on  the 
same  subject,  Clarkson's  Researches,  Antediluvian,  Patriarchal,  &c. 

in  his  Notes  on  Virginia,  Mr.  Jefferson  has  contended  for  the  natural  inferiority 
of  negroes  to  white  men.  But  I  was  assured  by  the  Abbd  Gregoire  (formerly 
Hishop  of  BIois),  that  Jefferson,  in  a  private  letter  to  him,  confessed  that  he  ha*d 
seen  cause  to  alter  this  opinion.  Anthony  Benezet,  the  Quaker,  himself  a  very 
ingenious  and  accomplished  man,  who  had  conversed  extensively  with  negroes 
in  America,  and  undertaken  the  education  of  a  great  number  of  them,  pronounced, 
as  the  result  of  his  experience,  that  this  race  is  perfectly  equal  to  the  whites  in 
all  the  endowments  of  nature ;  the  prevalence  of  an  opposite  opinion  he  ascribed 
partly  to  the  debasing  effect  of  slavery  on  the  minds  of  the  negroes,  and  partly  to 
the  mfluence  of  ignorance,  pride,  and  cruelty  on  those  white  men,  who,  pluming 
themselves  on  a  wide  separation  from  the  negroes,  are  incompetent  to  form  a 
sound  judgment  on  the  capacities  of  this  race.  Vaux's  Life  of  Benezet.  Man 
(alas!)  seems  to  be  the  only  creature  capable  of  provoking  from  his  fellow-man 
such  cruelty  as  the  blacks  have  experienced  from  the  whites. 

Most  of  the  advocates  or  apologists  of  slaveiy  maintain  that  enslaved  negroes 
are  generally  contented  with  their  lot,  —  a  statement,  which,  if  correct,  might  well 
be  cited  in  proof  of  the  corrupting  effect  of  slavery  on  ordinary  minds.  Who  re- 
gards otherwise  than  with  pity  and  contempt  the  depraved  longings  of  the  emanci- 
pated Israelites  for  a  return  to  the  ignominy  of  Egyptian  bondage  ?  The  con- 
tentment of  a  slave  in  his  degraded  estate  proves  that  the  iron  has  entered  into 
las  soul.  "If  thou  mayest  be  free,"  says  an  inspired  Apostle,  "use  it  rather." 
A  distinguished  American  writer,  whom  I  respect  so  highly  as  to  be  unwilling  to 
name  him,  on  the  present  occasion,  has  so  far  misused  i.:"  ndmirable  inge^.-ty  as 
to  maintain  that  slavery  may  prove  a  blessing  to  the  country  in  which  it  exists, 
and  elevate  human  character  by  affording  opportunity  to  the  masters  of  generous 
self-control,  and  to  the  slaves  of  grateful  recognition  of  the  indulgent  forbearance 
of  their  masters.  To  be  consistent  (an  impossibility  to  a  North  American  advo- 
cate of  slavery),  tins  accomplished  writer  should  demand  an  alteration  of  thf 
Lord  s  prayer,  and,  instead  of  the  petition,  "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation,  but  de- 
liver us  from  evil,"  propose  as  our  orison,  "  Let  us  fall  into  temptulion,  that  wc 
may  deliver  oureolves  from  evil." 


572  NOTES. 

Many  Americans,  while  they  cling  to  the  vile  institution  of  negro  slavery  (as- 
serting,  with  horrible  sophistrj-,  the  sacredness  of  a  man's  pretension  to  an  artificial 
right  of  property  in  the  violent  privation  of  another  man's  natural  right  of  property 
in  his  own  liberty;,  are  eager  to  impute  its  existence,  or  at  least  its  extent,  among 
them,  to  the  policy  and  conduct  of  the  British  government,  in  encouragirg  the 
slave-trade,  and  disregarding  the  remonstrances  against  it  that  were  addressed  to 
them  by  certain  of  the  American  provinces.  But  they  urge  this  apologetic  plea 
a  great  deal  too  far.  Britain  could  not  force  her  colonial  offspring  to  become 
slave-holders,  though  she  might  (and  did)  facilitate  their  acquisition  of  slaves 
"  Every  man,"  says  the  word  of  God,  "  is  tempted,  when  he  is  drawn  away  of  his 
own  lust,  and  enticed."  By  far  the  greater  part  of  the  remonstrances  unsuc- 
cessfully addressed  to  the  British  government  were  the  suggestions  of  men  who 
themselves  possessed  abundance  of  slaves,  and  who  were  desirous  of  preventing 
others  from  rivalling  them  in  wealth,  and  from  endangering  the  stability  of 
slavery,  by  additional  importations  of  negroes  unaccustomed  to  the  yoke.  I 
have  heard  many  slave-owners  vehemently  profess  a  sincere  desire  to  discover 
some  practicable  plan  of  abolishing  slavery  ;  but  almost  invariably  found  that 
they  required  the  impracticability  of  repairing  long  and  enormous  injustice  with- 
out any  atoning  sacrifice  or  reparatory  expense. 


NOTE  V.     Page  148.  , 

Chalmers  and  Robertson  have  ascribed  the  slow  increase  of  the  colonists  of 
New  Plymouth  to  "  the  unsocial  character  of  their  religious  confederacy."  As 
the  charge  of  entertaining  antisocial  principles  was  preferred  against  the  first 
Christians  by  men  who  plumed  themselves  on  exercising  hospitality  to  the  gods 
of  all  nations,  it  is  necessary  to  ascertain  the  precise  meaning  of  this  imputation 
against  the  American  colonists,  if  we  would  know  whether  it  be  praise  or  blame 
that  it  involves.  Whether,  in  a  truly  blameworthy  acceptation,  the  charge  of 
unsocial  principles  most  properly  belongs  to  these  people  or  to  their  adversaries 
may  be  collected  from  the  statements  they  have  respectively  made  of  the  terms 
on  which  they  were  willing  to  hold  a  companionable  intercourse  with  their  fellow- 
men.  Winslow,  who  was  for  some  time  governor  of  New  Plymouth,  in  his  ac- 
count of  the  colony,  declares  that  the  faith  of  the  people  was  in  all  respects  the 
same  with  that  of  the  reformed  churches  of  Europe,  from  which  they  differed 
only  in  their  opinion  of  church  government,  wherein  they  pursued  a  more 
thorough  reformation.  They  disclaimed,  however,  any  uncharitable  separation 
from  those  with  whom  they  differed  on  this  point,  and  freely  admitted  the  mem- 
bers of  every  reformed  church  to  communion  with  them.  "  We  ever  placed," 
he  continues,  "  a  large  difference  between  those  that  grounded  their  practice  on 
the  word  of  God,  though  differing  from  us  in  the  exposition  and  understanding 
of  it,  and  those  that  hated  such  reformers  and  reformation,  and  went  on  in  anti^ 
christian  opposition  to  it  and  persecution  of  it.  It  is  true,  we  profess  and  desire 
to  practise  a  separation  from  the  world  and  the  works  of  the  world  ;  and  as  the 
churches  of  Christ  are  all  saints  by  calling,  so  we  desire  to  see  the  grace  of 
God  shining  forth  (at  least  seemingly,  leaving  secret  things  to  God)  in  all  whom 
we  admit  into  church-fellowship  with  us,  and  to  keep  off  such  as  openly  wallow 
in  the  mire  of  their  sins,  that  neither  the  holy  things  of  God  nor  the  communion  of 
saints  may  be  leavened  or  polluted  thereby."  He  adds,  that  none  of  the  settlers 
who  were  admitted  into  the  church  of  New  Plymouth  were  encouraged,  or  even 
permitted,  to  insert  in  the  declaration  of  their  faith  a  renunciation  of  the  church 
of  England,  or  of  any  other  reformed  establishment.  Mather.  It  does  not  ap- 
pear to  me  that  these  sentimetiis  warrant  the  charge  of  unstjcial  principles  in  any 


NOTES, 


673 


sense  which  a  Chr.st.an  will  feci  himself  at  all  concerned  to  disclaim.  Whether 
♦.he  advcrsanes  of  these  men  were  distinguished  for  principles  more  honorably 
ZlwTr^""'".'"*'-^  charitable  may  be  gathered  'from  a  passage  in  HoS 
Famthar  Letters  where  this  defender  of  royalty  and  episcopacy  thus  expresses 
the  senuments  of  h.s  party  respecting  religio^us  dVerenc'es  be'twe'en  manki';^! 
•  I  ra  her  p.ty  than  hate  a  Turk  or  infidel ;  for  they  are  of  the  same  metal  and 
bear  the  same  stamp  as  I  do,  though  the  inscriptions  differ.  If  I  hate  any,  it  is 
those  sch.smat.cs  that  puzzle  the  sweet  peace  of  our  chumh ;  so  that  I  could  be 
content  to  see  an  Anabaptist  go  to  hell  on  a  Brownist's  back."  The  ecclesiastical 
policy  of  the  monarchs  and  prelates  of  England  tendered  a  premium  to  the 
production  of  such  sentiments.  Howel's  fervor  for  the  church  party  did  not 
survive  the  power  of  this  party  to  reward  him.  After  the  fall  of  the  English 
church  and  monarchy,  he  became  the  defender  and  panegyrist  of  the  adminis. 

Ifrtnl^T^l''  though  like  Waller  and  Dryden,  he  returned  in  the  train 
of  fortune,  when  she  returned  to  his  original  friends. 


NOTE  VI.    Page  171. 

The  introduction  of  this  feature  into  the  portrait  of  Sir  Henry  Vane  rests 
entirely  on  the  authority  of  Burnet  and  Kennet  (followed  by  Hum%,who  sjS 

^Z.T7'  Jt?^'^^'  ^^°  ^"r  ^^"^  personally,  bestows  the  highest  pK 
on  his  imperturbable  serenity  and  presence  of  mind  ;  and,  with  the  sympathy  of  a 
kindred  spirit,  describes  the  resolute  magnanimity  with  which  at  his  trial  he 
sealed  h.s  own  fate  by  scorning  to  plead,  like  Lambert,  for  his  life,  and  gallantly 
pleading  for  the  dy.ng  liberties  of  his  country.  At  his  execution,  when  lome  of 
his  friends  expressed  resentment  of  the  injuries  that  were  heaped  upon  him,— 

1  u  Ik  '?  ^^\  ""^'^^  ^J^""  f^^  ''^^P  *°  "^^^  ^  Poof  creature  like  his  Saviour  ♦ 
I  bless  the  Lord  I  am  so  far  from  being  affrighted  at  death,  that  I  find  it  rather 
shrink  from  mo  than  I  from  it.  Ten  thousand  deaths  for  me,  before  I  will  defile 
the  cha.st.ty  and  purity  of  my  conscience ;  nor  would  I  for  ten  thousand  worlds 
part  with  the  peace  and  satisfaction  I  have  now  in  my  heart."  Perhaps  the  deev 
piety  and  constant  negation  of  all  merit  in  himself,  by  which  the  heroism  of  Vane 
was  softened  and  ennobled,  may  have  suggested  to  minds  unacquainted  with 
these  principles  the  imputation  of  constitutional  timidity.  At  all  events,  thi» 
cloud,  whether  naturally  attendant  on  his  character  or  artificially  raised  by  the 
envious  breath  of  his  detractors,  has,  from  the  admirable  vigor  of  hia  mind  and 
the  unquestioned  courage  of  his  demeanour,  served  rather  to  embellish  than  to 
obscure  the  lustre  of  his  fame. 

Hugh  Peters,  like  Sir  Henry  Vane,  has  been  charged  with  defect  of  courage; 
Bishop  Burnet,  in  particular,  reproaches  him  with  cowardice  at  his  execution. 
'  'u"f  j-^'-  '^'^.^f«th  ^««  dignified  by  a  courage  such  as  Burnet  never  knew* 
and  which  distinguished  h.m  even  among  the  regicides.  After  his  fcllow-suffeno-i 
Cook,  had  been  quartered  before  his  face,  the  executioner  approached  him,  and, 
rubb.ng  his  bloody  hands,  said, "  Come,  Mr.  Peters,  how  do  you  like  this  work  > " 
I  eters  answered,  "I  thank  God  I  am  not  terrified  at  it ;  vou  may  do  your  woret." 
{shortly  before  he  died,  addressing  a  friend  who  attended  him,  he  said,  "Return 
straightway  to  New  England,  and  trust  God  there."  Prefixed  to  a  posthumous 
work  of  Peters,  entitled  A  dying  JPather's  last  Legacy  to  his  DmsMcr,  is  a 
poetical  tribute  to  the  author,  thus  concluding : —»       ' 

"Yet  his  last  breathings  shall,  like  inceine  hurted 
On  sanred  altars,  so  perfume  the  world, 
Th«t  the  next  will  admire,  and.  out  of  doiibt,^^ 
Kevere  that  torchlight  which  this  ago  put  out,'*' 


574 


NOTES. 


NOTE  VII.    Page  199. 

The  accounts  of  the  first  conversations  which  the  missionaries  held  with  various 
tribes  of  these   heathens  abound  with  curious  questions  and  observations  that 
proceeded  from  the  Indians  in  relation  to  the  tidings  that  were  brought  to  their 
ears.     One  man  asked,  Whether  Englishmen  were  ever  s<o  ignorant  of  Jesus 
Christ  as  the  Indians.    A  second,  Whether  Jesus  Christ  could  understand  prayers 
in  the  Indian  language.     A  third  proposed  this  question.  How  there  could  be  an 
image  of  God,  since  it  was  forbidden  in  the  second  commandment.     On  another 
occasion,  aAer  Mr.  Eliot  had  done  speaking,  an  aged  Indian  started  up,  and 
with  tears  in  his  eyes  asked.  Whether  it  was  not  too  late  for  such  an  old  man  as 
he,  who  was  near  death,  to  repent  and  seek  after  God.     A  second  asked,  How 
the  Lnghsh  came  to  differ  so  much  from  the  Indians  in  their  knowledge  of  God 
and  Jesus  Christ,  since  they  had  all  at  first  but  one  father.     A  third  desired  to  be 
informed,  How  it  came  to  pass  that  sea-water  was    salt  and  river-water  fresh 
Several   inquired.  How  Judas  could  deserve  blame  for  promoting  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  purpose  of  God.     One  woman  asked.  Whether  she  was  entitled 
to  consider  herself  as  having  prayed,  when  she  merely  joined  in  her  mind  with 
her  husband  who  prayed  by  her  side.     Another,  If  her  husband's  prayer  signified 
any  thing  while  he  continued  to  beat  his  wife.     Many  of  the  converts  continued 
to  believe  that  the  gods  whom  they  formerly  served  had  in  reality  considerable 
power,  but  were  spirits  subordinate  to  the  true  and  only  God  ;  and  when  threat- 
ened  with  witchcraft  by  the  Powwows  for  their  apostasy,  they  said,  "  We  do  nbt 
deny  your  power,  but  we  serve  a  greater  God,  who  is  so  much  above  your  deities 
that  he  can  defend  us  from  them,  and  even  enable  us  to  trample  upon  them  all " 
One  sachem  sent  for  an  Indian  convert,  and  desired  to  know  how  many  gods  the 
English  had.     When  he  heard  they  had  but  one,  he  replied  scornfully,  "  Is  that 
all  ?  I  have  thirty-seven.     Do  they  suppose  I  would  exchange  so  many  for  one  i" " 
Other  sachems  rejected  the  instructions  of  the  missionaries  with  angry  disdain 
saying,  that  "  the  English  had  taken  away  their  lands  and  were  attempting  now 
to  make  them  slaves."  * 

The  efforts  of  missionaries  among  the  Indians  have  always  been  obstructed 
by  the  erroneous  ideas  of  liherty  fondly  cherished  by  these  savages ;  who,  pro- 
fessing  the  most  exalted  estimate  of  this  blessing,  and  having  its  name  continually 
m  their  mopllis,  have  always  ignorantly  restricted  it  to  a  debased  and  impover- 
whed  sense.  "  The  Indians  are  convinced,"  says  Charlevoix,  "  that  man  is  bom 
free,  that  no  power  on  earth  has  a  right  to  infringe  his  liberty,  and  that  nothing 
can  compensate  the  loss  of  it ;  and  it  has  been  found  a  very  difficult  matter  to 
undeceive  even  the  Christians  among  them,  and  to  make  them  understand  how,  by 
a  natural  consequence  of  the  corruption  of  our  nature,  which  is  the  effect  of  sin 
an  unbridled  liberty  of  doing  wrong  differs  very  little  from  an  obligation  to  com-' 
mit  it,  because  of  the  strength  of  the  bias  which  draws  us  to  it ;  and  that  the  law 
which  restrains  us  causes  us  to  approach  nearer  to  our  original  state  of  liberty 
whilst  it  appears  to  take  it  from  us."    Charlevoix's  Travels. 


NOTE  VIII.    Page  211. 

"  Geohge  Fox,"  says  William  Penn,  doubtless  with  especial  reference  to  the 
advanced  age  and  matured  character  of  the  subject  of  his  description,  "  was  a 
man  whom  God  endowed  with  a  clear  and  wonderful  depth,  — a  discoverer  of 
other  men's  spirits,  and  very  much  a  master  of  his  own.  The  reverence  and 
solemnity  of  his  address  and  behaviour,  and  the  fewness  and  fidnnss  of  his  wordo 
often  struck  strangers  with  admiration.    He  was  civil  beyond  all  forms  of  breeding 


NOTES. 


575 


bulky  pe Jon.""''  '"^  »«'"?««'<«.  ^^^^S  ^e  and  sleeping  less,  although  a 
The  character  of  George  Fox  is  certainly  neither  justly  nor  generally  under- 

Tt'^  of  PT''"f  ^"r-  ^''  """'"'^^  "''  ^  voluminous,  and  there  is^uch  a 
mixture  of  good  and  evil  in  them,  that  every  reader  finds  it  easy  to  justify  his  pr«. 
conceived  opinion  and  to  fortify  it  by  appropriate  quotations.  His  iorks  are  read 
by  few,  and  wholly  read  by  still  fewer.  Many  derive  their  conception  of  his 
character  from  the  passages  which  are  cited  from  his  writings  by  his  adversaries; 
3lrJ  ^T*"'"  n^'^^^  ^''  ^^"*^"*  '"^  J"''^^  ^'i'"  from  [he  passages  Ja 
in Tr  T''L^1!T  ^h'^t^?"^  ^"''^  '"  '^^  ^°'-'^«  «f  the  modern  writers  of  their 
own  sect      I  shall  here  subjom  a  few  extracts  from  his  Journal,  which  will  verify 

fhT hni  -^^  [f """"^ «  ^  have  made  in  the  text;  premising  this  observation,  that 
the  book  Itself  was  first  put  into  my  hands  by  a  zealous  and  intelligent  Quaker, 
for  the  purpose  of  proving  to  me  that  it  contained  no  such  passages  as  some  of 
those  which  I  am  now  to  transcribe  from  it. 

m.^'!Li^'^r;  « f  ,'"  ^^^  yf"'  ^^^®  ^^  ^°™^  his  nature  so  completely  new 
modelled,  that  "  I  knew  nothing  but  pureness,  innocency,  and  righteousness, 
being  renewed  up  into  the  image  of  God  by  Christ  Jesus;  so  that  I  was  come  up 
to  the  state  of  Adam  which  he  was  in  before  he  fell.  The  creation  was  opened 
to  me ;  and  it  was  showed  me  how  all  things  had  their  names  given  them  accord- 
ing  to  their  nature  and  virtue.  I  was  at  a  stand  in  my  mind  whether  I  should 
pracuse  physic  for  the  good  of  mankind,  seeing  the  nature  and  virtues  of  the 
creatures  were  so  opened  to  me  by  the  Lord.  But  I  was  immediately  taken  up 
in  spirit  to  see  another  or  more  steadfast  state  than  Adam's  in  innocency,  even 
into  a  state  m  Christ  Jesus  that  should  never  fall.  The  Lord  showed  me  that 
such  as  were  faithful  to  him  in  the  power  and  light  of  Christ  should  come  up  into 
tha  state  in  which  Adam  was  before  he  fell ;  in  which  the  admirable  works 
of  the  creation  and  the  virtues  thereof  may  be  known  through  the  openings  of 
that  divine  word  of  wisdom  and  power  by  which  they  were  made."  In  many 
of  the  disputes  which  he  afterwards  held  with  ministers  and  doctors,  he  main- 
tained that  he  was,  and  that  every  human  being,  by  cultivation  of  the  spiritual 
principle  withm  his  breast,  might  become,  like  him,  perfectly  pure  and  free  from 

A^  r^  *'"*  J  ^®  ^^'"*®^  "^'^^  complacency  and  approbation,  that,  having 
one  day  addressed  a  congregation  of  people  at  Beverley,  in  Yorkshire,  the  audi- 
ence  declared  afterwards  that  it  was  an  angel  or  spirit  that  had  suddenly  ap- 
peared among  them  and  spoken  to  them.  He  conceived  himself  warranted  by 
his  endowments  to  trample  on  all  order  and  decency.  One  Sunday,  as  he  ap- 
proached the  town  of  Nottingfiam,  he  tells,  "  I  espied  the  great  steeple-house:  and 

he  Lord  said  unto  me.  Thou  must  go  cry  against  yonder  great  idol,  and  against 
the  worshippers  therein."  He  accordingly  entered  the  church,  and,  hearing  the 
minister  announce  the  text.  We  have  also  a  more  sure  word  of  prophecy,  and 
tell  the  people  that  by  this  was  meant  the  Scriptures,  whereby  they  were  to  try 
all  doctrines,  religions,  and  opinions,  Fox  adds,  «  I  could  not  hold,  but  was  made 
to  cry  out, '  O,  no!  it  is  not  the  Scriptures :  it  is  the  Holy  Spirit.' "  On  another 
^casion,  having  entered  a  church,  and  hearing  the  preacher  read  for  his  text. 
Ho!  every  one  thai  thirsteth,  come  ye  to  the  waters,  &c.,  Fox  called  out  to  him, 

Come  down,  thou  deceiver!  dost  thou  bid  people  come  freely  and  take  of  the 
water  of  life  freely,  and  yet  thou  takest  three  hundred  pounds  a  year  of  them  for 
preaching  the  Scriptures  to  them.?"  Approaching  the  town  of  Lichfield,  he 
declares  he  found  himself  spiritually  directed  to  cast  off  his  shoes,  and  in  that 
condition  walk  through  the  streets,  exclaiming,  "  Woe  to  the  bloody  city  of  Lich- 
held  !  which  he  accordingly  did.  These  examples  are  selected  almost  at  ran- 
dom trom  numberless  instances  of  similar  proceedings  recorded  in  his  voluminous 
journal.  Yet  he  strongly  condemns  the  frantic  extravagance  of  the  Rmiers,  and 
relates  various  attempts  he  had  made  to  convince  them  of  their  delusion. 
Journal. 


576 


NOTES. 


William  Penn,  in  the  beautiful  Preface  wliich  he  wrote  for  this  Journal,  in- 
forms us  that  these  Ranters  were  persons,  who,  "  for  want  of  slaying  their  minds 
in  a  humble  dependence  upon  Him  that  opened  their  understandings  to  see  great 
things  in  his  law,  ran  out  in  their  own  imaginations,  and,  mixing  them  with  these 
divine  openings,  brought  forth  a  monstrous  birth,  to  the  scandal  of  those  that 
feared  God."  "  Divers,"  he  adds,  "  fell  into  gross  and  enormous  practices,  pre 
tendmg  m  excuse  thereof  that  they  could  without  evil  commit  the  same  act  which 
was  sin  in  another  to  do."  "  I  say,"  he  continues,  "  this  ensnared  divers,  and 
brought  them  to  an  utter  and  lamentable  loss  as  to  their  eternal  state  ;  and  they 
grew  very  troublesome  to  the  better  sort  of  people,  and  furnished  the  looser 
with  an  occasion  to  blaspheme." 

Fox  himself  relates  some  horrid  immoralities  of  the  Ranters,  and  that  he  had 
found  it  necessary  to  publish  addresses  conveying  assurance  to  the  world  that 
these  deluded  persons  were  Quakers  only  in  name.  Journal.  He  applies  the 
epithet  of  Ranters  to  many  of  those  who  called  themselves  Quakers  in  America. 
Some  of  Fox's  chief  associates  and  coadjutors  appear  to  have  become  in  the  end 
Ranters,  or  something  worse.  Of  these  was  James  Naylor,  long  the  fellow-laborer 
and  fellow-sufferer  of  Fox,  and  whom  Fox  still  terms  a  Quaker,  at  the  time  when 
he  was  in  prison  for  blasphemy  and  obscenity.  Fox  alludes  vaguely  and  sorrow- 
fully  to  Naylor's  errors  and  disobedience  to  him.  When  he  found  that  Naylor 
would  not  give  heed  to  his  rebukes.  Fox  told  him  that  "  the  Lord  moved  me  to 
slight  him,  and  to  set  the  power  of  God  over  him."  He  adds,  that  it  soon  after 
happened  to  Naylor  that  "  his  resisting  the  power  of  God  in  me,  and  the  truth  of! 
God  that  was  declared  to  him  by  me,  became  one  of  his  greatest  burdens." 
Journal.  Naylor  had  ridden  naked  into  Bristol  with  a. crew  of  insane  followera, 
uttering  blasphemous  proclamations  before  him,  and  had  gloried  in  the  commis-' 
sion  of  abominable  impurities.  On  his  trial,  he  produced  a  woman,  one  Dorcas 
Barberry,  who  declared  on  oath  that  she  had  been  dead  two  days,  and  was  re- 
called to  life  by  Naylor. 

It  is  not  easy  to  discover  what  part  of  the  extravagance  of  Naylor  was  con- 
demned by  Fox  and  the  proper  body  of  the  Quakers.  We  find  Fox  relating 
with  great  approbation  many  wild  and  absurd  exhibitions  by  which  Quaken? 
were  moved,  as  they  said,  to  show  themselves  as  signs  of  the  times.  "  Some," 
he  informs  us,  "  have  been  nooved  to  go  naked  in  the  streets,  and  have  declared 
amongst  them  that  God  would  strip  them  of  their  hypocritical  professions,  and 
make  them  as  bare  and  naked  as  they  were.  But  instead  of  considering  it,  they 
have  frequently  whipped,  or  otherwise  abused  them."  Journal  Many  such  in- 
stances he  relates  in  the  Journal,  with  cordial  commendation  of  the  insane  inde- 
cency of  the  Quakers,  and  the  strongest  reprobation  of  the  persecutors  who  pun- 
ished them  for  walking  abroad  in  a  state  of  corporeal  nudity. 

Fox  taught  that  God  did  not  create  the  devil.  Yet,  though  the  reasoning  by 
which  he  defends  this  gross  heresy  would  plainly  seem  to  imply  that  the  devil 
was  a  self-created  being,  there  is  another  passage  in  his  writings  from  which 
we  may  perhaps  conclude  that  Fox's  deliberate  opinion  was,  that  the  devil  was 
created  by  God  a  good  spirit,  but  transformed  himself  by  his  own  will  into  a 
wicked  one.  He  records  every  misfortune  that  happened  to  any  of  his  adversaries 
or  persecutors  as  a  judgment  of  Heaven  upon  them.  He  relates  various  cures 
of  sick  and  wounded  persons  that  ensued  on  his  prayers,  and  on  more  ordinary 
means  that  he  employed  for  their  relief.  It  may  be  doubted  if  he  himself  re- 
garded these  as  the  exertions  of  miraculous  power;  but  from  many  passages  it 
is  plain  that  they  were  (to  his  knowledge)  so  regarded  by  his  followers,  and  the 
Quaker  editor  of  his  Journal  refers  to  them  in  the  Index  under  the  head  of 
"  Miracles." 

I  think  it  not  unreasonable  to  consider  Quakerism,  the  growth  of  a  Protestant 
CQuot^,  arid  Quiciissm,  which  arose  among  Cutholics,  us  brunches  ;)f  a  systnn 


NOTES.  gmm 

essentially  the  same  ;  and  Madame  Guyon  and  Molinos  aa  the  counterparts  of 
Fox  and  Barclay.  The  moral  resemblance  is  plainer  than  the  historical  connec- 
tion ;  but  the  propagation  of  sentiment  and  opinion  may  be  effectually  accom- 
plished when  It  is  not  visibly  indicated.  Quietism  was  first  engendered  in  Spain 
among  a  sect  called  the  niuminati,  or  Alumbrados,  who  sprang  up  about  the 
year  1575.  They  rejected  sacraments  and  other  ordinances ;  and  some  of  them 
became  notorious  for  indecent  and  immoral  extravagances.  This  sect  was  re- 
vived in  France  in  the  year  1634,  but  quickly  disappeared  under  a  hot  perse- 
cution.  It  reappeared  again,  with  a  system  of  doctrine  considerably  purified  (yet 
still  mculcating  the  distinctive  principle  of  exclusive  teaching  by  an  inward  light 
and  sensible  impression),  towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  both  at 
Rome  in  the  writings  of  Molinos,  and  in  France  under  the  auspices  of  Madame 
Guyon  and  Pension.  / 


NOTE  IX.     Page  216. 

Besse,  in  his  volummous  Collection  of  the  Sufferings  of  the  People  called 
Quakers,  relates,  that  Lydia  Wardel,  of  Newbury,  in  New  England,  a  convert  to 
Quakerism,  found  herself  inwardly  prompted  to  appear  in  a  public  assembly  "  in 
a  very  unusual  manner,  and  such  as  was  exceeding  hard  and  self-denying  to  her 
natural  disposition,  she  being  a  woman  of  exemplary  modesty  in  all  her  behaviour. 
The  duty  arid  concern  she  lay  under  was  that  of  going  into  their  church  at  Now- 
bury  naked,  as  a  token  of  that  miserable  condition  which  she  esteemed  them 
in."  "  But  they,  instead  of  religiously  reflecting  on  their  own  condition,  which 
she  came  in  that  manner  to  represent  to  them,  fell  into  a  rage  and  presently 
laid  hands  on  her,"  &c.  He  also  notices  the  case  of  ■'  Deborah  Wilson,  a  young 
woman  of  very  modest  and  retired  life,  and  of  a  sober  conversation,  having  passed 
naked  through  the  streets,  as  a  sign  against  the  cruelty  and  oppression  of  the 
rulers. " 

George  Bishop,  another  Quaker  writer,  thus  relates  the  case  of  Deborah  Wil- 
son. "  She  was  a  modest  woman,  of  a  retired  life  and  sober  conversation  ;  and 
bearing  a  great  burden  for  the  hardness  and  cruelty  of  the  people,  she  went 
through  the  town  of  Salem  naked,  as  a  sign ;  which  she'  having  in  part  performed, 
was  laid  hold  on,  and  bound  over  to  appear  at  the  next  court  of  Salem,  where  the 
wicked  rulers  sentenced  her  to  be  whipt." —  New  England  Judged.  The  writings 
of  Besse,  Bishop,  and  some  others,  who  were  foolish  enough  to  defend  the  extrav- 
agance that  they  had  too  much  sense  to  commit,  were  the  expiring  sighs  of  Qua- 
ker nonsense  and  frenzy.  They  are  still  mentioned  with  respect  by  some  modern 
Quakers,  who  praise,  instead  of  reading  them  ;  as  the  sincere  but  frantic  zeal  of 
Loyola  and  Xavier  is  still  commended  by  their  sly  successors,  who  have  inherited 
the  name  and  the  manners,  without  the  spirit  that  distinguished  the  original  Jes- 
uits. With  a  great  proportion  of  its  modern  professora  Quakerism  is  far  less  in- 
fluential as  a  doctrinal  system  than  as  a  system  of  manners. 

Since  the  infancy  of  Quakerism,  various  eruptions  of  the  primitive  frenzy  have 
occurred.  But  they  have  all  been  partial  and  shortlived.  The  most  remarkable 
occurred  in  Connecticut  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Even  in  the 
close  of  that  century, as  1  was  assured  by  a  respectable  person,  who  was  a  witness 
of  the  fact,  a  Quaker  walked  naked  for  several  days  successively  at  Kichmond, 
in  Virginia,  as  a  sign  of  the  times.  Nathaniel  Prior,  a  worthy  Quaker  of  London, 
informed  nie,  that,  at  a  meeting  of  his  fellow-sectaries  at  which  he  was  present,  in 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  one  member,  suddenly  starting  up,  an- 
nounced that  he  was  directed  by  the  Spirit  to  walk  in  Lombard  Street  without  his 
breeches.    Hq  was  instantly  disowned  and  expelled  by  the  Quaker  Society.    The 

VOL.  I.  73,  WW 


5tB  NdTfis. 

progressive  diminution  ot  Quakeir  extravagance  tias  Imeti  attended  with  n  pro- 
gressive increase  of  acknowledged  insatiity  among  the  Quakers, —  in  whose  soci- 
ety the  numbers  of  tho  insane  bear  a  greater  proportion  to  the  whole  mass  than  in 
any  other  C    listian  sect  or  associutioi. 

It  had  been  well  if  the  government  of  Massachusetts  had  inflicted  punishment 
on  the  disgusting  violations  of  decency  avowed  by  Besse  and  Bishop,  without  ex- 
tending its  severity  to  the  bare  profession  of  Quakerism.  This  injustice  was  oc- 
casioned by  the  conviction  that  these  outrages  were  the  legitimate  fruits  of  Quaker 
principles ;  a  conviction,  which,  it  appears,  the  language  even  of  those  Quakers 
who  were  themselves  guiltless  of  outrage,  tended  strongly  to  confirm.  It  is  only 
such  language  on  the  part  of  the  Quakers  that  can  acquit  their  adversaries  of  tho 
ingenious  inhumanity  that  pervades  the  reasoning  of  persecutors,  and  holds  men 
responsible  for  all  the  consequences  that  may  be  logically  deduced  from  their 
principles,  though  rejected  and  denied  by  themselves.  The  apology  of  the  magis- 
trates of  New  England  is  thus  expressed  by  Cotton  Mather :  —  "I  appeal  to  all  the 
reasonable  part  of  mankind,  whether  the  infant  colonies  of  New  England  had 
not  cause  to  guard  themselves  against  these  dangerous  villains.  It  was  also  thought 
that  the  very  Quakers  themselves  would  say,  that,  if  they  had  got  into  a  corner 
of  the  world,  and  with  immense  toil  and  charge  made  a  wilderness  habitable,  on 
purpose  there  to  he  undisturbed  in  the  exercises  of  their  worship,  they  would 
never  bear  to  have  New  Englanders  come  among  them  and  interrupt  their  public 
worship,  and  endeavour  to  seduce  their  children  from  it ;  yea,  and  repeat  such 
endeavours  after  mild  entreaties  first,  and  then  just  banishments  to  oblige  their 
departure."  Yet  Mather  deplores  and  condemns  the  extreme  severities  which 
were  ultimately  inflicted  by  his  countrymen  upon  the  Quakers.  It  was  one  of  the 
privileges  of  Israel  that  the  people  shall  dwell  alone ;  and  the  expected  fruition 
of  a  similar  privilege  was  one  of  the  motives  that  led  the  Puritans  to  exchange 
the  charms  of  their  native  land  for  the  gloom  of  a  desolate  wilderness. 

A  story  is  told  by  Whitelocke  strongly  illustrative  of  the  singularity  with  which 
the  Quakers  of  those  times  combined  all  that  was  frantic  in  action  with  all  that 
was  dignified  and  aflfecting  in  sufTering.  Some  Quakers  at  Hasington,  in  Northum- 
berland, having  interrupted  a  minister  employed  in  divine  service,  were  severely 
beaten  by  the  people.  Instead  of  resisting,  they  went  out  of  the  church,  and,  fall- 
ing on  their  knees,  besought  God  to  pardon  their  persecutors,  who  knew  not  what 
they  did, — and  afterwards  addressing  the  people,  so  convinced  them  of  the  cru- 
elty of  their  violence,  that  their  auditors  fell  a  quarrelling  among  themselves,  and 
beat  one  another  more  than  they  had  formerly  beaten  the  Quakers. 

The  Quakers  have  always  delighted  to  exaggerate  the  persecutions  encountered 
by  their  sectarian  society.  An  illustrious  French  traveller  has  been  so  far  de- 
ceived by  their  vague  declamations  on  this  topic,  as  to  assert  that  Quakers  \Vere 
at  one  time  pvl  to  the  torture  in  New  England.    Rochefoucauld's  Trantls. 


NOTE  X.     Page  224. 

Upon  this  occasion  Cotton  Mather  observes  :  — "  Such  has  been  the  jealdtis 
disposition  of  our  New  Englanders  about  their  dearly  bought  privileges,  and 
such  also  has  been  the  various  understanding  of  the  people  about  the  extent  of 
these  privileges,  that,  of  all  the  agents  which  they  have  sent  over  unto  the  couVt 
of  England  for  now  forty  years  together,  I  know  not  any  one  who  did  not  at  his 
return  meet  with  some  very  froward  entertainment  among  his  countrymen ;  and 
there  may  be  the  wisdom  of  the  Holy  and  Righteous  God,  as  well  as  the  malice 
of  tho  evil  one,  acknowledged  in  the  ordering  of  such  temptations." 

Morton,  before  bis  departure  for  England,  expressed  a  strong  apprehension 


NOTES. 


679 


S  ^''^^"rii"*'*  u  "^f?  ^T"^-^  *°  undertake  would  issue  disastrously  to  him- 
self.      Mather  adds,  "In  the  .spring  before  his  going  for  England,  he  preaSed 

,Te  cmm'o?  TT"  T  »!'^'•«P---^t-esof^he^holecln^sseKd  at 
the  court  of  election,  wherem  I  take  particular  notice  of  this  pe^sLfie  :- Moses 
was  the  meekest  man  on  earth ;  yet  it  went  ill  mth  Moses,  V  i.,  said,  for  their  sakes 

a  man  ojas  good  a  temper  as  cmdd  he  expected  from  a  mere  man.'' 

fjf  ^r  f  •    ^'"',}^^'"  expected,  that  Norton,  whose  death  was  thus  in  a  manner  the 

S^e  .^LZrr^"'  '^  '^''"'^  rf"«^""^  "'^"y  »"  '»'«  colony,  would  have  escaped 
?roZnTL  P^-^^^"^'^"-  «"t  he  had  given  mortal  offence  to  the  Quakers  by 
rAr?i«llP'''T""T  u  S^'"''  ^^^  ^'^^'''  enthusiasts  in  New  England.  And 
Tit!  i?  p''r  "  °f  '^r  '""'^'•'^'  P"^''^»>^'^  «^  Lo»do"  -^  Re^esentation 
i«^  T«n„  yl  f ''^''«'"«"''  ^'herein,  pretending  to  report  some  Remarkable  Judg. 
mrnts  upon  thetr  Persecutors,  they  inserted  the  following  passage :  --  »  John  Norti 
ch.ef  pnest  at  Boston,  by  the  immediate  power  of  the  Lord,  tas  smi  ten ;  and^s 

th'e  handTf  thf  jZ"  '^  *'^  'T'^'  '^'"^  ""^^^  J"^^  J^^g^-^'  he'cinfess^' 
the  hand  of  the  Lord  was  upon  h.m,  and  so  he  died."    Mather.    The  Romish 

^Dle  ;  wir/T  '^\^'t'  «f  Luther,  Calvin,  Bucer,  and  Beza,  are  hardly  mo^ 
TrS  Zif  P  ^'  T"^*^'  ''^i  P'-«^«"'"Ption,  than  some  of  these  Quaker  inter- 
ELont  ^r'^^'"^''-  The-r  auth  rs,  Hke  many  other  pe«on"  involved  in 
SZTSTf  V'""u''P^^''  '^  persecution  for  religion's  sake,  mistook  an  ar- 
;?"^?f?'/",^^",'f  ^'^  "'hi!  they  esteemed  divine  truth  for  a  complete  subjection 
01  mmd  to  the  divme  will,  and  an  entire  identification  of  their  views  and  pur- 
poses  with  It;  practically  regardless  of  their  own  remaining  infirmity,  and  for- 
geUing,that,whilewecontmuetobe  clothed  with  humanity,  we  know  only  in  part 
and  can  see  but  darkly  Enlargement  of  view  is  always  attended  with  increase' 
Of  Charity  ;  and  the  culUvation  of  our  charity  at  once  refines  and  enlarges  our 


NOTE  XI.    Page  226. 

WiNTHROP  the  younger  was  in  the  bloom  of  manhood,  accomplished  4)y  Jeam- 

ing  and  travel,  and  the  heir  of  a  large  estate,  when  he  readily  joined  with  his  father 

in  promoting  and  accompanying  an  expedition  of  emigrants  to  New  England 

Ihey  were  indeed,  as  Dryden  said  of  Ormond  and  Ossory,  "a  father  and  a  son 

only  worthy  of  each  other."    Cotton  Mather  has  preserved  a  letter  written  by 

Winthrop  the  elder  to  his  son,  while  the  one  was  governor  of  Massachusetts,  and 

he  other  of  Connecticut.    I  shall  be  excused  for  transcribing  some  part  of  an  epis- 

tie  so  beautiful  in  itself  and  so  strikingly  characteristic  of  the  fathers  of  I^ew 

t^ngland.     "You  are  the  chief  of  two  families.     I  had  by  your  mother  three 

fions  and  three  daughters  ;  and  I  had  with  her  a  large  portion  of  outward  estate. 

Ihese  are  now  all  gone ;  mother  gone  ;  brethren  and  sisters  gone  :  you  only  are 

m  to  see  the  vanity  of  these  temporal  things,  and  learn  wisdom  thereby  which 

Eh     •  \?r^  use  to  you,  through  the  Lord's  blessing,  than  all  that  inheritance 

rilw  .T'f  n  r""  \f ''"^^  .y°"  •■  ^"'^  ^""^  ^^'<=^'  t^'^  "^^y  st«y  and  quiet  your 
heart,  that  God  is  able  to  give  you  more  than  this;  and  that  it  being  spent  in  the 
furtherance  of  his  work,  which  has  here  prospered  so  well  through  his  power 
Mherto,  you  and  yours  may  certainly  expect  a  liberal  portion  in  the  prosperity 
and  blessing  thereof  hereafter;  and  the  rather,  because  it  was  not  forced  from 
you  by  a  father  s  power,  but  freely  resigned  by  yourself,  out  of  a  loving  and  filial 
respec^  unto  me,  and  your  own  readiness  unto  the  work  itself.  From  whence,  as 
o  fi..cn  tnriic  occasion  to  bless  the  Lord  for  you,  so  do  I  also  commend  you 
and  yours  to  his  fatherly  blessing,  for  a  plentiful  reward  to  be  rendered  unto  you. 


•580 


NOTES. 


And  doubt  not,  my  dear  son,  but  let  your  faith  be  built  upon  hiH  promise  and 
fuithfulnoss,  that,  an  he  hath  carried  you  hitherto  llirough  nriuny  perils,  and  pro- 
vided hborally  for  you,  so  ho  will  do  for  the  time  to  come,  und  will  never  fail  you 
nor  forsnko  you.  My  son,  the  Lord  knows  how  dear  thou  art  to  me,  and  that  my 
care  has  been  more  for  thee  than  for  myself.  But  I  know  thy  prosperity  do- 
pcndH  not  on  my  care,  nor  on  thine  own,  but  on  the  blessing  of  our  Heaven'y 
Father  :  neither  doth  it  on  the  things  of  this  world,  but  on  the  light  of  Uod's  coun- 
tenance througii  the  merit  and  mediation  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  that  only 
which  can  give  us  peace  of  conscience  with  contentation ;  which  can  as  well 
make  our  lives  happy  and  comfortable  in  a  mean  estate  as  in  a  great  abundance. 
But  if  you  weigh  things  aright,  and  sum  up  all  the  turnings  of  diviiK)  providence 
together,  you  shall  find  great  advantage.  The  Lord  hath  brought  us  to  a  good 
land,  a  land  where  we  enjoy  outward  peace  and  liberty,  and  above  all  the  bless- 
ings of  the  gospel,  without  the  burden  of  impositions  in  matters  of  religion.  Manv 
thousands  there  are  who  would  give  great  estates  to  enjoy  our  condition.  Labor, 
tlierefore,  my  good  son,  to  increase  our  thankfulness  to  Clod-  for  all  his  mercies 
to  thee,  especially  for  that  ho  hath  revealed  his  everlasting  good-will  to  thee  in 
Jesus  Christ,  and  joined  thee  to  the  visible  body  of  his  church  in  the  fellowship 
of  his  people,  and  hath  saved  thee  in  all  thy  travels  abroad  from  being  infccteil 
with  the  vices  of  those  countries  where  thou  hast  been  (a  mercy  vouchsafed 
but  unto  few  young  gentlemen  travellers).  Let  him  have  the  honor  of  it  who 
kept  thee.  He  it  was  who  gave  thee  favor  in  the  eyes  of  all  with  whom  thou 
hadst  to  do,  bo»h  by  sea  and  land ;  he  it  is  who  hath  given  thee  a  gift  in  under- 
standing and  art ;  and  he  it  is  who  hath  provided  thee  a  blessing  in  marriage,  a 
comfortable  help,  and  many  sweet  children.  And  therefore  I  would  have  you  to 
love  him  again  and  serve  him,  and  trust  him  for  the  time  to  come." 

Winthrop  the  elder  not  only  performed  actions  worthy  to  be  written,  but  pro- 
duced writings  worthy  to  be  read.  Yet  his  Journal,  or  History,  as  it  has  been 
termed  in  the  late  edition  by  Mr.  Savage,  is  very  inferior  in  spirit  and  interest  to 
his  Letters.  Winthrop  the  younger  was  one  of  the  greatest  philosophers  of  his 
age,  the  associate  of  Robert  Boyle  and  Bishop  Wilkins  in  projecting  and  found- 
ing the  Royal  Society  of  London,  and  the  correspondent  of  Tycho  Brahe,  Gali- 
leo, Kepler,  Milton,  Lord  Napier,  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  and  vari- 
ous othen  of  the  most  distinguished  characters  in  Europe. 


NOTE  XII.     Page  242. 

Among  many  interesting  and  romantic  adventures  related  by  Mather,  Neal, 
Hutchinson,  Dwight,  and  other  New  England  writers,  as  having  occurred  during 
Philip's  War,  there  is  one  incident  which  excited  much  wonder  and  speculation  at 
the  time,  and  has  since  derived  an  increase  of  interest  from  the  explanation  which 
it  received  after  the  death  of  the  individual  principally  concerned  in  it.  In  1675, 
the  town  of  Hadley  was  alarmed  by  the  sudden  approach  of  a  body  of  Indians 
during  the  time  of  public  worship,  and  the  people  were  thrown  into  a  confusion 
that  betokened  an  unresisted  massacre.  Suddenly  a  grave,  elderly  person  ap- 
peared in  the  midst  of  them.  Whence  he  came,  or  who  he  was,  nobody  could  tell. 
In  his  mien  and  dress  he  differed  from  the  rest  of  the  people.  He  not  only  en- 
couraged them  to  defend  themselves,  but,  putting  himself  at  their  head,  rallied, 
instrucied,  and  led  them  on  to  encounter  the  enemy,  who  were  defeated  and  put 
to  flight.  As  suddenly,  the  deliverer  of  Hadley  disappeared ;  and  the  people  were 
left  in  a  state  of  perplexity  and  amazement,  and  utterly  unable  to  account  for  this 
singular  plicnomenon.  After  his  death,  it  was  known  to  have  been  Goffe,  the  reg- 
icide, who  dwelt  somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood,  but  in  such  deep  sequestration 


NOTEi. 


581 


that  none  except  those  who  were  intrusted  with  the  secret  were  ever  able  to  make 
the  remotest  approach  to  a  discovery  of  hU  retreat.  Whaliey  resided  with  him  • 
and  they  had  some  years  before  Ix^en  joined  by  another  of  the  regicides,  Colonel 
Ihxwell.  I  hey  frequently  changed  their  place  of  abc^de,  and  gave  the  name  of 
hbenf.xer  to  ev.-ry  snot  that  afforded  them  sheher.  They  had  many  friends  both 
m  England  and  ,n  the  New  England  States,  with  some  of  whom  they  maintained 
acloso  corrospondence.  They  obtained  constant  and  exact  intelligci,cc  of  every 
thmg  that  passed  u.  England,  and  were  unwilling  to  resign  all  hopes  of  deliver- 
ance.  Iheir  expectations  were  suspended  on  the  fuliilment  of  the  prophecies 
of  Scripture  which  they  earnestly  studied.  They  had  no  doubt  that  the  execution 
of  the  late  king  s  judges  was  the  slaying  of  the  witnesses,  in  the  Apocalypse,  and 
were  greatly  disappointed  when  the  year  1666  elapsed  without  ,my  remarkable 
event ;  but  still  flattered  themselves  with  the  notion  of  some  error  in  the  common- 
ly  received  chronology  The  strict  inquisition  that  was  made  for  them  by  the 
roya  commissioners  and  others  renders  their  concealment  in  a  country  so  thinly 
peopled,  and  where  every  stranger  was  the  object  of  immediate  and  curious  notice, 
ruly  surprising.  It  appears  that  they  were  befriended  and  much  esteemed  for 
their  piety  by  persons  who  regarded  the  great  action  in  which  they  had  partici- 
pated  with  unqualified  disapprobation.     Hutchinson. 


NOTE  XIII.     Page  243. 

'^T/^^^''^^"^^■  u"*^  suspicion  with  which  the  New  England  States  were 
regarded  by  the  English  court  had  not  slumbered  in  the  interim  may  be  inferred 
from  the  following  passages  extracted  from  the  Journal  of  John  Evelyn,  the  nu- 
thorof  Sylva,yvhj,  m  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  was  one  of  the  Commis- 
sioners  of  Trade  and  Plantations.  "  26  May,  1671.  What  we  the  commission- 
ers  most  insisted  on  was,  to  know  the  condition  of  New  England,  which  appearing 
to  bo  very  independent  as  to  their  regard  to  Old  England  or  his  Majesty,  rich  and 
strong  as  they  now  were,  there  were  great  debates  in  what  stylo  to  write  to  them : 
lor  the  condition  of  that  colony  was  such  that  they  were  able  to  contest  with  all 
other  plantations  about  them,  and  there  was  fear  of  their  breaking  from  all  de- 
pendence  on  this  nation ;  his  Majesty  therefore  commended  this  affair  more  ex- 

P'if-  u^.V  '  ?°T^  ""^  °""'  '^°""''''  ^^""^  ''"•■  sending  them  a  menacing  letter, 
which  those  who  better  understood  the  peevish  and  touchy  humor  of  that  colony 
were  utterly  against."  »  6th  June.  We  understood  they  were  a  people  almost 
on  the  brink  of  renouncing  any  dependence  on  the  crown."  "  3d  August  The 
matter  »n  debate  was,  whether  we  should  send  a  deputy  to  New  England,  requiring 
them  of  Massachusetts  to  restore  such  to  their  limits  and  respective  possessions  as 
had  petitioned  the  council ;  this  to  be  the  open  commission  only,  but  in  truth 
with  secret  instructions  to  inform  us  of  the  condition  of  those  colonies,  and  whether 
they  were  of  such  power  as  to  be  able  to  resist  his  Majesty,  and  declare  for 
themselves  as  independent  of  the  crown,  which  we  were  told,  and  which  of  late 
years  made  them  refractory."  "  12th  February,  1672.  We  also  deliberated  on 
some  ht  person  to  go  as  commissioner  to  inspect  their  actions  in  New  England, 
and  Irom  time  to  time  report  how  that  people  stood  affected." 


NOTE  XIV.    Page  290. 

^  A  GOOD  history  of  Harvard  University,  by  its  librarian,  Benjamin  Peirce,  has 
been  recently  {jivcii  io  ihu  world,     in  the  collegiate  establishment,  says  this  author, 

WW  * 


NOTES. 

"  the  8ubstantial  properties  of  the  English  universities  were  retained,  while  their 
pompous  and  imposing  ceremonies  were  in  a  great  measure  excluded." —  "  Th' 
first  Commefwement  took  place  on  the  second  Tuesday  of  August,  1642  Unon 
thjs  novel  and  auspicious  occaaion,  the  venerable  fathers  of  the  land  the  -overnor 
magistrates,  and  m.mstera  from  all  parts,  with  others  in  great  numbers,  re°paireTto 
Cambridge,  and  at  ended  with  delight,  to  refined  displays  of  Euix>p;a„Cninff 
on  a  spot  which  but  just  before  was  the  abode  of  savages."  -  "  In  looking  over  S 
hst  of  early  benefactions  to  the  College,  we  are  amusid  when  we  read  of^a  mm.ber 
nLi.  ^H  ^'^""^f**^  ^y  «"«  '"«"'  «*  q"«"tity  of  cotton  cloth  worth  nine  sh  IHnl 
presented  by  another, a  pewter  Bagon  worth  ten  shilUngs  by  a  third, a  fruit-dis"  a 
.ugar-spoon,  a  silver-tipped  jug,  one  great  salt,  one  small  tr^ncher-silt,  by  others 
and  of  presents  or  legacies  amounting  severally  to  five  shillings,  nine  shillings  ol^ 
pound,  two  pounds,  &c.,  all  faithfully  recorded,  with  the  names  of  thdr Se^tllc 

sSntn  «7  r"  ^r  ^  ""'"  'f  """*'°"  "''^"««  ""y  ^'^P°««»'°"  >^«  ™«y  have  to 
smile  into  a  feeling  of  respect  and  even  of  admiration  !    What,  in  fact,  were  these 

humble  benefactions  ?    They  were  contributions  from  the  ^  res  a^gusta  dolT'  from 

pu,us,  virtuous,  enlightened  penury,  to  the  noblest  of  all  causes,  tlfo  advancemLn  oT 

education,     fhe  donations  were  small,  for  the  people  were  poor;  they  leave  ^ 

doubt  as  to  the  motives  which  actuated  the  dono^ ;  'they  remind  u^  of  the  offering 

from  'everyone  whose  heart  stirred  him  up,  and  every  one  whom  h  sspiruSo 

willing,  to  the  work  of  the  tabernacle  of  thi  congregndon ' ;  and,7ike  the  ^Z's 

tWn'js'tH  '  '''P'V^  ^-'  ^°/  the  object!  wLh  would  have  done  gre  Je 
hings,  had  the  means  been  more  abundant."     How  much  nobler  these  humble 

Eutno  "af  """'^T"^  ^r''°"^  °^''Sot  or  robber  princes  to  the  colleges  o 
tion  of  t^hTc^lT'  ^  H  7r'  ^'"""''"'  '^^'^  ^°'  ^  ^^"S  a  period  after  the  founda- 
r  1  ?■  r°t'  ^"d,^.«^o'-«  '"any  other  institutions  had  sprung  up  to  divide 
the  attention  of  the  public,  this  'school  of  the  prophets'  should  Jve  experN 
sunoorroftj"'"''  ^^'^^^  of  sufficient  magnitude' to  supersede  the  carfand 
Twho^  i  community  at  large.  Its  long  dependence  on  the  whole  people, 
nL.  t  ?v.  •  *^'  cherished  With  parental  fondness,  tended  to  secure  and  per 
petuate  their  affection  for  the  College,  and  even  for  learning  itself;  and  to  E 
circumstance  may  probably  be  traced,  in  some  degree,  that   geneml   imeS 

A^ll^^  ''7"^  '?^?''-  fS^^^''^'  «™tury,  the  College  was  enriched  by  many  liberal 
donat^ns  from  individuals  in  Britain,  as  well  as  in  America.     The  most  nombTo 

a  memj;:  f ^'"f '^""^  ""f  ^^'^  "°'^^^"'  ^"^'''^^r  of  the  Bank  of  Engtnd! 
a  Slv  nanTd  ?Mr '' m^ ""  ^'-^"^fP^^on  among  the  English  Dissentefs,  and 
a  family  named  Hollis  (Dissenters  likewise  ,  distinguished  through  succe^ivo 
generations  for  mercantile  industry  and  opulence,  and  for  the  most  1^'Z 
untiring  and  judicious  philanthropy.  Peirce  has  preserved  an  intereSrac: 
count  of  these  and  other  friends  and  patrons  of  this  venemble  instimJio^  Z 
SloSl  the  Holhses  m  particular,  with  une.xaggeratod  encomium,  that  hey 
fornied -ono  of  the  most  extraordinary  families  that  Providence  ever  raiser  un 
for  the  benefit  of  the  human  race."  Such  were  the  great  mei4nnrofX  ain 
Son.  '^  """""  ^'""^'''^'^  '^  "  "Sc  for  fashionable  and  arisrcmtico;  2 


Since  the  foregoing  note  was  written,  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  reading  a  far 
ampler  and  superior  history  of  Harvard  University,  by  ils  excellent  and  a^ccom 
plished  president,  Josiah  Quincy.     If  every  thi,^g  clse^hat  has  been  written  aZt 
America  should  perislj,  that  work  would  secure  to  New  Enr^land  a  globus  a^.d 

^t^ia^:.  !^^^^l^  -.-  P-^-^  a  seatV  learning  Z^ ! 
-1-  «,  „    — a^.„  „,  xxa.vaiil  Ljiivcrsiiy,_ana  never  did  a  noble  institution 


NOTV&. 


ed,  whilo  their 
detl."  — "Tho 
,1643.  Upon 
,tho  governor, 
>rs,  repaired  to 
apean  learning 
oking  over  the 
id  of  a  number 
I  nine  shillings 
►  a  fruit-dish,  u 
lit,  by  others ; 
3  shillings,  one 
heir  respective 
e  may  have  to 
ct,  were  these 
a  domi ' ;  from 
Ivanccment  of 
they  leave  no 
jf  the  oflering 
lis  spirit  made 
0  the  widow's 

done  greater 
these  humble 
le  colleges  of 
3r  the  foundu- 
:  up  to  divide 

have  experi' 

the  care  and 
ivhole  people, 
lire  and  per- 
;  and  to  this 
leral   interest 

been   distin- 

mnny  liberal 
most  notable 

of  England, 
issenters,  and 
h  successive 
•St  generous, 
tercsting  ac- 
Jtitution ;  re- 
m,  that  they 
cr  raised,  up 
S  of  Britain, 
)cmticul  dis- 


■cading  a  far 
and  accom- 
written  about 
glorious  and 
ng  so  honor- 
e  institution 


583 


church  and^tMo  Massachusetts  from  an  entire  and  punctilious  intertexture  of 
Lc.  nation,  i!  •   '■^^'••";":'"  «f  municipal  government  to  civil  affairs  and 

STn  Npw  F  7  T'T  ''"^  "t'^^^^^S'  ""'^  ^'^'"•'•«bly  fills  up  an  important 
chamnio!!nr?^  "?  ^'-'T*  !°"  ^^  ^"^  «^  ^^e  ablest  and  most  generous 
Inst^^n  country's  mdependence,  President  Quincy  has  given  additional 

If  Ch  AmeHca""'"""'"      "'  Runnymedo  and  dear  to  the  liberty  and  iitoratu'o 


NOTE  XV.    Page  331, 

i^y^^  folloY'"g  fnay  serve  as  a  specimen  of  these  articles  of  complaint,  and  of 

^m^r-r  5"^-  "T'^^'  -'l^^-  ^'  "°  ^^^«  ««"  be  repealed  but  by  the^, 
sembly  ,t  is  desired  to  know  if  the  proprietary  intended  to  annul  a  clause  in  the 

?o  annuMhf  ?  '"^"'"^  ^°  '""T  ^Z  ^"^"'^''-  "  ^^"^  Proprietary  does  not  intend 
to  annul  the  clause  mentioned,  without  art  act  of  repeal."  "V.  The  attornev- 
general  oppresses  the  people."     Ansu,er.  "If  such  proceedings  have  been  prac- 

rn/"  .  v";  'p°P'"  ''°'''"''  '^'^  «^""^^^''  ^'^^  '«  "°t  countenanced  by  govern- 
iT^nt.  VI.  Certain  pereons,  under  a  pretended  authority  from  some  militia 

officers,  have  pressed  provisions  in  time  of  peace."  Answer.  "  We  know  of  no 
such  offenders  ;  but,  when  informed  of  them,  we  shall  proceed  a^^ainst  them  ac^ 
cording  to  law  and  matter  of  fact."     "VII.  The  late  adjournmentTf  the  pro- 

3'  "a  '"  ''•'  \f  i  ^T^^^  ''\  J^""'^'^  '«  ^  '^""^  "'^^  incommodious  to7e 
people.  Ansioer.  "  At  the  request  of  the  lower  house,  they  will  adjourn  he 
provincial  court  by  proclamation."  Chalmers.  Why  Chalmei,  who  is  generaUy 
displeased  even  with  the  most  reasonable  and  moderate  friends  of  American 
liberty,  should  term  this  ebullition  of  ill-temper  and  nonsense  «  a  spirited  repS- 
sen  ation  of  grievances,"  I  am  at  a  loss  to  discover.  But  perhaps  no  oiher 
writer  has  ever  combmed  such  elaborate  research  of  facts  with  such  temerity 
ot  "r'on  and  such  glaring  inconsistency  of  sentiment,  as  the  Political  Annak 
of  this  writer  display  The  inhabitants  of  America,  though  little  beholden  to  his 
respect  for  their  rights  or  their  character,  owe  the  most  important  elucidation 
ot  their  history  to  his  mdustrious  researches.  Some  of  the  particulars  of  his 
own  early  history  may  perhaps  account  for  the  peculiarities  of  his  American 
politics.  A  Scotsman  by  birth,  he  had  emigrated  to  Maryland,  and  was  settled 
at  Baltimore  as  a  lawyer,  when  the  Revolutionary  contest  (in  which  he  adhered 
o  the  royal  cause)  blasted  all  his  prospects,  and  compelled  him.  to  take  refuge 
Ml  England,  waere  his  unfortunate  loyalty  and  distinguished  attainments  proourld 
him  a  respectable  appointment  from  the  Board  of  Trade.  The  first  (and  onlv^ 
volume  of  his  Annals,  a  work  intended  to  be  the  apology  of  his  party  was 

Srfjt^'' ^'\';'Ptt*  ''^^'°y"^  ^""^^  ^«"'d  yet  prevail  in'lm^errca 
Though  too  honorable  wilfully  to  misrepresent  facts,  his  mind  was  too  much  warped 
oy  prejudice  to  regard  and  appreciate  them  fairly.  His  labors  were  discontinued 
ThZJhl  f"'°  ""  party  to  which  they  were  devoted  had  evidently  perished, 
wr^fnn  ^  ^^  '''•'"  °^,T°7'«'"  Vowades  all  his  pages,  he  is  at  times  unable  to 
restrain  an  expression  of  indignant  contempt  at  particular  instances  of  the  con- 
duct of  the  kings  and  ministers  whose  general  policy  he  labors  to  vindicate 


NOTE  XVI.     Pago  351. 


!! 


tixmwt 


•I    lilt; 


That  a  cift  will  blind  the  disnprnmonf 
words  sven  of  tne  just,  is  an  assurance  conveyed  to  us  by  qnerring  wisdom,  i^d 


Wise,  uiiu  j;Crvcri  the 


584 


NOTES. 


confirmed  by  examples  among  which  even  the  name  of  Locke  must  be  en- 

wththl  1  s'hS  r""^  ^  Tf-  ''l"^'"e  ^^«"  ^h«  '^^f^rence  and  admiration 
With  which  Shaftesbury  graced  his  other  bounties  to  Locke,  no  blindness  coS 
well  be  gre,ater  than  that  which  veiled  the  eyes  and  perverted  the  sentiments  of 
the  philosopher  with  respect  to  the  conduct  and  character  of  his  patron  In  Ws 
memoirs  of  this  profligate  politician,  not  less  fickle  in  his  friendship^  San  furious 
.n  his  enmit.es,  and  who  alternately  inflamed  and  betrayed  ever^  facdon  in T 
state,  Locke  holds  him  up  as  a  mirror  of  worth  and  patrioti7m  jTeclarina 
that,  m  a  mild  yet  resolute  constancy,  he  was  equalled  by  few  anT  Exceeded  bJ 
none;  and  that,  while  liberty  endures,  his  glory' will  mock  the  assaXof  envv 

rlahn^irT  f  .  *T":     ^  .^['^  ^^'^«  ""^P'-^^''^^^^  ^^e  selfish  ambitbn  Snd 
elaborate  fraud  and  duplicity  with  which  Monk  endeavoured  to  the  \^st  to  obtab 
for  himsdf  the  vacant  dignity  of  Cromwell,  he  is  totally  insensible  t^  any  othe 
feature    ban  the  ability  of  the  more  successful  mancBuvres  by  wh^h  Shaftes 
bury  outwitted   the   less  dexterous  knave,  and  at  length  forced    ™to  concu 
wVc^  sSt^  ?'  ^^•'^♦r'--     Locke  has  vaunted  the  profound  sagfcit^wih 
which  Shaftesbury  could  penetrate  the  character  and  acquire  a  mastery  over 
^uJ^rT  ^"  •   ""^^'•^^"'^'"g  «f  «very  person  he  conversed  with.     For  L  own 

h.  nfl?"'  '\"'rr?  '°  "''S"^  '"'"^^•^  ^"  '^'  performance  as  exempHfyi^g 
the  influence  which  he  has  ascribed  to  the  object  of  his  panegyric.  When  ^^ 
casion  required  it,  Shaftesbury  could  assume  1  virtue  to  whicf  his  talent  lenra 
degree  of  efficacy  that  commanded  universal  admiration.  When  he  was  L 
pointed  to  preside  in  the  Court  of  Chancery,  he  was  unacquainted  with  kw  and 
had  grown  gray  in  the  practice  of  fraud  and  intrigue,  vlt,  in  the  disclame  " 
the  functions  of  this  office,  he  is  acknowledged  to  have  combined  the  gS  of 

fheTir  '5'  '"''?'?  ^^  ^"•'^  '  «"^  the^tisfaction  that  was  derifcd  from 
the  legal  soundness  of  his  decrees  was  surpassed  only  by  the  respect  that  wa^ 
entertained  for  the  lofty  impartiality  of  his  ^'udicial  condL  I  seS  indeed 
siirprising  that  the  two  most  ambitious  politicians  that  have  ever  appe'ared  1^ 
^X^ v^lf'  i"^^  "".'^  Shaftesbury-,  should  have  distinguished  themselves  so 
jute^  in'atuToreq^uit"^'^"^  ''''  ^'^^'  ''^'  ^^'"^ '^^  ^'^  ^---  o^ 
nutT"v.?  °^^'  T'^""  °*"  ??"5*^«"ce  bestowed  by  Shaftesbury  on  Locke,  he  cm- 

Mred     as  the  feebleness  of  the  young  man's  constitution  gave  him  cause  to 
apprehend  the  extinction  of  his  family.     Locke,  undismayed  by  th?  nTe  and 

is  cfe  a,td^h"'?,•^^^"'"^'•"^^«'^  ^""^  ^«  coLlne^n  tt  ol  et  of 

X'li'^S';  Tr  ^  wtZ.f '''  ''"'-''''''''■  ^"^^^  ^/^''^^xed 

Shaftesbuiy  was  able  to  infect  Locke  with  all  his  own  real  or  pretended 
suspicions  of  the  Catholics;  and,  even  when  the  philosopher  could  no  eJrain 
^TpMhTr^  '^^  17u"7  ""^  intolerance  of  the  Protestants,  he  expressed  hS 
regret  that  they  should  be  found  capable  of  "  such  popish  practices  "Not  less 
unjust  and  absurd  was  Lonl  Russell's  declaration,  fhat  ma'^^Sc ring  nicifin  coo 
b  ood  was  so  hke  a  practice  of  the  Papists,  that  he  could  not  butlbhor  it    and 

i  ^    r?  r°  ■  f '  '■r^'"'^'  '^'''  P«'^«"'"g  ^°«  «  popish  trick.     When  Locke 
undertook  to  legislate  for  Carolina,  he  produced  ecclesiastical  co. Sons  no^ 
more  and  political  regulations  far  less,  faVomble  to  human  liberty  and  haZness 
M^JylanT        "^  ^""^  ''^"  P''^"^"^'>^  ^^^'^^''^^^^^  ^^  ^  Cathiic  legiE  in 

^n^lIZZ:;:t-.^::^^t::.^^:'  '"'^'  mendship  with  Shaftesbury, 
It  IS  strange  that  we  should  be  obliged  to  prefer  the  testimony  of  an  unprinci- 


NOTES. 


e  must  be  en- 
and  admiration 
jlindness  could 
s  sentiments  of 
patron.  In  his 
ps  than  furious 
y  faction  in  the 
m  ;  declaring, 
d  exceeded  by 
ssaults  of  envy 

ambition  and 
3  l^t  to  obtain 
le  to  any  other 
which  Shaftcs- 
bim  to  concur 

sagacity  with 

mastery  over 
For  liis  own 
s  exemplifying 
c.  When  oc- 
s  talent  lent  a 
1  he  was  ap- 

with  law,  and 
3  discharge  of 

the  genius  of 

derived  from 
spect  that  was 
seems,  indeed, 

appeared  in 
themselves  so 
3  functions  of 

iocke,  he  em- 
anxiously  de- 
Wm  cause  to 
the  nice  and 
the  object  of 
id  afterwards 
larriage,  who 
icke,  prefixed 

or  pretended 
I  not  refrain 
ixpresscd  his 
"  Not  less 
men  in  cool 
bhor  it ;  and 
When  Locke 
stitutions  not 
d  happiness, 
legislator   in 

Shaftesbury, 

m  'jnpi'inci- 


585 


^ArL^Zf-       1    l°L  ""u  VP'-'ght  philosopher.     Yet  Dryden's  character  of 
inrl  T  f  i!"  ""^o"l>tedlythe.iustest  and  most  masterly  representation  of  Shaftes- 

;,  I&l,-      ,u    ^''^  •^^^"  5'?'^"^''^  ^y  ^^''^"^  «'  <■««•     So  '""ch  more  powerful 
13  affection  than  enmity  m  deluding  the  fancy  and  seducing  the  judgment! 


NOTE  XVII.     Page  401. 

M.w^VnT-  "^^T^""^  f '«"'f  have  sometimes  been  deified  by  their  successors. 
inilL  ^Ith  '".  ,P",^^P^'  ^h«  e"'y  commonwealth  whose  founders  have  been  as- 

^eninns  ^n/?'"!-  ^'"'"  '^'  '"'"^  ^""*^'"-  ^'  ^'  ^P^^^^^le  to  read  tho  in- 
genious  and  diverting  romance  entitled  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York 

hi  iVnlf  t  J  f  •  '''*'"^^°'.^"™°'  ^"^  '"'"''"^"^  ^^^  fo"nd  another  subject  than 
in.t  hT  ^  '^I'J'P'' ^"^  ^•'■'""^  °^  *^«  ancestors  of  his  national  family.  It 
Z,?,nL.-  !'"''"'  u^uP^'""*.'^"'  *°  *'^""^^t  *''«to"cal  recollections  with  ludi. 
itTs  dlZTrT-^  ''"V^"  ^'Tl  °^  ^^'-  ^^^'"g  h««  d'^"^  <his  so  effectually,  that 
IZ ^n  v\ ^'^^'•^^^^'^  to  behold  the  names  of  Wouter  Van  Twiller,  of  Cor- 

nists  n?  Npw  V  I  T'T.:  '"'^"^^  ^™"^  '  «''*°  «««  ^^e  free  and  ha^py  cole 
lTtJ^7.  l^  ^"''^""'^  ^y  "^^  ^•^''^^^  ""^  ^  '^^^Pot,  without  a  sense  of  ridi- 
Sifpi  i  h'  f ''''-'r"'"^""* J^'"^ '"j'^^t'^^  «h°"'d  excite,  and  the  sympathy 
which  ,s  due  to  misfortune.     Yet  Stuyvesant  was  a  gallant  ^nd  generous  man ; 

li?K   T-'^k""'^  ?"  '"''^""^  "^  ^^'^  ^"-^  '^'%ated  human  fnmity  and  s^f! 

F  XSa  r  benevolence.  Stuyvesant  appears  (see  Miller's  Retroiect  of  the 
Eightemth  Century)  to  have  possessed  an  additional  claim  on  the  courtesy  of  a 

nan  of  letters,  derived  from  the  respectability  of  his  own  attainments  in  litera- 
ture.     11  Mr.  Jrv.ng  had  confined  his  ridicule  to  the  wars,  or  rather  bloodless  buf- 
fetings  and  squabbles,  of  the  Dutch  and  the  Swedes,  his  readers  would  have  de 
rived  miore  unreproved  enjoyment  from  his  performance.     Probably  my  discern- 
men  of  the  unsuitableness  of  this  writer's  mirth  is  quickened  by  a  sense  of  per- 

.onTJrr°'  ""a-  \  ''"""°'  ^^'P  ^««""?that  he  has  by  anticipation  ridiculed  my 
topic  and  parodied  my  narrative.  If  Sancho  Panza  had  beei  a  real  governor 
misrepresented  by  the  prior  wit  of  Cervantes,  his  posterior  historian  would  have 
found  It  no  easy  matter  to  bespeak  a  grave  attention  to  the  annals  of  his  admin- 


NOTE  XVIII.     Page  423. 

\2Z^}f^''^}''ATT?  °^  Chalmers  to  vindicate  the  character  ef  this  man, 
eXd^W  r.^'^'^'^'f^  "«t  by  one,  but  by  every  province  over  which  he  ex- 
ercised  the  functions  of  government  previous  to  the  British  Revolution-  is  totally 

orTrrnr  1  ••  ^^f  "'"'".  ^'P'"  "^  "P°'"-V  i«'  that  Andros  merely  executed  the 
orders  of  his  master,  and  sometimes  ineffectually  recommended  more  humane 

nwi  -""fT  "Jf  '  """  "P°'"Sy  '"'""'^  "''Rbt  be  (as  in  fact  it  was)  equally 
of  Tin  W  ^"^  ^  ^  tb«  atrocities  of  Kirke  and  Jeffries  in  England,  and  of  G?aham 
of  Claverh(,use  and  Sir  James  Turner  in  Scotland.  It  is  an  apoloay  that  may 
ren'rolT'  w^'^'t '"^  punishment,  but  can  never  redeem  Lno?,  or  aS 
InCin  n  ^?."" J"''"^'-  ^^'^^  t«k«"  prisoner  by  the  persecuted  Scottish  peas- 
an  ry  n  Dumfneshire,  they  were  proceeding  to  put  him  to  death  for  his  crudty  ; 
no  n„lir7n°'  ^T^the  written  instructions  found  on  his  person,  that  he  had 
act  ally  fallen  short  of  the  severity  which  he  was  desired  to  inflict,  these  gen. 
nnf  vv;fh;,,?f  m"  t„u.r  ^,,mcu  nanas,  and  dismissed  him  with  impunity,  but 
not  without  abhorrence.  That  Andros  seems  (from  some  counsel  which  he 
VOL.  I.  74 


586 


NDT^g. 


privately  tendered  to  his  royal  pt^tron)  to  have  been  willing  at  times  to  alleviate 
the  burdens  of  the  people  only  renders  him  the  more  culpable  for  his  active 
subservience  to  a  contrary  policy,  the  mischief  and  odium  of  which  he  plainly 
discerned.  It  has  been  urged,  with  some  color  of  probability,  that  the  unanimous 
dislike  which  he  provoked  in  New  England  inferred  less  of  reproach  to  his  per- 
sonal character,  than  of  repugnance  between  the  previous  habits  of  the  people 
and  the  structure  of  that  arbitrary  system  which  he  was  appointed  to  administer 
among  them.  But  the  detestation  he  excited  in  New  York,  where  the  people 
were  habituated  to  arbitrary  government,  admits  not  of  this  apologetical  sug- 
gestion ;  which,  even  with  regard  to  New  England,  is  very  slightly  applicable,  if 
admissible  at  all.  James  the  Second  displayed  a  sagacity  that  approached  to 
instinct,  in  the  employment  of  fit  instruments  to  execute  injustice  and  cruelty ; 
and  his  steady  patronage  of  Andros,  and  constant  preference  of  his  to  any  other 
instrumentality  in  the  subjugation  of  colonial  liberty,  is  the  strongest  certificate 
that  could  be  given  of  the  aptness  of  this  officer's  disposition  for  the  employ- 
ment for  which  he  was  selected.  His  friend  and  colleague,  Randolph,  boasted, 
that,  in  New  England,  Andros  was  as  arbitrary  as  the  Great  Turk. 

A/ler  the  British  Revolution,  Andros  conducted  himself  irreproachably  as 
governor  of  Virginia.  But  William  and  Mary  had  not  intrusted  him  ^ith  tyran- 
nical power  in  this  province ;  and  the  Virginians  would  not  have  permitted  him 
to  exercise  it.  His  appointment  to  this  situation,  however,  was  an  insult  to  the 
American  colonies,  and  an  illiberal  measure  of  King  William,  who  assuredly  was 
not  a  friend  (as,  indeed,  what  monarch  ever  was?)  to  liberty,  either  in  America 
or  anywhere  else. 

Andros  died  at  London  in  1715,  at  a  very  advanced  age. 


NOTE  XIX.     Page  450. 

This  Jesuit  accompanied  the  French  commissioners  who  repaired  to  the 
head-quarters  of  the  Five  Nations  to  treat  for  peace.  When  the  commissioners 
approached  the  Indian  station,  they  were  met  by  a  sachem  who  presented  them 
with  three  separate  gifts  (strings  of  wampum) ;  the  first,  to  wipe  away  their 
tears  for  the  French  that  had  been  slain ;  the  second,  to  open  their  mouths  that 
they  nfiight  speak  freely  ;  and  the  third,  to  clean  the  mat  on  which  they  were  to 
sit,  whiio  treating  of  peace,  from  the  blood  that  had  been  spilt  on  both  sides.  The 
Jesuit,  who  acted  as  the  orator  of  the  embassy,  endeavoured  to  pay  court  to  the 
Indians  by  imitation  of  their  style  of  speech.  "The  war-kettle,"  said  he, 
"  boiled  so  long,  that  it  would  have  scalded  all  the  Five  Nations,  had  it  continued ; 
but  now  it  ie  overset  and  turned  upside  down,  and  a  firm  peace  made."  He 
recommended  to  them  the  preservation  of  amity  with  Corlear  (the  Indian  title  of 
the  governor  of  New  York) ;  and  having  thus  attempted  to  disarm  their  sus- 
picions, uttered  many  injurious  insinuations  against  this  ally.  "  I  offer  myself  to 
you,"  he  continued,  "  to  live  with  you  at  Onondaga,  to  instruct  you  in  the  Christian 
religion,  and  to  drive  away  all  sickness,  plagues,  and  diseases  out  of  your  coun- 
try." Though  this  proposition,  which  the  French  pressed  with  great  urgency 
and  address,  was  absolutely  rejected,  the  peace  brought  them  a  deliverance  from 
so  much  misery  and  fear,  that,  when^  a  deputation  of  the  sachems  of  the  Five 
Nations  arrived  at  Montreal  to  ratify  the  treaty,  they  were  received  with  general 
acclamations  of  joy,  and  a  salute  from  the  artillery  on  the  ramparts.  The  In- 
dian allies  of  the  French  were  highly  offended  with  this  demonstration  of  re- 
spect. "  We  perceive,"  they  angrily  observed,  "  that  fear  makes  the  French 
show  more  respect  to  their  eneajies,  than   love  can   make   them   do   to   their 


trK:iia3 


/-1 . 1  j-.- 


WOTSS.. 


Bs  to  alleviate 
br  his  active 
;h  ho  plainly 
lie  unaijinious 
h  to  his  per- 
of  the  people 
to  administer 
■e  the  people 
logetical  sug- 
applicable,  if 
pproached  to 
and  cruelty ; 
i  to  any  other 
}st  certificate 
■  the  employ- 
alph,  boasted, 

iroachably  as 
n  ^ith  tyran- 
ermitted  him 
insult  to  the 
issuredly  was 
r  in  America 


m 


aired  to  the 
ommissioners 
esented  them 
!  away  their 

mouths  that 
they  were  to 
h  sides.  The 
court  to  the 
;,"  said  he, 
it  continued ; 
made."  He 
ridian  title  of 
•m  their  sus- 
fer  myself  to 
the  Christian 
*  your  coun- 
eat  urgency 
'erance  from 

of  the  Five 
with  general 
s.  The  In- 
ration  of  re- 

the  French 

do  to   their 


NOTE  XX.    Page  457. 
Dfi^iTON,  whose  description  of  New  York  was  published  in  1702  cives  a  v^rv 

!!MtXrdslftS%l^'^  r^"^^^"^  '^  inL"itarktTh"peS 
Th^  ■  ^u\    ?  y,'  *"'^^'  '^  ^^^'■®  ^e  a  terrestrial  Canaan,  't  is  surelv  here 

S^sad  fn  tSrfrrnf  T'  t'!!-  ''"'^  '^"'^  P'^'^  '  blessed  'in  lSc7oX\ 
blessed  m  the  fruit  of  their  bodies  ami  the  fruit  of  their  grounds-  blessed  in 
their  basket  and  in  their  store  ;  in  a  word,  blessed  in  whatever  Iheftake  n 

awnsornchest  silks;  and  though  their  low-roofed  hous^may  seem  to  shu 
Uieir  doors  against  pride  and  luxury,  yet  how  do  they  stand  SeTen  to  W 
chanty  m  and  out  either  to  assist  each  other  or  to  relieve  a  stmnLr  i  and  tht 
distance  of  place  from  other  nations  doth  secure  them  from  threJvTous  Jrow^t 
of  Ul-affected  neighbours,  and  the  troubles  which  usually  arise  thence  '' 

30cltv  a'boTthe'Va'r  '' -"^T- 1"^'^.  ^^^  picture  L  the  ZZ}  European 
society  about  the  same  period,  as  depicted  by  De  Foe  in  the  most  celebrated 

m«n  nf  ?  V  ^'  squandering  ,t  m  vile  excesses  or  empty  pleasures  "  :  _  "  the 
men  of  labor  spent  their  strength  in  daily  strugglings  for  bread  to  maintain  he 

bLTtoTo'k  'V^'^T^  r'*^'  ^"  "^^"g^"^  daily  ^ci«.ulation  of trTowr?v„« 
but  to  work,  and  working  but  to  live,  as  if  daily  bread  were  the  only  end  of  ! 
wearisome  life,  and  a  wearisome  life  the  only  (icasion  of  daily  breadj' 


NOTE  XXI.    Page  469. 

From  the  writings  of  the  modern  historians  and  apologists  of  Quakerism 
we  might  be  led  to  suppose  that  none  of  the  Quakers  whoTereimprisonrdW 
the  magistrates  of  England  at  this  period  were  accused  of  aught  el  ^but  the  nro^ 
fession  of  their  peculiar  doctrinal  tenets,  or  attendance  at  SpecuhL  places 
hLX'^'P;  But. very  different  accounts  of  the  causes  of  tl  eir^rprlonment 
have  been  transmitted  by  some  of  the  sufferers  themselves;  and  fZ  the  tTnor 
1  r'il ''.  '"^"•f^'t  that  the  only  wrong  which  their  authors  sustained  from 
Oie  mag strates  was,  that  they  were  committed  to  prison,  instead  of  beingcr 
fined  in  lunatic  hospitals.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these  composhfons  U 
the  I\r«rr«,».co/^AePer.ec«iio«  of  Solomon  Eccles,  in  the  year  IS  Sen 

fo^r  th^"^  'r*"'^  ^^'i  ^"?  ^Tl^''^  ^•^^^^  he  describes  himJelf  as  "a  prisS 
for  the  testimony  of  the  Lord."     This  man,  who  was  a  Quaker,  and  a  ta  lor  in 

l:Zt?\  '''"*'''  S  "  ^'  r'  ^^^^'•'y  showed  to  me  that  I  should  go  to  tl " 
steeple-house  in  Aldermanbury  the  first  day  of  the  week  then  followL,  and 
take  with  me  something  to  work,  and  do  it  in  the  pulpit  at  their  siS me" 

1 '  7.""1^'^  '""T?.'  ,"  ^  P"''P'^«^^  *«  ^"--^  ^ith  me  a  pocket  to!eSue 
repaired  to  Edmund  Ca^my's  chapel,  and,  'watching  his  opportunity,  with  "e 
proverbial  dexterity  of  a  Quaker,  made  his  way  into  the  pulpit^    "I  sat  myself 

Srtoirut  hiT'"S\r'  '!J^  ^^^^^P.^^"  *^«  '^'^  wbLe'thepriUwhene 
oftwo  <,Ht?.t,  '  S;k^''^  '''  down,  and,  having  my  work  r^ady,  I  fulled  one 
or  two  stitches.  When  the  people  began  to  persecuto  him  (i.e.  to  pull  him 
down),  he  cared  not  if  thov  ImH  kilM  hirr>  "'h-  t  ..-  a,!.  ^  r-  PJ  l^ 
were  Mi  of  ™U,  and  „ad„osa."-He  wa3  I^arrW  tefo^'tli^^o;.''".^,;!;:^ 


688  NOTES. 

said  ho  to  me,  '  Wherefore  did  you  work  there  ? '  I  said,  '  In  obedience  to  the 
Lord's  commandment,'  lie  said  it  was  a  false  spirit :  and  said  he,  '  Where 
are  your  sureties  ?  '  I  said,  the  Lord  was  my  security."  Accordingly,  h\a  perse- 
cution was  consummated  by  a  commitment  to  Newgate.  "  Now,  let  all  sober 
people  judge  whether  I  did  this  thing  out  of  envy  against  either  priest  or  people. 
Yea,  farther  I  say,  the  Lord  lay  it  not  to  their  charge  who  have  said  that  I  did 
it  in  malice,  devilishness,  and  envy,"  &c.  &c.  This  singular  narrative  is  re- 
published in  Howell's  State  Trials. 


NOTE  XXII.     Page  473. 

Of  this  diversity  the  following  instance  may  serve  as  a  specimen.  When  the 
statute  against  the  Quakers  began  to  be  generally  enforced,  George  Bishop,  a 
man  of  some  eminence  among  them,  remonstrated  against  it  in  these  terms: 
"  To  the  king  and  both  houses  of  parliament.  Thus  saiih  the  Lord,  Meddle  not 
with  my  people  because  of  their  conscience  to  me,  and  banish  them  not  out  of 
the  nation  because  of  their  conscience ;  for,  if  you  do,  I  will  send  my  plagues 
among  you,  and  you  shall  know  that  I  am  the  Lord.-  Written  in  obedience  to 
the  Lord,  by  his  servant,  G.  Bishop."  Gough  and  Sewell.  Very  different  was 
the  remonstrance  which  William  Penn  addressed  on  the  same  subject  to  the  king 
of  Poland,  in  whose  dominions  a  severe  persecution  was  instituted  against  the 
Quakers.  "  Give  us  poor  Christians,"  said  he,  "  leave  to  expostulate  with  thee. 
Suppose  we  are  tares,  as  the  true  wheat  hath  always  been  called  ;  yet  pluck  us 
not  up  for  Christ's  sake,  who  saith.  Let  the  tares  and  the  wheat  grow  up  until  the 
harvest,  that  is,  until  the  end  of  the  world.  Let  God  have  his  due  as  well  as 
Caesar.  The  judgment  of  conscience  belongeth  unto  him,  and  mistakes  about 
religion  are  known  to  him  alone."     Clarkson's  Life  of  Penn. 


NOTE  XXIII.     Page  482. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how  a  friendly  intercourse  originated  between 
the  leading  persons  among  the  Quakers  and  Charles  the  Second  and  his  brother. 
The  Quakers  desired  to  avail  thetrselves  of  the  authority  of  the  king  for  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  general  toleration,  and  for  their  own  especial  defence  against 
the  enmity  and  dislike  of  their  numerous  adversaries.  The  king  and  his 
brother  regarded  with  satisfaction  the  principles  of  non-resistance  professed  by 
these  sectaries,  and  found  in  them  the  only  class  of  Protestants  who  could  be 
rendered  instrumental  to  the  design  of  reestablishing  the  faith  and  sway  of  the 
church  of  Rome  by  the  preparatory  measure  of  a  general  toleration.  But  how 
the  friendly  relation  thus  created  between  the  royal  brothers  and  such  men  as 
Penn  and  Barclay  should  have  continued  to  subsist  uninterrupted  by  all  the 
tyranny  and  treachery  which  the  reigns  of  these  princes  disclosed  is  a  difficulty 
which  their  contemporaries  were  unable  to  solve  in  any  other  manner  than  by 
reckoning  the  Quakers  conscious  votaries,  instead  of  deluded  instruments,  of 
bigotry  and  arbitrary  power.  The  more  modern  and  juster,  as  well  as  more 
charitable,  censure  is,  that  they  were  the  dupes  of  kingly  courtesy,  craft,  and 
dissimulation.  They  hoped  to  make  an  instrument  of  the  king ;  while  he  per- 
mitted them  to  flatter  themselves  with  this  hope,  that  ho  might  avail  himself  of 
their  instrumentality  for  the  accomplishment  of  his  own  designs. 

Perhaps,  since  the  days  when  the  prophets  of  Israel  were  divinely  commissioned 
to  rebuke  their  olTeuding  monuichs,  no  king  was  ever  addressed  in  terms  of  more 


NOTES. 


589 


llr'^r'i"?'"''"!-'''"^^".^"''''''^  ^^'•^'^y  h^«  employed  in  concluding  the  dedica- 

"who  ran  .n  .v  !  n  '""^J"  '^^  ^°'^'^'    ^«  '^'^^  ^he  monarch  remember, 

iJil  ^^  so  expenmcntally  testify  of  God's  providence  and  goodness;  neithe^ 

cnders  Slv°  ™  ''  T  "^"7  ^'"'^  P^°P'^' ««  '"^"y  ^^»«  Christians":  whch  thing 
renders  thy  government  more  honorable,  and  thyself  more  considerable,  than  thi 
accession  of  many  nations  filled  with  slavish  and  superstitious  sou^  Thou  hast 
tosted  of  prosperity  and  adversity;  thou  knowest  what  it  is  to  be  banS  thv 
native  country  and  to  be  overruled,  as  well  as  to  rule  and  sit  upon  the  throne     and 

GoS'andTaT  i/ aT  't  .r""  ''  '"°"  ^°"  ^'^^^^"l  '"^^  SppL'sor  7s  bot^  o 
.into  Z.  T  A  -5:^,  'u^'^u  ^^'^  warnings  and  advertisements,  thou  dost  not  tun. 
unto  the  Lord  with  all  thy  heart,  but  forget  him  who  remembered  thee  in  ZIZ 

^Sa'tron^'^Yef  Ch?rf  *°  ''"T  '"^'./"'^  "T^^  ^"'^'y'  ^'^^  -»  b^th/co; 
demnation.       Yet,  Charles  gave  himself  up  to  lust  and  vanity  without  apprehend- 

f"Lh  ^^^'^^T  ^'"f  «"y  diminution  of  the  regards  of  his  Quaker  friendsfand  ?he 
falsehood  and  cruelty  that  stained  the  conduct  of  both  Charles  and  James  rende  ed 

flwT.  f  ^!^ '"  "  '  *"""  /"^^P^  '^^  ^^'^^^^'  ""'i  the  Quakers.  The  tortures  in- 
flicted, by  the  orders  and  m  the  presence  of  James  himself,  on  the  Sc^Si  Cove- 
nanters must  have   been   perfectly  well   known  to  Barclay.     But  pe  haps  Ws 

fpw  nfl  '  ""^«rtunate  victims  of  bigotry  themselves  displayed.  There  were 
clvTnf I'r'  ''^°'  r'"  '"  '^'  '^^''  ^^  ^heir  own  afflictions,  did  not  bequeaTh  a 
dying  testimony  to  their  countrymen  against  the  sin  of  toUratina  the  blaLhemaus 
'Z?  '^'X^^^^^'''-  S,««  'The  Clold  of  Witnesses,  W oodr! JshS^'^Z 
other  works  illustrative  of  that  period.  'y,  anu 

Of  the  cajolery  that  was  practised  by  King  James  upon  the  Quakers  I  think 
M  r^',  nry77-'"'p"  "^r'^l^  ^''^y  unintlntionallyfby  Mr.  Glarkson,  in  hb 
nS  1?^  •  '  l*'""  ^'""-  ^^  ^^^  y^^""  ^^®®'  ^'Ihert  Latey,  an  eminent  Quaker 
?m'  YtJ^'^''  ^'""T"'^  I'y  P*^""  '^  *his  prince,  thanked  him  for  his  Dec 
laratton  of  Indulgence  in  favor  of  Quakers  and  other  Dissentere  ;  adding  an  ex- 
pression of  his  hope  that,  as  the  king  had  remembered  the  Quakers  in  their 
distress,  so  God  m.ght  remember  him  in  his  distress.  Some  time  after,  when 
James,  expelled  from  England,  was  endeavouring  to  make  head  against  his  ad- 
versanes  in  Ireland,  he  sent  a  message  to  Latey,  confessing  that  the  Revolution 
had  approved  him  so  far  a  prophet,  inasmuch  as  the  king  had  actually  fallen  into 
distress      But  Latey  was  not  satisfied  with  this  partial  testimony,  and  reminded 

i.?«Tr'n    '''"J'f  ''fe  had  been  saved  at  the  battle  of  the  Boyne,  the  i^-flipAeca 
that  had  been  addressed  to  him  was  entirely  fulfilled.  f   f     9 

The  Quakers,  notwithstanding  Pope's  imputation  of  slyims  to  them,  have 
displayed  amazing  creduhtym  their  intercourse  with  every  tyrant  who  has  thought 
It  worth  his  while  to  caress  them.  Since  the  death  of  James  the  Second  of 
*.ngland,  no  prince  has  game  i  a  greater  share  of  their  good  graces  than  the  late 
Enriperor  Alexander  of  Russia,  who,  during  his  visit  to  England,  accompanied  a 
distinguished  philanthropist  of  this  persuasion  to  a  Quaker  meeting,  and  actually 
convinced  some  of  the  leading  members  of  the  society  that  he  himself  was  L 
heart  a  (.Quaker. 


NOTE  XXIV.    Pago  487. 

"The  truth  is,"  said  the  accomplished  grandfather  of  Queen  Anne,  "theii 
IS  naturally  that  absence  of  the  chief  elements  of  Christian  religion,  charitv 
--•— -v'  j'-?'^^*  a»a  u.umciiy  compassion,  in  me  very  policy  and  institution 
ot  princes  and  sovereign  states,  that,  as  we  have  long  found  the  civil  obligations 

XX 


590 


KWes. 


of  alliance  and  maiTiage  to  be  but  trivial  circumstances  of  formality  tow«r,l= 

me.^  pnvate,  subordinate  and  subservient  fLSlt^to  convelnc^S "he  L^ 
est  of  kingdoms,  rather  than  duties  requisite  to  the  purchase  of  the  kinSdn^    r" 
nrces  /"'l;^?'-«f-«««d  hathstirrld  up  and  applfed  the  peopl     in  ^^^^^^^ 
pnnces  thought  it  necessary  to  plant  religion,  to  Jhe  destruction  of  prinSiUes 

c^:e':drrsr ''"^^  ""^'°"  ''^^  »^-  ^•^-^^^^  unnecess:;;?tord' 


NOTE  XXV.    Page  490. 

Sir^Joh%Irr.tH  '5'  ^^i""'  ""^  'i''  P'*'*^'"?  "**'«  ^'^^  (^^^''«h  '«  dedicated  to 
»ir  John  Moore  and  Sir  Thomas  Lane,  aldermen  of  London,  and  two  of  the 
principal  proprietaries  of  West  Jersey),  was  a  Quaker,  and  2e  friend  of  Penn 

?f  P  nlliXat^VSf'^  '^""•^'?  •'^  corrSpondi'ng  hisIoVofte^rovre' 
L  i!k    -^  ?n  ^^^^  *""  '"  ^"t'ng  he  declares  to  have  been  to  inform 

SaUeSenTo?^  ^T"  '^  '^'  ''PP"^""^^^  ^^'^'^^^  ^«  them,  by  Jhose  cX 
rlnmiT       ^      exchanging  a  state  of  ilUrewarded  toil,  or  of  beggarly  and  bur- 
densome  dependence,  for  a  condition  at  once  more  useful,  honorable!  prosperou 
and  happy.     "  Now,  reader,"  he  thus  concludes,  "  having  no  more  to  add  of  anv 

3dVn7?i?"'H '  '  t"^^  *^^«  '"  C»'"«^ '  «"d  whetLr  thou  stlyest  in  Eng- 
Kh  .h       n'i    'fu*^'  ^I^^'^^'  «f  goest  to  Pennsylvania,  West,  or  East  JeSef 


NOTE  XXVI.    Page  496. 
Wiufam^P^J!;*"^]"?"*'*'''^  •''^  sensitiveness  of  the  Quakers  to  the  reputation  of 

iiKio7h7.Uy  ^  7"^^  ^"°r-  .When  Winterbotham  undertook  the  com. 
SlT«^^  rSr<^  ;  ^'^Sraphical,  Commercial,  ana  Philosophical  View  of 
^Amencan  Untied  States,  he  was  encouraged  to  pursue  his  labore  by  the  assur- 

Je«  TriTJ^'^'tTr'''  ''  ^'^'^^  were  obtained  from  E^^th  Qu,- 
hfm'.«  r  •  ^^^*'"^««  ^,»"ch  he  consulted  on  the  subject  of  Pennsylvania  gave 

rrnirirtlS  ''"'^'^^  ''Tl!^^l^  ^•"^''"^•''"■^  »hat  hid  occurred  between  Ae 
ODin^n  ,?nflvn  ^S^Tfu  '^"^  ^''  ^"'''^^''  ^*''«"'«»«'  ^"^  ^^^'^^^  W""  to  form  an 
??.erstolaTnai'  ?  J'  '^"'^^  *^7^""  ""^  ^°  ^»^«  moderation  of  both  parties 
i«,l  !1T  .  I  ^A  ^^  ^'^  '*^''°""^  •'^  Pennsylvania  was  accordingly  written  in  a 
rtram  calculated  to  convey  this  impression.     Unfortunately  for  hL,  this de 

u^rtT^Tt^S'^'"  "'^'  r  'T'y  '""^  publication  and  deliVcr;  to  tl 
volv^d  wTnterSL^"^  T  '"'^''''^'y  ^'*'^'"^^  '^^'  subscriptions;  a  step  that  in- 
JS  f  then  a  nri^l^T  '."  m"  '"°''  f  """^.  ^"'barrassment.  The  unfortinate  au- 
^««nt  r  f  ^  '",  N^g^te  for  seditious  expressions  of  which  he  is  now 
fyn  ^f  Wdth^r^  T  i"^^  .been  innocent)  ap'plied  to  the  late  WillLm  S 
iy^fl_V*'T.'r»'*^*'^"d'  throwmg  himself  on  the  humanity  of  this  vnn.n.Wn 
!««,,  ««p,orea  rag  powerful  intercession  with  the  membera  of  his  religious"  fiuiter^ 


NOTES. 


rmality  towards 
for  conscience' 
tate  itself,  were 
any  melancholy 
d  to  be  directed 
)n  against  those 
eligion  itself  as 
y  and  the  inter- 
the  kingdom  of 
3,  in  whom  only 
•f  principalities, 
jssary."     Lord 


691 


is  dedicated  to 
ind  two  of  the 
Hend  of  Penn, 
of  the  province 
been  to  inform 
by  those  colb- 
Jgarly  and  bur- 
lie,  prosperous, 
!  to  add  of  any 
ftayest  in  Eng- 
>r  East  Jersey, 
art  (in  God)  in 


i  reputation  of 
published,  and 
rtook  the  com- 
phical  View  of 
i  by  the  assur- 
English  Quft- 
isylvania  gave 
I  between  the 
im  to  form  an 
r  both  parties. 
/  written  in  a 
im,  this  came 
elivery  to  the 
a  step  that  in- 
ti fortunate  au- 
ch  he  is  now 
William  Dill- 

thi$  vnnprahin 

ligious  frater- 


rtity     By  his  advice,  Wintc  fbotham  consented  to  camiel  the  objectionable  nortlon 

betrayed  with  regard  to  the  character  of  Penn  and  his  colonists.     The  QuaS 

^ect7frirdTnd  fulfil  5?"^'"'  ''  °"^«  "'^^  ^'^^  solicitation  of  thetrX' 
dote  was  ekt^Sfo  r^t  'i^"  ^S^S^"*^P^  ^ith  Winterbotham.  This  anec- 
aote  was  related  to  me  by  Mr.  Dillwyn  himself.  The  composition  which  this 
excellent  person  thus  contributed  to  Wimerbotham's  publica3  s  chamcterized 
by  h.s  usual  mildness  and  indulgence.  Without  denying  the  existLcTof  unha« 
jyd.ssens.ons  .n  Pennsylvania,1.e  suggests  reasons  for  fuppo?nftEa^hevS 
^nlln J?  "!"'""  '"'^apprehension,  and  were  neither  vioten  n°or  lasS  X 
apologet.cal  ve.n  pervades  the  whole  piece,  of  which  the  only  fault  is  that  ^uV 
like  the  generality  of  Quaker  productions)  it  is  a  great  deal  toVshort      £  DuT 

71ZIL""%"  '/  ^r  •''Tl'  ^"^  ^"^  -^^-^'^  mucrattention  o  the  Wsto^ 
of  America.  He  has  been  celebrated  (along  with  his  fritend  and  coadiutor  in  e5^ 
ertmns  to  promote  human  liberty  and  happmess.  Robert  Grahame  of  WhiteWH 


NOTE  XXVII.    Page  498. 

«n?  AM  '  B.JRNET  relates,  that  Penn,  in  alluding  to  the  executions  of  M)^.  Gaunt 
and  Alderman  Cornish,  which  he  had  attended  as  a  spectator,  said  that  "Te 
king  was  greatly  to  be  pitied  I "  and  endeavoured  to  palliate  his  guiU  by  ascrib  a^ 
his  participation  in  these  and  other  atrocities  to  the  influence  thS  Jeffries  had  a^ 
ttkLTn,^'"f  •  Unfortunately  for  the  credit  of  this  misembe  apofo^, 
he  king  was  not  under  the  influence  of  Jeffries  when  he  ordered  and  witnessed  the 
&llVu  TT.V^  Covenanters  in  Scotland;  and  the  disgrareTnto  l^dh 
Jeffries  fell  short  y  before  the  Revolution,  for  refusing  to  gratify  the  king  bv  nro- 
fessing  the  Catholic  fa  th,  and  pretending  to  keep  .  coLr  ^This^conscleni  L^tS 
fIn?J      K-^'  •  ^°""r"'  '^r^  ^^^  voluntary  and  how  limited  the  ki^W,^ 

SI      f^  ??  S-^'™  ''■"'y  ^^-     ^'  '"  ^«'«»^  '"  the  diary  of  Henrf,  L^ 
Clarendon,  that  Jeffnes  expressed  his  uneasiness  to  this  noWeman  at  the  ktac^ 

To'wTatVR  T^  °^'"°'^'"^^T•^  ^♦'^^   J^««««  -««  imprisoneS  in   L 
IIZa   ^h\^«^°l"J°"'  ^l  assured  Tutehin  (one  of  his  victims,  who  came  te 

For  the  credit  of  Penn's  humanity,  it  may  be  proper  to  observe,  that  Mma 
common,  in  that  age,  for  persons  of  the  highest  respectabilhy  («„d,  amS  iJhe^ 
for  noblemen  and  Iad.es  of  rank,  in  thiir  coaches)  to  attend  eXecSn  ,  S 


NOTEXXVm.    Page  502. 

eSL^p''  ^'';?°^'°J:''  ?",f  ^i^e  agent  of  the  mwn  both  before  and  after  the 

Si-  ♦  ^      ^uT'''''^^^'^  °^^^  successively  in  many  of  the  colonies,  and  was 
acQuainted  with  tho  ^nnHitjA^  of  u..5~  ~ii   :-  _  i^^^.-  ."^  ..      #.      ..    -  i.     .     . 
leou  «u  —■—  -—!—-!"..  oi  Tn..m  au,  m  a  rciwr  lo  mo  uoara  oi  "ifaae,  in 

1698,  observes,  th&t «  A  great  many  people  ofdi  the  tohnies,eBpeenAtf  in  ihoto 


6y2 


NOTES. 


under  proprietaries,  think  that  no  law  of  England  ought  to  bo  binding  on  them 
without  their  own  consent ;  for  they  foolishly  say,  that  they  have  no  representa- 
tives sent. from  ihcinselves  to  the  parliament  of  England  ;  and  they  look  upon  all 
laws  made  in  England,  that  put  any  restraint  upon  them,  to  bo  great  hardships." 
State  Papers,  apud  Chalmers.  It  was  probably,  in  reference  to  the  reports  of 
Colonel  Nicholson,  that  the  Lords  of  Trade,  writing  to  Lord  Bellamont  in  the 
year  1701,  caution  him  to  watch  and  curb  "  the  humor  that  prevails  so  much 
in  proprietary  and  charter  governments,"  — adding,  that  "  the  independency  they 
now  thimf.  after  is  so  notorious,  that  it  has  been  thought  fit  those  considerations, 
together  with  other  objections  against  these  colonics,  should  be  laid  before  the 
parliament."     Belknap. 

In  the  mtroduction  to  the  historical  work  of  Oldmixon  (who  boasts  of  the 
assistance  and  information  he  received  from  William  Penn)  we  find  this  remarka- 
ble passage :  —  "  The  Portuguese  have  so  true  a  notion  of  the  advantage  of  such 
colonies,  that,  to  encourage  them,  they  admit  the  citizens  of  Goa  to  send  deputies 
to  sit  in  the  assembly  of  the  Cortes.  And  if  it  were  asked,  why  our  colonies 
have  not  their  representatives,  who  could  presently  give  a  satisfactory  answer  > " 
In  the  year  1809,  during  the  struggle  which  the  Spaniards  were  maintaining 
against  the  usurpation  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon,  a  proposal  was  broached  in  the 
Spanish  councils  that  "  the  colonies  be  represented  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
empire  "  in  the  organs  of  authority  within  the  parent  state.  This  idea  was  subse- 
quently realized  to  a  certain  extent,  when  the  Spanish  Cortes  was  convoked. 
Napier's  History  of  the  War  in  the  Peninsula. 

An  extension  of  the  right  of  electing  members  of  parliament  to  a  part  of  the 
realm  which  had  not  been  previously  represented  there  occurred  in  the  thirty- 
fifth  year  of  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Eighth.  The  inhabitants  of  the  county 
palatine  and  city  of  Chester  complained,  in  a  petition  to  the  king,  "  that,  for  want 
of  knighta  and  burgesses  in  the  court  of  parliament,  they  sustained  manifold 
damages,  not  only  in  their  lands,  goods,  and  bodies,  but  in  the  civil  and  politic 
governance  and  maintenance  of  the  commonwealth  of  their  said  county ;  and 
Uiat,  while  they  had  been  always  bound  by  the  acts  and  statutes  of  the  said  court 
of  parliament,  the  same  as  other  counties,  cities,  and  boroughs,  that  had  knights 
and  burgesses  in  the  said  court,  they  had  often  been  touched  and  grieved  witli 
acts  and  statutes,  made  within  the  said  court,  as  well  derogatory  unto  the  most 
ancient  jurisdictions,  liberties,  and  privileges  of  the  said  county  palatine,  as 
prejudicial  unto  the  commonwealth,  quietness,  and  peace  of  his  Majesty's  sub- 
jects." They  proposed,  as  a  remedy,  "  that  it  would  please  bis  Highness,  that 
it  be  enacted,  with  the  assent  of  the  lords  spiritual  and  temporal,  and  the 
commons  in  parliament  assembled,  that,  from  the  end  of  the  session,  the 
county  palatine  shall  have  two  knights  for  the  said  county,  and  likewise  two 
citizens  to  be  burgesses  for  the  city  of  Chester."  The  con^plaint  was  thought 
just  and  reasonable,  and  the  petitioners  were  admitted  to  send  representatives  to 
parliament. 

Various  instances  of  similar  proceedings  occurred  in  the  reigns  of  this  mon- 
arch's successors, —  Edward  the  Sixth,  Mary,  and  Elizabeth ;  the  latter  of 
whom  created  twenty-four  new  boro'  .ghs  in  England.  In  the  reign  of  Edward 
the  Sixth,  a  writ  was  directed  to  the  inhabitants  of  Calais,  requiring  the  return 
of  a  member  of  parliament  for  that  town. 


NOTE  XXIX.    Page  517. 
In  the  year  1684,  there  was  published,  by  one  of  these  emigrants.  The  Planter's 


Sn0»^h  #A  h' 


r  tiivtt 


NOTES. 


693 


•The  l^v?.  T  '^?  productions  of  the  early  colonists  of  New  England, 
m/n  n».ln  r  ^""''  '•^''^"''"g  »«  ^^^^  "^w  habilalions,"  says  this  writer  "  I 
approl^nd  (measur.nB  your  sentiments  by  my  own)  to  have  been,  -  '     ^ 

his  law  whh  Sdol  "^  ^'""T^^'  ''''I'  ^^^-^^  ^«  '"'g'"  ^""^hip  God  and  obey 
clbeTed  w  h^S  m^'n  "^  '""'^^  dictates  of  the  divine  principle,  unen- 

So  Uic  r..af>    „n  ?    ^  errors  occasioned  by  the  fierce  invasiins  of  tradition, 

^  11  o^    rrJ'  covetous  or  ambitious  cruelty.  ' 

nrnvp t.A      "^^  '"'^''^  ^*"''''  "^  °"  "^  ^^""g'"  ^lysian  shore,  commence  or  im-' 

vTxalions  and"  ZZl"'  '  rT  w  "'^''  "^  "'^•'^  ""'°«''  ^  °^  «'^-«  outward  caes, 

o7;prdS^".i;^rdlti^^^^^^     -^^^^  -^^-^  -^^  ^--  ^•^^  ^-^^ 

mL^'^n  ^Y'  "^  j"''  ''^  .1^'"^  to  little  Zoar,  from  the  ungodly  company  of  a 
more  populous  and  magnificent  dwelling,  we  might  avoid  belg  Sd  wfth  ho 
sight  of  infectious  as  well  as  odious  eAamples,%f  horrid  sweaiScTiil^^^^ 

cZS^dwiif  "''"{•'  "-'---f'  ^"'^   ""  ^'"^«  -'  iTchei^f  contrary' 

rd"jiieTiJitr:^taToi„r„"atr  ^^^^p^ '''  ^^'^-'^^  ^^---'^  ^«  -"' 

more^'fhriTiri'  and'^Ztrb'^'^'P'""'"^  ^'T  °""  '""  '"  ^^^^'^^^  *«  ^^"'^^r  them 
.inT.-h    K^  .V  ,    '^^"^f.  bearers,  so  we  here,  in  peace  and  secure  retirement 

t^re  mth?Z/  ^'T'T  "^  ^"^'  ""^  '"  '^«  '"P  ^^  ^^^  •'^^^t  adulter  edna-' 
tru'sSST  '%^r''!  -mprovehis  talent,  and  bring  forth  more  plen- 

"  5tl     And  Wl  ^  r."-  ^°^'  ""f  P"^^^«  ^^^'^^^^  °^  ''>«  ^hole  creation.    ^ 
caZ  fi^W,   nr  ^'        '  ""  "i''^'''  ''t''""*°'  ^y  °"'  •^"'y  '^««trine,  and  the  practi- 
cat  teachings   of  our  exemplary  abstemious   lives,  transacted    n  all    humiiil^ 
obnety    plainness,   self-denial,  virtue,  and  honesty  we  might  gain  upon  toTj 

of  Pol  f  P°r  ^"""^  r^'  ^^^"^^^d  '•'^""'1  «bout  us  (and  commonrin  way 
of  con  ompt  and  reproach,  called  heathens),  and  bring  them  not  only  to  a  sTatJ 

count'  t£if\"rb  T""  '  ^f^  '""'"'f^  "^"''^  ^-"  ♦«  «  --«  saSactoiy  at 
"Ssotbnf\T     1    ^  f°"^  Spaniards,  we  had  gained  the  mines  of  Potosi." 

andt  fnl  nnf  '  '''''"  '''"S"''  "7  ^'''^^'^  "^''^  ^^ose  that  brought  you  hither; 
k>u  nev^'  "^nfl  ^°"  ^""'T  ^^'^  ^«c«'"Pli«hthem,  you  obtain  the  end  of  you; 
ZuTh'  7  business  therefore,  here  in  Uiis  new  land,  is  not  so  much  to 

build  houses  and  establish  factories,  and  promote  trade  and  manufactures  tZt  mav 

L    o'eTiT trmiloriVr  ^'"^  '""r^  r  ''''''  ^"^  P>-«  -«  -^  to  be  negle  t^dT 

attrntc:tr=f  fS  1=:°"  -^^«  ^^  ^"^-^-  -^-^  ^^^-  ^-  -? 

Such  says  Proud  the  historian  of  this  province,  were  the  views  and  motives  of 
tte'.  td  bo  h lifJ''  ^^"'r ^"^•'^'  Pennsylvania.  "  But  all  things'ave  t  leTr 
Sons  i,,t  d;  "^  •'"%^"''-^'?'P''''''^'^^"  ^'  ^'"^"^''  states  and  particular 
persons,  must  die  :Jinis  ab  ongtne  pendet.  Yet  folly  often  shortens  their  dura- 
.on,  as  wisdom  and^  virtue  prolong  their  more  happy  existence."  IbTd  TWs 
Wh.  T°"  f|"'"^\"«  of  the  celebrated  mkxim  of  the  Jewish  Eabbf 
Jochonan  Hassandalar,  who  lived  under  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Adrian  -  thaJ 
every  commonwealth  formed  in  the  fear  of  God  flourishethT?or  y^tu"  is  the  li?e 
and  bond  of  society,  while  vice  ruins  and  dissolves  it. 


Tie  Planter's 


NOTE  XXX.    Page  547. 

for?hi's^de'Sf!n°"^  ""1^''^  ^"""  "?"''"""^  *°  ""g^^  ^^'  ^  ""'"ber  of  years  be- 
lore  nis  aeatn  an  inifirpstinnr  ni^Mi'-p  i°  criv — k-t'I ci-         u    ^     ,  •'  ,    . 

account  of  the  yellow  fever  at  Philadelphia,  in  1699, 1  have  already  poticed  ,  who 

VOL,.     I.  7I»  J,  '  . 


XX 


594 


NOTE8. 


arriving  from  America  in  1713,  paid  a  visit  to  all  that  remained  of  his  veneroblo 
friend.     '♦  Ho  was  then,"  snys  Story,  "  under  tho  lanr.cntttbie  cficcto  of  an  apo- 
plectic  fit  which  ho  had  hnd  some  time  before  ;  for  hia  memory  was  almost  quite 
lost,  and  tho  use  of  his  understanding  suspended,  so  that  he  was  not  so  cunversa- 
bio  as  formerly,  and  yet  as  near  the  truth,  in  the  lovo  of  it,  as  before  ;  wlierein 
appeared  tho  great  mercy  and  favor  of  God,  who  looks  not  as  man  looks.     For 
though  to  some  this  accident  might  look  like  judgment,  and  no  doubt  his  enemies 
so  accounted  it,  yet  it  will  bear  quite  another  interpretation,  if  it  be  considered 
how  littlo  time  of  rest  ho  over  had  from  tho  importunities  of  the  affairs  of  others, 
to  the  great  hurt  of  his  own,  and  suspension  of  all  his  enjoyments,  till  this  hapl 
pened  to  him,  by  which  ho  was  rendered  incapable  of  all  business,  and  yet  sen- 
sible of  the  enjoyment  of  truth  as  at  any  timo  in  all  his  life.     When  I  went  to  tho 
house,  I  thought  myself  strong  enough  to  seo  him  in  that  condition ;  but  when  I 
entered  tho  room,  and  perceived  the  great  defect  of  his  expressions  irom  want  of 
memory,  it  greatly  bowed  my  spirit  under  a  consideration  of  the  uncertainty  of 
all  human  qualifications,  and  what  the  finest  of  men  are  soon  reduced  to  by  a  dis- 
order of  tho  organs  of  that  body  with  which  the  soul  is  connected   and  acts 
during  this  present  mode  of  being.     When  these  are  but  a  little  obstructed  in 
their  various  functions,  a  man  of  the  clearest  parts  and  finest  expression  becomes 
scarcely  intelligible.     Nevertheless,  no  insanity  or  lunacy  at  all  appeared  "in  his 
actions  ;  and  his  mind  was  in  an  innocent  state,  as  appeared  by  his  very  loving 
deportment  to  all  that  came  near  him.     And  that  he  had  still  a  good  sense  of 
truth  is  plain  by  some  very  clear  sentences  he  spoke  in  the  life  and  power  of  truth 
in  an  evening  meeting  we  had  together  there,  wherein  wo  were  greatly  comfort- 
ed ;  so  that  1  was  ready  to  think  this  was  a  sort  of  sequestration  of  him  from  all 
the  concerns  of  this  life,  which  so  much  oppressed  him,  not  in  judgment,  but 
in  mercy,  that  he  might  have  rest,  and  not  be  oppressed  thereby  to  tho  end." 
Clarkson.     Yet  some  writers  have  asserted,  that,  at  this  very  time,  Penn  was 
engaged  with  the  Jacobites  in  concerting  plots  in  behalf  of  the  Pretender.     This 
allegation  appeared  the  more  plausible,  as  proceeding  from  the  State  Papers  (pub- 
lished by  Macpherson)  of  Nairne,  an  under  secretary  at  the  Pretender's  court ; 
although  the  statements  in  these  papers  are  founded  entirely  on  the  reports  sent  to 
France  by  two  obscure  Jacobite  spies  in  England. 

William  Penn  lingered  in  this  condition  till  the  30th  of  July,  1718,  when  he 
closed  his  long  and  laborious  life.  This  event,  though  for  many  years  expected, 
was  deeply  bewailed  in  Pennsylvania;  and  the  worth  of  Penn  honorably  com- 
memorated by  the  tardy  gratitude  of  his  people.     Proud. 


NOTE  XXXI.    Page  551. 

"  The  British  nation,  renowned  through  every  age,  never  gained  by  all  her 
conquests,  even  when  her  arms  subdued  France  and  thundered  at  the  gates  of 
Paris,  such  a  valuable  acquisition  as  her  settlements  in  North  America.  To  law- 
less power,  to  faction,  and  to  party  rage,  these  spreading  colonies  owed  their 
firmest  establishment.  When  the  mother  country  was  in  tho  most  deplorable 
situation,  when  the  axe  was  laid  to  the  root  of  the  constitution,  and  all  the  fair 
blossoms  of  civil  liberty  were  destroyed,  —  even  then,  from  the  bare  trunk, 
despoiled  of  all  its  honors,  shot  forth  these  branches,  as  from  a  stock  where  na- 
tive vigor  was  still  kept  alive."     Wynne,  Introduction. 

A  few  such  animated  sentences  as  these,  together  with  a  compilation  of  sta- 
tistical  details  from  the  numerous  publications*  respecting  America  that  issued 
from  the  English  press  shortly  prior  to  the  War  of  Independence,  constitute  the 
wnolc  merit  of  the  first  part  of  vVyuue'a  History.    This  writer  is  distinguished 


NOTES. 


U  voncrablo 
of  an  apo- 
almost  quite 
io  coiivursa" 
•o  ;  wlierein 
looks.  For 
his  enemies 
considered 
■s  of  others, 
ill  this  hap> 
md  yet  sen- 
went  to  the 
but  when  I 
om  want  of 
certainty  of 
to  by  a  dis- 
d  and  acts 
bstructed  in 
on  becomes 
ared  in  his 
very  loving 
Dd  sense  of 
wer  of  truth 
tly  comfort- 
im  from  all 
Jgment,  but 
>  the  end." 
,  Penn  was 
ider.  This 
'apcrs  (pub- 
ler's  court; 
torts  sent  to 

3,  when  he 
s  expected, 
•rably  com- 


695 


by  all  her 
be  gates  of 
,  To  law- 
owed  their 
deplorable 
all  the  fair 
are  trunk, 
where  na- 
tion of  sta- 
that  issued 
istituto  the 
stinguished 


above  every  other  historian  willi  whose  works  I  am  acquainted,  for  the  depth  of 
his  'gnoranco  and  the  he.ght  of  his  presumption,  for  the  monstrous  inaccuracy  of 
h.s  statements  and  the  folly  and  absurdity  of  his  speculations.  Amnnr.  „  Vu- 
wh.r!l.r'  '""r  Y  blunders,  ho  describes  the  delusion  of  the  New  England 
witchcraft  as  one  of  the  causes  that  led  to  the  concession  of  the  charter  of  Con- 

n^thn  ni,  m"'''"*''*^'^'P''"''^'"""^°^^°"''  A"'«"«'^  to  Ihe  enforcement 
Fnll^r  li"""'  "^'""''  ?'rn'«"  by  James  the  Second;  and  ho  congratulates 
Lngland  on  the  conquest  of  Canada,  as  an  event  that  excluded  the  interposition 
ot  1  ranco  in  the  approaching  struggle  with  the  North  American  colonies.  But 
the  charter  of  Connecticut  was  granted  more  than  thirty  years  before  the  occur- 
rDlen"!,  rn  nnl  f'^P'^^?.'^^  ^^.'''^S  produced  it;  James  the  Second  excited  the 
susnonrn^  X.t  f^  *"'  Subjects,  not  by  enforcing,  but  by  unconstitutionally 

suspending,  the  penal  laws  against  Dissenters ;  and  the  conquest  of  Canada  not 
only  accelerated  the  Revolutionary  War,  but  insured  the  participation  of  France  ,n 
It  against  England.  lie  represents  Colonel  Dongan  as  having  been  governor  of 
Massachusetts;  and  relates  (with  superfluous  regret)  that  William  Penn  died  in 
^iT"'»v,  '  '"  ^"■''r'?'  °^  ")"''  ridiculous  superiority  and  condescension,  he  de- 
clares the  purpose  of  his  work  to  have  been  the  reconciliation  of  England  and  her 
colonies,  by  dissipating  that  mutual  ignorance  in  which  he  supposes  their  disputes 
to  have  onginated.    Dark  mdeed  must  have  been  the  ignorance  that  exceeded  his 


own 


The  same  remarks  do  not  apply  (or  if  so,  far  less  forcibly)  to  the  second  part 
of  Wynne  a  History -y,h^ch,  whether  from  greater  attention  or  from  access  to 
better  materials,  displays  so  much  of  accuracy  and  good  sense,  that  it  is  not  easy 
to  believe  the  whole  work  to  have  been  the  composition  of  the  same  author 


NOTE  XXXII.     Page  553. 

"It  is  remarkable,"  says  a  distinguished  modern  statesman  and  philosopher, 
how  exactly  the  history  of  the  Carthaginian  monopoly  resembles  that  of  the  Euro- 
peaii  nations  who  have  colonized  America.     At  first,  the  distant  settlement  could 
admit  of  no  immediate  restraints,  but  demanded  all  the  encouragement  and  protec- 
tion  of  the  parent  state ;  and  the  gains  of  its  commerce  were  neither  sufficiently 
alluring  to  the  Carthaginian  merchant  from  their  own  magnitude,  nor  necessary 
to  him  fronri  the  difficulty  of  finding  employment  for  his  capital  in  other  direc- 
tions.    At  this  period,  the  colony  was  left  to  itself,  and  was  allowed  to  manage 
Its  own  affairs  in  its  own  way,  under  the  superintendence  and  care  of  Carthage, 
which  protected  it  from  foreign  invasion,  but  neglected  its  commerce.     In  this 
favorable  predicament,  it  soon  grew  into  importance ;  some  of  the  Carthaginian 
merchants  most  probably  found  their  way  thither,  or  promoted  the  colonial  specu- 
lations by  loans ;  at  any  rate,  by  furnishing  a  ready  demand  for  the  rude  produce, 
in  this  stage  of  its  progress,  then,  we  find  the  colony  trade  lef\  free  ;  for  the 
first  of  the  two  treaties,  prohibiting  all  the  Roman  ships  of  war  to  approach 
within  a  certain  distance  of  the  coast,  allows  the  trading-vessels  free  access  to  all 
the  harbours  both  of  the  continent  and  the  colonies.     This  intercourse  is  even 
encouraged  with  the  port  of  Carthage,  by  a  clause  freeing  the  vessels  entering 
from  almost  all  import  duties.     The  treaty  includes  the  Roman  and  Carthaginian 
allies ;  by  which  were  probably  meant  their  colonies,  as  well  as  the   friendly 
powers;  and  the  clause,  which  expressly  includes  the  colony  of  Sicily,  gives  the 
Komans  all  the  privileges  in  that  island  which  the  Carthaginians  themselves  en- 
joyed.     At  this  period,  it  is  probable  that  the  commerce  of  Rome  excited  no  ieal- 
ousy,  and  the  wealth  of  thp  onlnnma  ijhIo  o.. — : —  .  -i.i u  _  j— _j  -/•  .i..  "*   -t 

itary  prowess  of  the  former  seems  to  have  given  rise  to  the  negotiation. 


me 


NOTES. 


'^  Some  time  afterwards,  another  treaty,  conceived  in  a  different  spirit  and 
formed  exactly  upon  the  principles  of  the  mercantile  system,  was  concluded  be- 
tween those  celebrated  rival  powers.  The  restrictions  upon  the  navigation  of  the 
Roman  sliips  of  war  are  here  extended  and  enforced  ;  the  freedom  of  entry  into  the 
port  of  Carthage  is  continued,  and  into  the  ports  of  Sicily  also ;  the  Komans  grant- 
jng  to  the  Carthaginians  like  privileges  at  Rome.  But  the  Romans  are  debarred 
from  plundering,  trading,  or  settling  (u  singular  conjunction)  upon  the  coast  of  Af- 
rica Propria,  which  was  peopled  by  Carthaginian  colonies,  and  furnished  large 
supplies  of  provisions  and  money  to  the  city.  The  same  restriction  is  extended 
to  Sardinia ;  and  trading-vessels  are  only  permitted  to  enter  the  harbours  of  that 
colony  for  the  space  of  five  days,  to  refit,  if  driven  thither  by  stress  of  weather 
A  singular  clause  is  inserted,  to  which  close  analogies  may  be  traced  in  the 
modern  questions  of  neutral  rights  and  contraband  of  war ;  —  if  any  Roman 
troops  shall  receive  stores  from  a  Carthaginian  port,  or  a  port  in  the  provincial 
territories  of  the  state,  they  are  bound  not  to  turn  them  against  eitlier  the  republic 
or  her  allies.  '^ 

"  The  substance  of  this  very  singular  document  will  suggest  various  reflections 
to  my  readers.  I  shall  only  observe,  that  we  find  in  it  the  principles  of  the  mod- 
ern colonial  system  clearly  unfolding  themselves  ;  and  that  we  have  eveiy  reason 
to  regret  the  scantiness  of  our  knowledge  of  the  Carthaginian  story,  which,  in  so 
far  as  relates  to  the  commerce  of  that  people,  breaks  off  here,  and  leaves  us  no 
trace  of  the  farther  restrictions  most  probably  imposed  by  succeeding  statesmen 
upon  the  growing  trade  of  the  colonies."  Brougham's  Inquiry  into  tlie  Colonial 
Policy  of  the  European  Powers. 


NOTE  XXXIII. 


Page  555. 


Thk  most  admirable  and  interesting  of  the  Britisli  settlements  in  North  Ameri- 
ca,  and  in  an  especial  degree  the  provinces  of  New  England,  owed  their  socia. 
formation  and  earliest  domestic  guardianship  to  men  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of 
piety,  virtue,  and  all  ennobling  and  humanizing  knowledge.  Such  national  parent- 
age inevitably  tended  to  the  nurture  and  propagation  of  democratical  spirit  and 
authority ;  a  circumstance  which  must  be  propitious  or  unhappy  to  America  (and 
consequently  to  all  the  world)  in  proportion  to  the  preservation  and  spread,  or  the 
neglect  and  restricted  operation,  of  the  principles  from  which  it  originated.  As 
democracy,  in  alliance  with  religion,  morality,  and  liberal  education,  may  be  the 
greatest  political  blessing  that  human  societies  can  receive ;  so,  united  witli  impi- 
ety, profligacy,  and  ignorance,  it  must  exert  an  instrumentality  at  once  injurious 
to  the  true  interests  and  disgusting  to  the  sound  judgment  and  good  taste  of 
mankind.  From  the  example  of  various  national  societies,  both  ancient  and  mod- 
ern, m  which  the  principles  of  aristocracy  have  prevailed,  it  has  been  too  rashly 
deduced,  that  the  mass  of  mankind,  in  all  numerous  and  civilized  communities, 
must  necessarily  be  corrupt,  gross,  ignorant,  and  depraved.  It  remains  for 
America  (and  God  grant  it  be  her  happy  destiny)  to  teach  a  difl'ercnt  and  nobler 
lesson  to  the  world.  The  recent  institutions  of  infant  schools,  which  have  so  won- 
derfully contributed  to  render  the  imitative  disposition  of  children  subservient  to 
their  moral  and  intellectual  advancement,  and  the  improvements  in  charitable 
practice  illustrated  in  the  writings  of  Tuckcrman  and  Channing  of  Massachusetts, 
if  diligently  and  generally  prosecuted,  appear  sufllcient  to  intercept  the  growth, 
or  extinguish  the  prevalence,  in  social  life,  of  the  worst  evils  of  poverty  and  of  all 
the  debasing  principles  of  artificial  aristocracy.  The  condition  of  the  poorer 
classes  of  society,  demanding  that  their  education  should  commence  at  an  nee. 
which,  among  tiie  wealthier  classes,  is  generally  reckoned  unsusceptible  of  culture, 


NOTES. 


jnt  spirit,  and 
cjoncluded  be- 
vigation  of  tho 
entry  into  the 
Romans  grant- 
i  are  debarred 
e  coast  of  Af- 
rnished  large 
n  is  extended 
•bours  of  that 
s  of  weather, 
traced  in  the 
'  any  Roman 
he  provincial 
r  the  republic 

>us  reflections 
s  of  the  mod- 
every  reason 
,  which,  in  so 
:  leaves  us  no 
ng  statesmen 
I  t/ie  Colonial 


697 


^orth  Ameri. 
d  their  socia. 
;ultivation  of 
tional  parent- 
;al  spirit  and 
imerica  (and 
pread,  or  the 
^inated.  As 
,  may  be  the 
;d  willi  impi- 
nee  injurious 
ood  taste  of 
:nt  and  mod- 
}n  too  rashly 
lommunities, 
remains    for 

and  nobler 
lavc  so  won- 
jbscrvient  to 
in  charitable 
issachusctts, 

the  growth, 
ty  and  of  all 

the  poorer 

at  an  asc, 
e  of  culture, 


nnif  r  ?dmmi8tored  to  large  numbers  of  them  together,  was  lone  ac- 

counted unpropmous  to  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  among  them.  But  thTLts 
of  benevolence  has  recently  discovered,  in  these  very  circumstances,  a  priS 
Cd  tSt'ihisT'''  °^>'^^,^ffi«««y  -->  the  best  effects  of  education.'  It^may^te 
S?„Il  ?."T  in  alliance  Avith  the  true  interests  of  democracy  will  dis- 

dXhe  advlZW"'  !!'  g°^T'^""' ''  '""^^  ««^^  *han  a  democratlcal  one  to 
comnlntl  ^  rendering  the  acquisition  of  the  elements  of  education  legally 
uZft  IvZ-^'"'''^  ■'^\^^''  ""^  '^^  commonwealth.  "Knowledge,"  said  the 
SS  »  u^^'^"'""^'""'  ^"  ^'''^'''  ^ddr«^«  to  congress  as  president  ?f 'the  United 
The  mea^nr^.  17'^  '^''""^''^  '^^  '"?""'*  ^^'^'  °^  P"''"^  happiness.  In  one  in  which 
Tn.T  fT  g«^«rn'^ent  receive  their  impressions  so  immediately  from  Uie 
sense  ot  the  community  as  m  oui-s,  it  is  proportionabiv  essential." 


NOTE  XXXIV. 


Page  559. 


piottn?n?h  T^^'^T  """."  ^''''^'"^  •"  America,  in  the  beginning  of  the 

eighteenth  century,  by  a  discussion  that  took  place  in  parliament  with  regard 
A  U-JPV-  ^''"^  employment  of  felons  in  the  royal  dock-yards  of  England. 
HrTwL  nJl  r'P"'"  T'  ^'""^'f  ^y  *''«  "°"'^  of  Commons,  but  rejected  by  the 
Thi.  wn!.  '  ^'  f  "^'"g  t«  d'scredit  his  Majesty's  service  in  the  dock-yards. 
Sniw  ''^'"'"""^"^  '^".^^'th  just  displeasure  by  an  American  journalist,  of  whos.,- 
lucubrations  some  specimens  have  been  preserved  in  Smith's  Histon,  of  New 
\ZZ-  ^  """!,•""  ¥«"y  ^  P«^sP"rt  to  tho  advantages  of  an  establishrucnt  in 
America,  says  this  writer,  the  number  of  criminals  is  multiplied  in  Sngland  ;  and 
the  misery  of  the  industrious  poor  is  aggravated  by  the  discredit  attad.cd  to  \h' 
only  certain  means  of  improving  their  condition.  He  maintains  that  this  policv 
IS  at  once  mischievous  and  insulting  to  tho  colonial  settlements;  and  that  it  'voul'd 
be  much  less  injurious,  and  not  more  unjust,  to  burden  them  with  the  support  of 
a^l  the  decrepit  or  lunatic  paupers  in  England.  "  There  are  thousands  of  honest 
men  he  continues,  "laboring  m  Europe  at  fourpencc  a  day,  starving  in  spile  of 
all  their  eflorts,  a  dead  weight  t^  tho  respectivo  oarishcs  to  which  thoy  belong  : 
who  without  any  other  qualifications  than  common  sense,  health,  and  strengU. 
might  accumulate  estates  among  us,  as  many  have  done  already.  These,  and 
not  the  felons,  are  the  men  that  should  be  sent  over  for  the  better  peopling  the 


NOTE  XXXV.     Page  560. 

From  the  time  when  one  of  tho  earliest  assemblies  of  North  Carolina  prohibited 
he  inhabitants  of  that  provmce  from  accepting  commissions  to  sue  for  debts  duo 
to  foreigners,  down  to  the  present  day,  the  North  Americans  have  been  charged 
with  ( efic.ency  of  strict  and  honorable  justice  in  their  commercial  policy,  es- 
pecially with  regard  to  the  interests  of  creditors  and  payment  of  debts.  To  a 
certain  extent,  tho  reproach  is  doubtless  well  founded.  But  those  who  have 
endeavoured  to  account  for  it,  by  supposing  that  the  commercial  morality  of  the 
Arnencans  was  tainted  hj.ti.p.  !ra\id^  inci-.tcmt  k>>e  Indian  tr.ade,  have  assigned 
neither  the  mos  honorab.'e -lin,-  ,rl>c  masf.-unpr,.  ;an.i  .Satis!Uotory  explanation,— 
which  may  be  derived,  I. think,. partly  f^-om  tlio  circliniStan^Ts  mentioned  in  the 
ext    and   pailly  from   tue  popnlan  ^pyr(;rj,;- rind  IcoOsieqiJcr.t.  Was  of  American 

," ,.  .-      ''*',  ^^My  "f  y^-^iy  propicarp  .K;bl5)rs,.ur  Hi  least  more  akin  k. 

the  condition  of  debtors  than  of  creditors  j  and  hence,  when  tlie  majority  rules,  the 


698  NOTES. 

interests  of  creditors  are  rather  reluctantly  protected  than  cordially  aided  by  the 
laws.  In  an  aristocracy,  where  legislation  is  in  the  hands  of  a  few,  and  these  few 
are  more  akin  to  the  class  of  creditors  than  of  debtors,  the  pervading  policy  of 
commercial  law  is  precisely  the  reverse.  Men  are  always  much  more  prone  to 
prescribe  than  to  practise  wisdom  and  virtue.  When  the  many  rule,  they  legia- 
late  mainly  for  themselves,  and  are  governed  chiefly  by  considerations  of  wlf- 
mterest,  which  are  often  illiberal  and  short-sighted.  When  the  few  rule,  then 
men  are  legislating  for  others ;  and  however  self-interested  the  legislators  may  be 
they  are  willmg  enough  to  acquire  a  cheap  credit  by  imposing  on  their  fellow* 
citizens  the  most  strictly  upright  and  honorable  regulations.  It  is  then  that  the 
sentiments  of  creditors  give  the  tone  to  commercial  legislation,  and  that  the  duties 
of  debtors  are  most  strictly  unfolded  and  enforced  by  law.  In  human  society 
evil  IS  often  overruled  to  the  production  of  good,  and  good  perverted  to  the  pro' 
ducUon  of  evil.  The  condition  of  the  inhabitants  of  North  America  is  eminently 
fraught  with  good ;  and  only  the  controlling  and  purifying  influence  of  strong 
Christian  principle  can  exempt  them  from  a  proportional  share  of  those  abuses 
that  constitute  the  guilt  and  the  penalty  of  benefits  irreligiously  enjoyed. 


BUS  OP  TOtUHS  I. 


I 


Jided  by  the 
id  these  few 
ig  policy  of 
)re  prone  to 
,  they  legis- 
ions  of  self- 
V  rule,  then 
ors  may  be, 
heir  fellow, 
len  that  the 
It  the  duties 
lan  society, 
to  the  pro- 
s  eminently 
e  of  strong 
dose  abuses 
d. 


